WeAreBrighton.com Transfer Deadline Day Live Blog
Welcome to transfer deadline day. One of the maddest 24 hours in the football calendar as clubs across England try to improve their squad for the final time until January.
Brighton have done some astonishingly stupid things on deadline days in the past. Remember when Gus Poyet spent big on Stephen Dobbie, only to loan him to Crystal Palace four months later. Who he helped to promotion to the Premier League.
Or when, in a moment of blind panic, the Albion tried to break their transfer record with a huge bid a few hours before the window shut for Vincent Jannsen, who was on the pitch for the Netherlands at the time. Quite how the expected to agree personal terms with the player is anyone’s guess.
Or what about the time – and this is our personal favourite – that Andy Naylor tweeted about that a “club legend” was returning and everyone lost their minds thinking Bobby Zamora was coming back. Turned out it was Dean Hammond on-loan from Southampton.
Will the final day of the summer 2019 transfer window match any of that? If it does, this is the place to find out on our WeAreBrighton.com Transfer Deadline Day Live Blog.
We don’t have the technology to make this page refresh automatically, so if you’re sticking with it all day then please hit F5 every now and again for updates.
WeAreBrighton.com Transfer Deadline Day Live
17:23 – Beram Kayal and Tomer Hemed move to Charlton Athletic
Two departures late in the day to report on as Brighton’s Israeli men (hallelujah) Tomer Hemed and Beram Kayal head to Championship club Charlton Athletic together.
With both players out of contract come the end of the season, that’s their Albion careers as good as over. Kayal and Hemed have both been brilliant servants who played key roles in the clubs promotion to the Premier League while Hemed had the added bonus of being married to a former Miss Israeli.
Charlton have got themselves two quality players at Championship level which will hopefully be enough to keep the Addicks up following their promotion out of League One last season.
16:01 – DONE DEAL – Aaron Mooy loan finally confirmed
✍️ We’re delighted to announce the signing of Aaron Mooy on a one-year loan deal from @htafc! 🇦🇺#AnnounceMooy 😉
📲 Breaking news brought to you by @eToro.#BHAFC 🔵⚪️
— Brighton & Hove Albion ⚽️ (@OfficialBHAFC) August 8, 2019
Typical. You’re just about to sit down for this afternoon’s episode of The £100k Drop and the Albion choose that exact moment to announce what we’ve known since 8am this morning – Aaron Mooy is a Brighton player.
The midfielder joins on a season-long loan from Huddersfield and has also signed a new three year deal with the Terriers. On the face of it, that sounds very odd but it’s actually an extremely shrewd move.
Mooy was out of contract come the end of the season and so could have walked away from the John Smith’s Stadium for nothing next year.
He was apparently desperate to play Premier League football in 2019-20, and so Huddersfield said they’d let him go out on-loan to do so as long as he penned a new contract so that they can sell him for a big fee next summer rather than lose him for nothing.
Will that big fee be forthcoming from the Albion? That remains to be seen.
15:26 – Is it took late for Lewis Dunk to go anywhere?
We’re into the final two hours of the transfer window now and it’s been so quiet that even while I’ve been locked in a 90 minute battle with the bastards at Vodafone customer support, I haven’t missed anything.
Aaron Mooy is still be announced, probably because the club are desperately trying to work out a way in which they can see the cock up with his photograph on the website was actually deliberate and all part of some clever reveal.
As four outgoings, there is nothing as yet on potential destinations for Beram Kayal or Tomer Hemed. A Charlton Athletic fan on Twitter reckons that the former is heading to the Valley on loan as he’s listed him in his Addicks team to face Stoke City this weekend, but that seems to be more in hope than based on anything concrete – a bit like if I included Cristiano Ronaldo in my Brighton line up for Watford or tweeted that Taylor Swift was now my wife.
With each minute that the clock ticks towards five, we take a step closer to keeping hold of Lewis Dunk. Leicester City don’t seem to have made any headway in their search for a Harry Maguire replacement and in a way, Manchester United deciding to wait until the last week of the window before meeting the Foxes’ asking price has done us a huge favour.
Hopefully, somebody at the club has had the good sense to lock Dunk in a broom cupboard without his mobile for the next few hours.
13:36 – Brighton announce Yapi but reveal Mooy
Well, this is a spectacular cock up. Somebody at the Albion managed to accidentally upload a photo of Aaron Mooy in a Brighton shirt onto the official website to accompany the news that the club had signed Romaric Yapi.
130) Announcing the #DeadlineDay signing of Romaric Yapi on the website but uploading a photo of the yet-to-be-confirmed Aaron Mooy in a Brighton kit instead pic.twitter.com/3oEiEl4jkY
— We Are Brighton (@wearebrighton) August 8, 2019
Quite how they’ve managed to confuse a 28-year-old Australian midfielder who’s been an established Premier League player for two years now with a 19-year-old French right back I don’t know, but there we go.
That’s our confirmation that Mooy is now a Brighton player.
11:44 – DONE DEAL – Brighton sign PSG right back
✍️ Albion have completed the signing of French right-back Romaric Yapi from @PSG_inside.
📲 Breaking news brought to you by @eToro.#BHAFC 🔵⚪️
— Brighton & Hove Albion ⚽️ (@OfficialBHAFC) August 8, 2019
Brighton’s first deal of the day is done – and it isn’t Aaron Mooy. Paris Saint-Germain right back Romaric Yapi has beaten Mooy to penning a contract as he joins for an undisclosed fee from the French champions.
Yapi is yet to play a senior game at Parc des Princes and has been signed initially for Simon Rusk’s Under 23 squad according to the official club website.
If this summer is anything to go by, then check back here at about 2pm to find out which Championship or Bundesliga 2 club he has been loaned straight out to.
10:43 – Why is Watford so shit for pubs?
All gone a bit quiet, hasn’t it? Since breakfast, I’ve spent most of the day trying to find a couple of decent pubs for pre-game beers on Saturday.
Every year there’s the hope that somebody might have finally opened a decent bar in Watford and every year the realisation very quickly sets in that you’d be better off going for a beer in downtown Damascus.
We’re waiting on the Albion to confirm that Aaron Mooy is a Brighton player but given that the club seem to take longer than a Wagner (Richard, not David) opera to announce these things, that may be some hours away yet.
One player who won’t be moving to the Amex is Swiss striker Albian Ajeti. The Basel forward was reportedly on the Seagulls radar but has moved to West Ham United for £8m. If we were Tony Bloom, we’d have been offering at least £20m just to have a bloke called Albian playing for the Albion.
Andy Naylor believes that both Tomer Hemed and Beram Kayal could secure loan moves to the Championship today. Will any second tier sides be interested in taking both of the Israeli men (hallelujah) in one deal?
08:27 – Aaron Mooy set to join on a season long loan
Well, I haven’t even finished breakfast yet and it sounds like the Albion have pulled off their first deal of the day. The player in question? Huddersfield’s Aaron Mooy.
Remarkably, we’ve seemingly managed to sign him on a season long loan according to the reliable Tom Barclay, which we can’t imagine is going to go down well with the locals at the John Smith’s Stadium.
They’ll be losing one of their best players for a year and presumably are only getting a minimal loan fee for their troubles.
I'm told Brighton have got their man in Aaron Mooy. He's set to join on a one-year loan from #htafc #bhafc
— Tom Barclay (@TomBarclay_) August 8, 2019
Whether there is anything in the deal which says the Albion have an option to buy next summer – like with Anthony Knockaert’s switch to Fulham – remains to be seen.
Mooy’s arrival will bolster Graham Potter’s midfield options and could well lead to the departure of Beram Kayal. The Israeli international has probably been relegated to fourth choice midfielder behind Davy Propper, Dale Stephens and now Mooy.
When Yves Bissouma gets fit, Kayal will become fifth choice. If Potter decides to use Gross in the middle of the park, sixth. And if he rates Steve Alzate as highly as appears to, potentially eighth.
At 31 years of age, Kayal doesn’t have long left in his career and needs to be playing regularly which isn’t going to happen at the Amex. In the unlikely even that there are any Championship clubs reading this, you should give Paul Barber a call as Kayal would be an excellent addition for most teams at that level.
We’ve also had it revealed to us that the transfer window actually shuts at 5pm tonight, which means there is no clash with EastEnders to worry about.
Signing Mooy and realising there isn’t a clash between deadline day and Phil Mitchell waking up from his coma. What a start to the morning.
07:39 – The rumour mill
Morning all. It was a bit of a mad one last night with Brighton rumours popping up more frequently than Piers Morgan revealing himself to be a twat.
Of those that were doing the rounds, Brian Owen has poured cold water on any deal for Norwegian whizzkid Sander Berge after The Mirror reported that we’d lodged a £28m bid with Genk for his services.
Owen also said that a move to Frank Lampard’s Derby County for Jurgen Locadia was unlikely. Locadia is said to be “happier than ever” at the Amex, presumably because his latest album has hit the dizzy heights of 274th in the iTunes chart.
Two stories that do appear to have a little mileage in them involve Huddersfield Town midfielder Aaron Mooy and Paris Saint-Germain full back Romaric Yapi.
L’Equipe reported that Yapi is set to have a medical with the Albion and will be confirmed as a Brighton player at some point today.
The 19-year-old began his career as a right winger before transitioning to right back, which you expect gives him the skilset required to make a pretty effective wing back.
Given his age and the fact that Graham Potter seems to be leaning towards playing 3-4-3, on paper it looks like he’d make a decent understudy to Martin Montoya on the right.
Mooy meanwhile would go some of the way towards addressing the Albion’s lack of depth in midfield. The Australian has apparently been on Brighton’s radar for some time and his arrival would give Beram Kayal the opportunity to leave in order to seek the regular first team football he probably needs at this stage in his career.
For our money, a defensive midfielder should be a higher priority than a creative player like Mooy. We already have Pascal Gross and Davy Propper who can both make something happen in the middle of the park, whereas Dale Stephens is the squad’s only option when it comes to playing in the holding role. And as the second half of last season in Chris Hughton’s 4-3-3 showed, it isn’t a position he is exactly comfortable in.
Whatever happens, it sounds like we could be in for a busy day. We’ll have it all covered here, apart from between 7.30pm and 8pm when EastEnders is on. Time for a sausage and bacon baguette.
