January 2023 Transfer Rumours, Discussions and Done Deals Thread

[Clampy]

Just watching a local game I would assume.

He does love his Footy (not that Footy) so it's possible. I reckon he plays Football Manager as well.

[coreyfeldman]

It's all gone very quiet, does this mean something will happen out of nowhere today?

I bloody hope so

[Smithy]

Two things about this window: How the hell does Brighton manage to consistently bring in high-sell-on players (ref Ciacedo)? And how many right backs does Tottingham need (ref Porro)?

The Brighton model of developing players requires two things, excellent scouting, and the willingness to let "promising" players have a run of twenty to thirty games at Premier League level before they're cut adrift. We have the first, but we do not have the luxury of the second. No club with genuine European aspirations does.  If a player isn't performing quickly, they're out. We can't afford a string of 5/6 out of 10 performances in the hope they'll become 8s or 9s with time.  Brighton spend a lot of money on players in the £5-10-ish million bracket.  Many of them don't really make an impact, but some of them turn out to be very good indeed. If a player shows promise, they get that game time other clubs wouldn't give them. A season later they can be worth a relative fortune.

We all know about Bissouma, Cururella, Ciacedo, but no one remembers Undav, Sima, Kozlowski (who cost nearly £30m between them, all in the last year).  It's like a lot of clubs that aren't our own - we remember their successes, but never their failures.  In the same way they probably don't remember Wesley or Sanson, but think we're great at recruitment because of Kamara.

I don’t think this is a very accurate or helpful answer to the question, sorry. I have a little bit of inside knowledge of how they do it - it’s not top secret but it’s not widely discussed.

They essentially are incredibly data focused. They are run by a professional gambler who has built a team of many stats / maths PHDs to identify incorrect odds, and bet heavily on them when they found. He has made a fortune and has decided to apply this to football (I think he also owns aBelgian club).

Their scouting network is not amazing, but they use extensive data analysis to focus on 3-4 targets of the radar of the big clubs (they explicitly identify certain characteristics that correlate with success, and others which seem to be highly valued but which they in fact ignore). Not every purchase is a success but they are looking for very high ceilings with players, so if they hit one in three, say (I don’t know their actual target or even if they have one) they will make massive returns and be able to punch above their weight.

This is the key difference to everyone else (except Brentford, who are also run by a professional gambler and have a very similar philosophy) - incredibly data led , no reliance on the old eye test or the opinion of a couple of charasmatic old pros.

As I understand it, there’s no explicit philosophy of give them 30 games, other than a trust in the underlying analytics and a discounting of short term variance to the norm in outcomes (confused for form by nearly all pundits).

Okay, but all that data analysis is just a long way of saying "excellent scouting"?  If they're finding and focussing on targets off the radar of the big clubs who they think have potential, is that not good scouting? Scouting these days doesn't mean a hundred guys in flat caps watching matches all over the place, or a huge network. Scouting isn't necessarily a volume game, but a focus on quality - which they seem very good at. Data is key for all clubs these days, Brighton might do it better than most. I don't know.

I'm also not saying they have a "philosophy" of giving players 30 games. I'm saying that if they believe a player has potential (whether that's based on "the data" as you put it, or their assessment in training), they can afford to give them that amount of game time as the pressure on Brighton from game to game is less than it would be at a different club with higher expectations. 

We don't have that luxury, as a run of six bad games can get the manager the sack.  Two years ago, around the time Dean got the sack, Brighton went 11 games without a win.  Do you think we'd have accepted that?

I just think that as much as we all want to be a club that unearths diamonds, the reality is, we are not a club where players can do a lot of developing IN the team, unless they show immediate signs of being pretty special.  Brighton can afford to do that, and every couple of years they reap the rewards for that. Over the last few years we seem to be becoming more of a club that produces too many promising players and has to sell a few (knowing some really good ones will slip through the net along the way), rather than a club desperate to find just one.

[rob_bridge]

Some suggestion he went to watch Elanga who came on in the 85th minute…..

From the little I have seen of him  I rate him.

[astonvilla82]

Some suggestion he went to watch Elanga who came on in the 85th minute…..

From the little I have seen of him  I rate him.

very impressed when I he played at villa park

[Scott Nielsen]

Some suggestion he went to watch Elanga who came on in the 85th minute…..

From the little I have seen of him  I rate him.

very impressed when I he played at villa park

We haven't been lucky with our Swedes lately but, regardless, I doubt we're looking at bringing in another promising but young striker.

[algy]

Just watching a local game I would assume.

He does love his Footy (not that Footy) so it's possible. I reckon he plays Football Manager as well.

Ha, I can imagine him sitting there on his lunch break "Not now Tyrone, I'm just about to win my 15th Champions League in a row with Leganés" ...

[Smithy]

I find this Gambling Technology stuff fascinating and the more I read about it the more I want it to fail.

The next thing will be an NFL draft style "parade" where players have their published stats for things like 60m sprint, vertical jump, speed of shot, and various other technical/physical capabilities.  I'm sure those metrics all exist within a club right now, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it's in the public domain.

[paul_e]

Some suggestion he went to watch Elanga who came on in the 85th minute…..

From the little I have seen of him  I rate him.

very impressed when I he played at villa park

We haven't been lucky with our Swedes lately but, regardless, I doubt we're looking at bringing in another promising but young striker.

He's very much a winger rather than a striker but if we were interested it would be to compete with Bailey not Watkins. I like him, looks a much better prospect than Garnacho in my opinion so I'm not sure why they've pushed him out.

[Scott Nielsen]

Some suggestion he went to watch Elanga who came on in the 85th minute…..

From the little I have seen of him  I rate him.

very impressed when I he played at villa park

We haven't been lucky with our Swedes lately but, regardless, I doubt we're looking at bringing in another promising but young striker.

He's very much a winger rather than a striker but if we were interested it would be to compete with Bailey not Watkins. I like him, looks a much better prospect than Garnacho in my opinion so I'm not sure why they've pushed him out.

Fair point.

[JUAN PABLO]

James Bree gets to be a prem player for at least 5 mths anyway

[brontebilly]

James Bree gets to be a prem player for at least 5 mths anyway

Fair play to him, he looked rubbish for us..granted we had 5 or 6 right backs at the time

[LeeB]

James Bree gets to be a prem player for at least 5 mths anyway

Fair play to him, he looked rubbish for us..granted we had 5 or 6 right backs at the time

When he did play, I wondered what it was that anyone had seen him him to make them splash out

[ChicagoLion]

I really don’t understand why Manure would sell or why Elanga  would join.

[paul_e]

James Bree gets to be a prem player for at least 5 mths anyway

Fair play to him, he looked rubbish for us..granted we had 5 or 6 right backs at the time

When he did play, I wondered what it was that anyone had seen him him to make them splash out

It was Steve Bruce, who knows what he saw in players, he signed Lansbury and Hogan in the same window.