Maths. Analytics. Forecasting. Predictions. Four areas in which Tony Bloom excels. Four areas which have led Bloom to become the king of Premier League Profit & Sustainability Rules and Brighton & Hove Albion to own the 2024 transfer summer window.
The Seagulls were the biggest net spenders in Europe, not just smashing their previous highest total in a single window but taking a sledgehammer to it. Despite their £193m spending spree, they are in no danger of breaking PSR. But what really catches the eye is not the money, but the calibre of player they have brought to the Amex.
Brighton are known for finding young players with potential, developing them and then selling for huge profit. This summer has seen that policy evolve. Rather than unknown South Americans arriving for £5m, Brighton are snapping up the brightest prospects from the Bundesliga and Eredivisie for anywhere up to £40m.
These players will not need two seasons to turn into individuals capable of delivering in the Premier League, as Alexis Mac Allister and Moises Caicedo did. They are ready to make an impact now. Fabian Hurzeler is subsequently working with the strongest squad in Albion history. How have Brighton done it?
The story starts three summers ago ahead of the 2021/22 season. Brighton sold Ben White to Arsenal for £50m, sparking a run of huge incoming transfers while spending very little in comparison. Chelsea paid a world record fee for a full-back of £62m for Marc Cucurella. Yves Bissouma and Leandro Trossard joined Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal respectively for £25m each.
Summer 2023 saw £115m banked for Caicedo, £35m for Mac Allister and £25m for Robert Sanchez. Other tidy little sums over the same three-year period included selling Dan Burn to Newcastle United for £13m and Neal Maupay to Everton for £15m. In total, Brighton brought in around £340m in player sales.
Throw in the £25m Chelsea have contributed for non-playing staff like Graham Potter, Paul Winstanley, Sam Jewell and the rest and you have quite the war chest. Much of it came direct from Todd Boehly, Chelsea spending the best part of £225m to take anything not nailed down at the Amex to Stamford Bridge.
Maybe Bloom should send Boehly a nice meat and cheese hamper as a thank you for his generosity? There cannot be another example of one football club spending nearly a quarter of a billion pounds signing 12 members of staff from another, only for the one who was raided to end up with a better manager and in a stronger position than they started.
While many Albion fans, the rest of the football world and seemingly Roberto De Zerbi wondered why Brighton were not using all this money to strengthen their squad, Bloom has been patiently waiting for the optimum time to roll the dice.
Current PSR works on a three-season rolling cycle, covering the 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24 campaigns. While the rest of the Premier League gouged itself through the first two seasons, Bloom forecast that not many clubs would have left themselves any wriggle room for the final transfer window of the accounting period.
Clubs would therefore find themselves with little money to spend in January and summer 2024, while at the same time potentially having to sell players to clear losses off their balance sheets. Brighton opted to keep their powder dry and their war chest shut, waiting to open it at the exact point when everyone else would be hampered by spending restrictions. And it has worked brilliantly.
Such an approach was obviously a gamble. Other clubs might have worked out what Brighton were doing and followed suit, meaning the 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 too. Would other clubs have reined in their spending and treated PSR quite so seriously these past two windows had the Premier League not shown they were going to uphold the rules by punishing losses? Probably not.
There is a reason Bloom is known as ‘The Lizard’ in the world of poker. He has ice cold blood running through his veins. He forecast what was coming, analysed how Brighton could take advantage of the rules and did the maths to ensure the Albion had huge spending power when no-one else would.
Not even the public outbursts and criticism over a lack of new signings from the only head coach to ever lead Brighton to European football convinced Bloom to change approach. De Zerbi instead found himself looking for a new job. With a little patience and understanding of why the Albion were waiting to spend the Caicedo and Mac Allister money, De Zerbi might still be at the Amex with £200m of shiny new toys to play with.
Instead, those toys are Hurzeler’s. Nine new signings, a mixture of players only sold by their former clubs for bookkeeping reasons and others who the Albion would have faced far greater competition for in a normal transfer window not dominated by PSR.
Yankuba Minteh falls into the first category. Newcastle United had a £30m hole in their accounts which needed filling to avoid a potential future points deduction. Brighton offered to fill it in exchange for a player many were expecting to set the Premier League alight in black and white after a successful 2023/24 on loan at Feyenoord.
Brajan Gruda falls into the second category. A Germany Under-21 international signed for £25m from Mainz, Gruda is the exact sort of player half the Premier League would have been after 12 months ago. Brighton had a relatively straightforward route to his signature and secured it at a very respectable price, rather than having to enter a bidding war which could have pushed the fee upwards of £30m.
Turkey international Ferdi Kadioglu is in the same boat. A player who can comfortably play right-back, left-back, holding midfield, box-to-box, right wing, left wing or as a number 10 should be costing more than £25m. Negotiations with Fenerbahce were long and complicated, partly because the Superliga club had to try and extract a big fee from Brighton themselves rather than relying on several clubs outbidding each other to inflate the price.
It was first reported back in February that Bloom was planning a big summer with the ambitious aim of establishing Brighton as regular competitors in European football. Not even the most optimistic of Albion fans would have expected the summer which has followed, however. After all, this is a club that just 26 years ago needed donations from supporters to afford Rod Thomas from Chester City for £25,000.
Bloom wants Europe. Expectations have subsequently ramped up among supporters, further fuelled by taking seven points from three difficult opening games against Everton, Manchester United and last season’s Premier League runners-up Arsenal.
The Albion’s owner has long been hailed as one of the smartest in English football. If his hoarding of money and patient wait to spend it at the optimum time not only takes Brighton back into the top eight but keeps them there, it will be Bloom’s cleverest move yet.
