Inside Brighton’s money-making scouting system that’s made £369m.. and three players who could be next out the door
FIRST they came for Ben White and they sold him for £50million.
Then they came for Marc Cucurella and they sold him for £60m.
Then they came for their manager and his entire coaching staff, and you know what happened next.
And now they have come for Moises Caicedo and they’ve flogged him for a British transfer record.
If anyone epitomises the concept of Keep Calm and Carry On, it’s Brighton owner Tony Bloom and his chief executive Paul Barber.
Because the remarkable work they are doing in good old Sussex by the sea is an object lesson in how not to make a drama out of a crisis.
Any other club in football would be tearing their hair out at the loss of nine senior players, the manager, technical director and head of recruitment in the space of just two years.
Yet this flock of Seagulls have not only survived the mass exodus, they have actually thrived.
They should have collapsed when Graham Potter packed his bags for the Chelsea circus last September but simply identified an even better coach and have gone from strength to strength under Roberto De Zerbi.
The same thing happened when they sold White, Cucurella, Dan Burn, Neal Maupay, Yves Bissouma and Leandro Trossard.
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Now they have cashed in on Caicedo, Alexis Mac Allister and Robert Sanchez to take their player sales income over the past couple of years to an extraordinary £368.7M.
And yet they still thrashed newly-promoted Luton 4-1 on the opening day as they look forward to their first ever season in Europe.
The key to everything they do at the Amex is buy low, sell high.
Midfielder Caicedo, 21, was an absolute unknown who cost them £3.6m when they signed him from Independiente del Valle. Now they’ve sold him in a deal that could net them £115m.
Mac Allister arrived unheralded from Argentinos Juniors for £7m and Cucurella cost them £15.4m from Getafe.
Yet these deals flew so far under the radar at the time that even Albion fans didn’t realise what was going on right under their noses.
And that’s not the end of the Amex production line as Kaoru Mitoma, Julio Enciso and Evan Ferguson attract envious glances from Premier League rivals who don’t have the patience to develop their own stars.
But everyone knows they are not going to come cheap because Bloom and Barber have forged a well-deserved reputation as the toughest negotiators in the business.
They never haggle and they never blink first.
They simply set a price and stick with it. And it’s proving to be a spectacularly successful tactic.
Southampton learned to their cost last season that it’s all very well to sell your best players but you will eventually come unstuck if you don’t bring in decent replacements.
Brighton are not going to make the same mistake because they are always planning ahead and preparing for any eventuality.
They already know that De Zerbi is top of every other team’s wanted list in the event of them sacking their manager.
The impressive Italian tactician is under lock and key for the next three years and will not be going anywhere on the cheap.
But no one is irreplaceable at Brighton because there is always another diamond just waiting to be unearthed.