It may not have been Tony Bloom’s week at Ascot for once but at least the Brighton owner could console himself by securing yet another signing for his football team before the summer solstice was here.
Confirmation of the Italy Under-21s defender Diego Coppola’s arrival on the south coast as Lake Forest finished a disappointing fifthin the Queen Anne Stakestook Brighton’s buys to three and the club are expected to announce any day that Olivier Boscagli is joining on a free from PSV Eindhoven. In with Coppola, who has joined from Verona, have come Sunderland’s19-year-old playoff hero, Tommy Watson,for £10m and the Greece Under-21s striker Charalampos Kostoulas for £30m. Talk about getting your business done early.
A record-breaking outlay of almost £200m last summer made Brighton the biggest net spenders in Europe but Bloom has hinted that the spree is nearing an end at the club whose renowned scouting department is always ahead of the game. “We have already got slightly involved in the transfer window and I don’t think we will be doing a huge amount more between now and the end of the window,” he said after Poniros – the 100-1 shot which won at Cheltenham wearing Bloom’s blue and white colours this year – ended up 17th in the Ascot Stakes on Tuesday.
As well as being linked to complying with profitability and sustainability rules, that probably has something to do with Fabian Hürzeler’s comments last month. The head coach said he had informed Bloom his squad needed more “physicality” but also said: “Overall I am not a big fan of too much change,” after admitting only two of last summer’s six big signings, Georginio Rutter and Yankuba Minteh, had adapted. “All the others, they suffer,” Hürzeler said. “They came here with injury, problems with the intensity, maybe problems with the culture. They all also will take the next step [next season].”
It is all part of the process at Brighton, whose recruitment department, led by the technical director, the former Scotland defender David Weir, benefits from cutting-edge data provided by closely guarded algorithms developed by Bloom and his various companies. The ruthless decision to dispense with three full-time scouts last year and rely even more on data was recognition of the direction of travel, even if it raised fears in the wider scouting community. Given the club’s success inrecouping more than £320min player sales over the past three seasons, the model is clearly here to stay.
“It’s important to know exactly what you’re looking for and what you’re working towards,” says one Brighton source who does not want to be named. “We went a little bit younger and higher on the potential side and, together with the fantastic managers that we’ve had, that’s been assimilated into being a success in the Premier League probably sooner than anybody would have realised. So that’s probably been the combination of things that’s enabled what is no doubt a market-leading set of data to be as productive as it has been.”
The towering 18-year-old Kostoulas – a product of the Olympiakos academy and part of the side that won the Uefa Youth League last year despite being a year younger than most of his teammates – is the latest example of that process. His compatriot Stefanos Tzimas was loaned by Brighton to Nuremberg in February after a £20.8m move, having been on the club’s radar for some time, but the emergence of Kostoulas meant Brighton had to act quickly. “It’s that decisiveness that comes with knowing exactly when you want to be able to go for it as strongly as we do,” the source says. “I’m sure a lot of clubs would have known about him, but probably weren’t ready to go as strongly as we did in order to get it done at this stage.”
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The groundwork for most of Brighton’s transfers is done months in advance and there is the same philosophy when it comes to players leaving. João Pedro and Kaoru Mitoma have two years on their contracts and will be allowed to depart if their valuations are met, and there is interest from Napoli in Matt O’Riley 12 months after he joined from Celtic. Newcastle and Chelsea have been strongly linked with João Pedro, who is expected to cost about £60m; Bayern Munich have yet to follow up their interest in Mitoma. “It’s not wanting to sell or needing to sell, but knowing that’s how it goes if the offers come along,” says the source.
If they do, Bloom is guaranteed to drive a hard bargain. He acknowledged that missing out on Europe despite finishing eighth with 61 points – one fewer than when they came sixth in 2023 – was a disappointment for some supporters but reflected that it was “a testament to how well we have done recently”. “With our younger players a little bit older, Fabian a year in the Premier League,” Bloom said, “we are hoping for more next season.”