Whatever happens with Cucurella, Brighton have a squad to cope
A few seasons ago, even in the Premier League, few of us would have predicted that a year on from the record £50 million sale of Ben White, the long-awaited £25 million sale of Yves Bissouma would be overshadowed by perhaps the biggest transfer saga of the Premier League window.
The subject of ten thousand tweets and more column space than a Greek temple, the Marc Cucurella to Manchester City story has been a rollercoaster of rumour about terms being agreed on almost an hourly basis, “in the know” experts saying the ink is already dry on a contract, and huge speculation about the player’s own intentions.
It looked in the past week like things seem to have been clarified. Cucurella submitted a transfer request after City’s first confirmed offer was refused. The Albion said there will be no more talks unless City meet the £50 million asking price.
City refused to do that. Game over… or so we thought. In another twist, City not playing ball looks like it might open the door for Chelsea to swoop in and steal Pep Guardiola’s number one target from under his nose. Presuming the board at Stamford Bridge are willing to pay the fee Tony Bloom wants.
With a month to go until the window closes, no-one truly knows how it will play out. Clearly, Cucurella would be a rare player to turn down the opportunity of vast wages at one of the biggest clubs in the world by most rankings.
Brighton and Hove Albion are not yet the pinnacle of any players ambition, certainly compared to what City and Chelsea can offer.
Putting in a transfer request doesn’t mean an exit is inevitable. As many have pointed out, a certain Lewis Dunk wouldn’t be here if that were the case.
City and Chelsea can easily afford the £50 million, but the question is whether they want to pay it. I can afford the new strip, but I’m not sure I actually like it enough to want to buy it.
I’ve said before that it is a good thing that players like White, Bissouma and Cucurella see the Amex as a staging post in their careers en route to Champions League football and international glory.
If we weren’t attracting players who thought that, then we probably wouldn’t be where we are. But there has to be a balance between that and all our best talent being stripped out after only one season in our side.
Albion’s scouting and recruitment operation is vast and now arguably amongst the best in British football. Whilst some gambles haven’t come off, you only have to look at near-misses like Darwin Nunez – who we came close to signing a couple of times – to see that we know what we are doing.
He will likely tear up the race for the title at Anfield this season. Like Virgil van Dijk before him, we can console ourselves by the fact Brighton were the first English club to realise the potential of Nunez.
Enock Mwepu, Moises Caicedo, Julio Enciso, Simon Adingra, Kaoru Mitoma and Deniz Undav are all recent additions who have shown – or who hopefully will prove – our recruitment process to be of the highest quality.
As Andy Naylor put it over the weekend, why didn’t City sign Cucurella for £15 million from Getafe before Brighton last season? He had a release clause everyone in football knew about.
With their unlimited funds, don’t they have a global scouting network? Are they content to let clubs like the Albion do the donkey work and then just pay big money for players once they have proven themselves in the Premier League?
Bloom and Paul Barber neither have the financial resources or the desire to scrap the club’s wages policy to keep players here, it’s just not sustainable.
The Big Six, Newcastle and possibly one or two others will for now and the foreseeable future be able to outbid us in terms of transfer fees and wages.
Does that mean we are doomed to lose against teams with bigger budgets and better players? I’d refer you to Cristiano Ronaldo, arms aloft in a resigned shrug as he and his highly paid teammates were played off the Amex pitch in a 4-0 humiliation just a couple of months ago.
The Albion have to maintain a steady stream of new players via the academy, development squad, loan players and recruitment to fill the gaps as the most prominent first team stars are poached.
Under Graham Potter’s leadership, we have to be better as a team than any collection of highly-paid individuals put out by teams with near-unlimited Middle-Eastern or US funds.
Whether Cucurella stays or not – and I think unless Chelsea decide to pay the fee then he is likely to be here at least until January – we have a strong squad.
Alongside those mentioned above, we have a raft of players developing on-loan. There is the experience of Adam Lallana, Pascal Gross and Danny Welbeck.
There are younger players a little more established like Tariq Lamptey and Leandro Trossard. The eventual return of Jakub Moder (we hope fully recovered). No teams success can rest on any one player, but on the depth, flexibility and cohesiveness of the squad as a whole.
Pre-season has seen the Albion look confident with all the free-flowing football that excited us so much in the final few games of the last campaign. Goals are coming from across the team.
Let us hope that continues at Old Trafford with our favourite long-haired Spaniard in the side. That we start how we left off, securing an early place in the top half of the Premier League table.
Warren Morgan @WarrenBHAFC
