mathematics Analytics forecast Predictions. Four areas in which Tony Bloom excels. Four areas that have led Bloom to become the king of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules and Brighton & Hove Albion to own 2024 transfer summer window
The Seagulls were Europe’s biggest clean sweepers, not only smashing their previous highest total in a single window, they hammered it. Despite their £193m, they are in no danger of breaking the PSR. But what really catches the eye isn’t the money, but the caliber of player they’ve brought to the Amex.
Brighton are known for finding young players with potential, developing them and then selling them on for huge profits. This summer has seen this policy evolve. Instead of unknown South Americans arriving for £5m, Brighton are snapping up the brightest prospects in the Bundesliga and Eredivisie for up to £40m.
These players won’t need two seasons to develop into individuals capable of delivering in the Premier League, like Alexis McAllister and Moises Caicedo did it. Now they are ready to make an impact. Fabian Hurzeler subsequently works with the strongest team in Albion’s history. How has Brighton done?
The story begins three summers ago before the 2021/22 season. Brighton sold Ben White to Arsenal for £50m, sparking a string of big inbound transfers while spending very little in comparison. Chelsea paid a world record £62m for a full-back for Marc Cucurella. Yves Bissouma and Leandro Trossard joined Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal respectively for £25m each.
He saw the summer of 2023 115 million pounds invested for Caicedo£35m for Mac Allister and £25m for Robert Sanchez. Other tidy sums over the same three-year period included the sale of Dan Burn to Newcastle United for £13m and Neal Maupay to Everton for £15m. In total, Brighton brought in around £340 million in player sales.
Add in the £25m Chelsea have shelled out for non-playing personnel such as Graham Potter, Paul Winstanley, Sam Jewell and the rest, and you’ve got quite a war chest. Much of that came directly from Todd Boehly, with Chelsea spending the bulk of £225m to bring anything that hadn’t been nailed down at the Amex to Stamford Bridge.
Maybe Bloom should send Boehly some nice meat and cheese as a thank you for his generosity? There cannot be another example of a football club spending close to a quarter of a billion pounds to sign 12 members of another’s squad, only for the one that was raided to end up with a better manager and in a stronger position than when they started.
While many Albion fans, the rest of the football world and apparently Roberto De Zerbi were wondering why Brighton weren’t using all that money to strengthen their squad, Bloom has been patiently waiting for the perfect moment to roll the dice .
The current PSR runs on a rolling three-season cycle, covering the 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24 campaigns. While the rest of the Premier League got through the first two seasons, Bloom predicted that not many clubs would have left room for the final transfer window of the accounting period.
Clubs would therefore find themselves with little money to spend in January and the summer of 2024, while having to sell players to remove losses from their balance sheets. Brighton chose to keep its powder dry and its war chest closed, waiting to open it at the exact point when everyone else would be hamstrung by spending restrictions. And it has worked brilliantly.
This approach was obviously a gamble. Other clubs could have picked up on what Brighton were doing and followed suit, meaning Albion would have rivals for the dominance of the transfer market they enjoyed this summer.
Brighton were undoubtedly helped by the points deductions handed out to Everton and Nottingham Forest last season as well. Would other clubs have reduced their spending and treated PSR so seriously these last two windows if the Premier League had not shown they would uphold the rules by punishing losses? Probably not.
There’s a reason why Bloom is known as “The Lizard” in the poker world. He has cold blood running through his veins. He predicted what was to come, analyzed how Brighton could take advantage of the rules and did the math to ensure Albion had big spending power when no one else would.
Not even the outbursts and public criticism the lack of new signings from the only manager who never took Brighton to European football convinced Bloom to change his approach. Instead, De Zerbi found himself looking for a new job. With a little patience and an understanding of why Albion were waiting to spend Caicedo and Mac Allister’s money, De Zerbi could still be at the Amex with £200m of shiny new toys to play with.
Instead, these toys are from Hurzeler. Nine new signings, a mix of players sold only by their former clubs for accounting reasons and others that Albion would have faced far greater competition in a normal transfer window not dominated by the PSR.
Yankuba Minteh falls into the first category. Newcastle United had a £30m hole in their accounts that needed to be filled to avoid a potential points deduction in the future. Brighton offered to fill it in exchange for a player many expected to set the Premier League ablaze in black and white after a successful 2023/24 loan spell at Feyenoord.
Brajan Gruda enters the second category. A Germany under-21 international signed for £25m from Mainz, Gruda is exactly the type of player half the Premier League would have had 12 months ago. Brighton had a relatively straightforward route to his signature and secured him for a very respectable fee, rather than having to enter a bidding war that could have raised the £30m fee.
Turkish international Ferdi Kadioglu is in the same boat. A player who can comfortably play as a right-back, left-back, midfielder, box-to-box, right-back, left-back or as a number 10 should cost upwards of £25m. Negotiations with Fenerbahce were long and complicated, partly because the Super League club had to try to extract a huge fee from Brighton rather than relying on several clubs outdoing each other to inflate the price.
It was first reported in February that Bloom was planning a big summer with the ambitious goal of establishing Brighton as regular contenders in European football. Not even the most optimistic of Albion fans would have expected the summer that followed, however. After all, this is a club that only 26 years ago needed donations from fans to afford Chester City’s Rod Thomas for £25,000.
Bloom wants Europe. Expectations have subsequently risen among fans, further fueled by seven points from a difficult opening three games against Everton, Manchester United and last season’s Premier League runners-up Arsenal.
The Albion owner has long been regarded as one of the smartest minds in English football. If his accumulation of cash and patient waiting to spend it at the optimal time not only takes Brighton back into the top eight, but keeps them there, it will be Bloom’s smartest move yet.
