The Sellingest of Selling clubs

Thursday was a frustrating evening, as the soap opera that has been the future of Leandro Trossard’s came to a head as his pending transfer to Arsenal was all but officially confirmed, along with stories surfacing that Albion’s midfield talisman Moises Caicedo looked like he may well following him out the door too before the month is over.

As I’ve written about before, this is the transfer strategy the club has chosen, to date and it’s worked wonders. We just have to get used to this.

However, losing both Trossard and Caicedo would most definitely dent out hopes of European football that I ended my last blog dreaming about. However well we’ve already adapted to life without Trossard, and the array of talent that’s previously left before him.

But, whilst there’s a genuine opportunity for European football this season, or even a FA cup run, I don’t think the club are primarily focused on it, their focus is on the bigger picture. And begrudgingly we have to admit, quite rightly.

Paul Barber said to in the Argus last week when referring to European qualification, “We have not looked at it in a lot of detail.”

At the same time Barber named a number of clubs Albion are above in the table, stating their (in my view) greater publicly ambitions, contrasting that with Albion’s more realistic mindset. Saying he believed the fans were on board with that.

Sensible mindset, that’s how you run a football club at the top level, I guess? But it does go against the football fan mindset of constantly dreaming of better and ultimately, seeing your club win something.

It’s certainly true the club recognise it’s a possibility. With Barber also saying, “You can’t afford to come off the gas at any point because points are crucial if you have ambitions to play at the highest level.

And the highest level for us is winning silverware, obviously, or playing in Europe.”

But there are other clubs who are bolder and more explicit (publicly at least) with their ambitions. Something inarguable really when you look at club’s like Villa, Leeds and West Ham who have (inexplicably) talked about Champions League qualification.

Barber is realistic. But it can be rather dispiriting at times like these.

Some will say, we’ve just thrashed Liverpool 3-0, what have you got to be dispirited about?.. But moments like this are dispiriting BECAUSE we’ve just beaten Liverpool, look at what’s possible!

Does Caicedo now leave too? Well, all I’d say is we’ve seen this story before and we know how it ends.

After all, whilst we don’t have another Caicedo, we do have a number of options in in his area of the pitch, particularly since the signing Billy Gilmour, and soon to be reinforced with the return of Jakub Moder from a long injury lay off, and that’s not to mention the array of talented youngsters threatening to break through too or return from loan this summer.

Furthermore, whilst some say Albion will hold off for a better time to sell, Albion have 30 points on the board already, with little-to-no risk of relegation. So the board may in fact decide: what better time to sell, particularly if they get a ‘silly money’ offer…That’s my worry anyway.

And even if Caicedo doesn’t go, his head’s likely now been turned. The infamous Fabrizio Romano been reported earlier this week that he’s got himself a new agent… as I said, we’ve seen this story before.

Look at Bissouma last season after the club rejected a bid in January for him, there was a clear subsequent drop off in standard. And you could easily expect the same to happen again with Caicedo if we hold off on selling.

Are this weekends opponents Leicester City, currently struggling at the wrong end of the table, showing us the alternative? Here’s what happens when you do actually try to avoid selling players?

Leicester manager Brendan Rodgers said in the build up to this weekends game that there “have been challenges here that are invisible to people which you might not see unless you were working with them”.

“But it’s just about reinforcing the qualities of the players,” he added. “Some of them have been here a long time. Maybe some thought they would get moves to bigger clubs, but it hasn’t happened for whatever reason.

“My job is to work with the players and to maximise their talent. We’ve been able to do that for the majority of the time we have been here. It’s about consistency at this level. You need to be mentally ready and committed.”

The example of Leicester shows the other side of the coin. It is a warning to Albion of what can be a tricky balance of maximising the potential of the team in the short term and doing what’s best for the longer term. Something Albion have done pretty well so far to their credit.

Right now, it feels like we are the most sellingist of selling clubs. The reality is, like most clubs, we are a selling club, and always have been.

Name a great Albion player of the modern era, and there’s a good chance that they were eventually sold to a bigger club too…

But not to this extent. West Ham made £23m from last seasons European cup run, an amount by far overshadowed by Premier League TV & prize money. So whilst us fans would love to see it, when in addition you take account of the larger squad often required, and the challenges qualifying for Europe places on domestic commitments, the short term benefits of this from a “business” perspective start to look small.

Showing that while Brighton remain in the Premier League they can make far more profit from selling their players at peak value than holding on a bit longer in hope of making Europe or winning a domestic cup competition.

Just look at team selections for cup competitions, over the years us supporters have just had to learn to accept that clubs now see potential glory as less important and don’t share our priorities.

Many have said (once again) Albion latest sale represents good business from the club. Buying a player and selling him on for double that value in just a few years.

Fine. That’s all well and good, I don’t disagree that it’s good business.

But as another one of Brighton’s best player is sold, I can’t help but feel a bit of frustration. Is “business” what we want our club to be truly best at?

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Deadline Day Recap: How badly do Albion need a striker?

Based on what I’ve read on social media in recent days, some Brighton fans appear to have a great deal of animosity towards the club’s summer transfer business. So much so it has at times been akin to a bitterly scorned partner feeling like they got the worst end of a divorce settlement. If you aren’t aware this is mostly drawn from a frustration over the club’s failure to sign a new first team striker to give a boost to its goalscoring woes.

We were all pushed to the point of frustration at times last season as Albion missed chance after chance and let a number of potential victories slip away. But for some that frustration has turned to desperation. I’ve even seen some pleading for the club to sign the likes of free agent Daniel Sturridge, a player whose historic struggles with injuries are worse than even Danny Welbeck and who hasn’t played professionally since February 2020, when his contract at Turkish side Trabzonspor was terminated after he was banned for four months for breaching the FA’s betting rules.

That said I do understand the vast majority of people who are concerned about not adding additional quality to the attack. I’m not a huge fan of the way xG is often used to definitively analyse a team’s performance, but when you are consistently underperforming a statistic as much as Brighton did last season it clearly shows there is something not going right.

The absence of the arrival of a striker is not without effort. Many well sourced journalists have been reporting Albion’s attempts to sign a number of targets like Nico Gonzalez or Darwin Nunez, but unfortunately the deal couldn’t be done. If the right player was not available within the club’s budget, then so be it. Especially given its well documented financial difficulties in recent times combined with the absurd state of the transfer market at this moment, especially for Premier League clubs.

Ultimately, the club has to be run sustainably; we can’t keep expecting Uncle Tony to pay off the overdraft every year.

That said, despite criticism over the club loaning out younger talents and reducing the team’s numbers in attack, I don’t think that’s something we should be as concerned about. The reality is Albion tend to play with just one central striker and have three senior specialist options for that one position, which is more than for most other single positions in their system.

And if Graham Potter wants to play two up top then the likes of Gross, Trossard, MacAllister, Richards and Lallana have all played in varying forms of second striker roles. We may have less options in terms of the pure number of players, but are in a far better position in terms of versatility. Something that in my eyes more than compensates and better suits Graham Potter’s style of coaching.

Of course, his main striker will continue to be Neal Maupay. A player not in everyone’s list of favourite Albion players of all-time, but he’s started the season well and if he can improve on last season and hit double figures again that will go a long way towards helping the club achieve its goals.

For me, a key part of bringing in a new striker is can you also fit Maupay into the team. If not, you’re not only losing 20 of the team’s goals (more than 1 in 5) over the past two-and-a-bit seasons, but also a player who is key to the teams build up play. Put simply, when he is missing Albion struggle to create chances. So, you need a certain type of player that can play alongside him.

Maupay has come in for a lot of flak. As a part of their 2020/21 end of season reviews the Guardian were quite typical in the national press’ distain towards Albion’s top scorer. Going in hard on Neal Maupay by naming him as one of the “Flops of the season”.

Yes, he’s missed big chances and should probably have scored more goals in his time with the club, but if he was the perfect striker he wouldn’t be at Brighton.

It is also worth noting that he’s scored 24% (20) of Albion’s goals since joining the club, whilst taking around 20% of their shots. Maupay isn’t blameless, but Albion’s problems in front of goal don’t lie entirely with him. Others also need to step up to take the weight of expectation off of the Frenchman’s shoulders.

His fellow striker partner for some of last season Danny Welbeck showed a similar level of threat in and around the box at times, but injuries have held him back from getting a sustained run in the team. Something that forced him to miss the start of this season. However, he showed toward the back end of last season that if he remains fit, he is a top striker and a good back up option to Maupay should the Frenchman be unavailable or in need of a rest.

Then there’s youngster Aaron Connolly, who looks to be currently sitting third in the pecking order. I’ve written recently about how this season is a crucial one for his prospects with the club and it’s a shame Maupay had an injury scare the other week that led to Connolly being rested for the League Cup tie and so limited his game time so far this season to just that 45 minutes in the second half against Watford.

This showed in his performance against Portugal for Ireland the other night. It was a lively performance, where he again showed he’s a huge threat if given space to run in behind. And one where with better finishing he could have put Ireland out of sight, a feeling us Brighton fans know all about.

But as opposed to the scorn often thrown his way on social media, I have sympathy for Connolly and feel that with a bit of sustained game time under his belt he would have taken at least one of those chances. So, it’s odd that given the club’s tendency to send its young players out on loan, that Connolly hasn’t had another loan opportunity since he returned from that short and largely unsuccessful, injury-hit spell at Luton.

Some will question why we are even sending players like Andi Zequiri or deadline day signing Abdallah Sima out on loan at all rather than keeping them as a further back up options. But take Zeqiri as an example. He’s been at Albion for the best part of a year and has barely played.

I understand the will for the security that increased squad depth brings, but as the example of Connolly shows, what value to these players is there staying at the club and not playing when they can go out and play regular football at a very high level? Something that is vital at this stage in their careers.

The only big disappointment of all the outs for me was Percy Tau leaving, a player I thought could give us a different option in attack this season following his bedding-in period in the first half of 2021. But I can only assume given the pressure and expectations on him from his many followers from his home country of South Africa, that he felt he could no longer wait to earn the regular football that Graham Potter couldn’t assure him of.

With these options in mind and only one place to fight for, I do find all this panic a bit silly. If it gets desperate there’s always the option of playing the likes of Leandro Trossard through the middle too, something he’s done before. Or if Potter prefers, he could give one of the development team squad a run out.

This includes Evan Ferguson who made his Albion debut the other week in the League Cup against Cardiff. He may be just 16 years old but has scored 3 goals in 3 appearances in Premier League 2 this season and is probably being considered as an option of last resort.

Evan Ferguson is one to watch having signed from League of Ireland side Bohemians in January. It would be ahead of schedule if he was used, but he’s caught the eye with both the U18s & the U23s and was described by his old boss at Bohemians as “one of the country’s brightest prospects.”

Despite being so young and featuring for only part of last season, FB Ref ranked Evan Ferguson in the top 200 players to feature in last season’s Premier League 2 and is inside this season’s top 100 for the first few of rounds of fixtures this season.

Fans of Irish football will have been following Evan for a little while. He became the youngest player in Bohemian’s first team history, debuting at just 14-year-old vs Derry City in September 2019 having made a substitute appearance in a friendly vs Chelsea earlier that year. 

Evan has already represented Ireland at u17 level, was this week selected for the Ireland U21s and will no doubt hope to copy fellow Albion development team graduates Jayson Molumby & Aaron Connolly in representing the senior national team, which could be sooner rather than later if he continues on this rapid rise

One of the common themes among many of the players already discussed and that is being forgotten in all the Deadline Day lack of a striker panic, is that Albion’s transfer policy of buying young & investing in the academy builds in year-on-year improvement amongst the existing squad and the potential for replacements from the academy.

So, do Albion need a striker? I think I’ve demonstrated that there is a reasonable level of cover for what in reality is just one position in the starting eleven.

Yes, its arguably the most important one and there is a good argument to say that added quality would be beneficial. Unfortunately, despite efforts to add this quality, the deal seemingly couldn’t be done within the club’s budget, and we have to accept that unlike sides like Aston Villa or Everton, Albion are working under very different financial restraints.

The striker is the most expensive position in football, and for good reason as Graham Potter says himself, scoring goals is the hardest thing to achieve in football. But the club have taken a different approach to some in this area, buying a crop of young talented strikers and hoping they can improve into the players that the team requires in order to take it to the next level.

For that patience will be required and accepting that the frustrations in front of goal from last season may reoccur, if hopefully less frequently. But this is a team that is nonetheless in a good place to improve on last season’s performance and goals scored tally. For me, the biggest factor that may hold them back is our lack of belief in them. So as Micky Adams used to say, Keep The Faith.

Monday Musings – Albion are taught lessons on the pitch amongst deadline day panic off of it

Everton teach us a lesson

The 2020/21 football season is going to be a weird one with so much football being packed in. As this weekend’s results resoundingly proved.

And just when it looks like most teams could do with a break, we get a round of international games with three games packed in, then we are back for more of this madness in two weeks’ time!

On top of that, it was always going to be a tough start to the season for Brighton given their opening fixtures, especially considering the amount of player turnover there has been in a very shortened summer break

Whilst Albion played well at times, scoring twice and putting Everton under some serious pressure, there were parts of the performance against Everton that weren’t great.

In particular the now worrying habit of conceding goals from set pieces and giving the ball away in our own half, but we still have plenty of positives to take away from the first 4 games and into the remaining 34 games.

Ten goals conceded from four games is a fairly poor return, but take account of the opposition and it’s not that unreasonable. Albion conceded 7 in the same fixtures last season whilst season scoring just three compared to this season’s eight goals scored. And accumulated just one point compared to the three so far this season. Clear signs of improvement.

But let’s not pretend there aren’t issues. Albion’s main fallibilities of defending set pieces and at times overplaying in defensive areas were costly for all four goals conceded and were exposed by an in form & high quality Everton team.

This Albion team is young, relatively inexperienced and many haven’t played together long. So some of the mistakes in those first four games were predictable but they can’t keep persisting if Albion really want to improve on last season’s 15th place finish.

The defeat will have been a reality check for some Albion fans as the team were well beaten by a very good side who took apart our every weakness. That’s 7 wins from 7 this season for Everton. Whilst for Albion that win over Newcastle is looking very important.

Easier games are to come, once we get to the second international break we‘ll have a better idea of how far this team has come, it’s very early to make any judgements just yet.

Powell’s team offers promise but are also taught a lesson.

There’s been lots of promise from Hope Powell’s team so far this season despite last week’s FA Cup exit. Something particularly shown by the four point picked up from their first two fixtures. But their third league game of the season against United was a big test of those signs of improvements and an equally stark reality check for Albion’s other senior side.

And unfortunately despite Kaagman, Green, Connolly and Walsh all returning to the starting line-up, Man United dominated and eased to a 3-0 victory in Sunday’s WSL match between the sides.

Like against Man City, Brighton again defended well for long periods. But you can’t expect to concede as much possession and territory every week and keep coming away with a clean sheet.

The highlight was a brilliant solo goal from the ex-Albion player and England international Alessia Russo to make it 2-0. A goal that highlighted how Man United were simply a cut above their guests, putting Albion under constant pressure who found it tough to get out their own half for long periods. With the eventual 3-0 scoreline a fair reflection of the home sides dominance.

A league cup tie against West Ham follows for Albion this week before another tough WSL game at home to Arsenal.

Deadline Day Panic

A lot of the transfer window discourse from Albion fans this time around has been very negative, a further example of the club’s disproportionately ever-growing expectations.

I personally think we’ve had a good window and would prefer no business today. Panicked deadline day deals are risky.

The club has a good first team squad and with Graham Potter in charge it looks more than enough is in place for the team to have a good season.

Yes, the club’s spent limited funds this summer, but offers for the likes of Brewster & Watkins were always likely to fall short if club’s with less frugal ownerships got involved as happened.

We must remind ourselves that the club has a relatively small budget for the Premier League and being here is success in itself.

The noticeably more frequent investment in u23 players and it’s academy is its way of the club trying to gain an advantage over the likes of Villa and others, something we have a proven success of doing in recent years.

Yes, we’ve spent big in prior years, but many of those players are still on our books. Some now filling the bench, filling the treatment table or out on loan, but all on financially limiting long term big money contracts. Can we afford to add yet another big money player to the wage book who could just as likely flop as much as he could be the “silver bullet” people have argued for? Especially amongst the current global economic turmoil and that has been caused by COVID.

It’s also a sign of the clubs plan to become financially self-sufficient whilst remaining competitive and working towards its long term goal of established top-half topflight status.

This is a more realistic long term strategy than splashing inordinate amounts of money on one player in search for short term success, Tony Bloom can’t keep bankrolling the club’s losses forever.

Disproportionately growing expectations are something I’ve written about before and that have been a problem for the club for a while, in part it’s a symptom of Albion’s success.

But I can’t help but feel they have created a rod for their own back by not managing things better.