Thank you for your time and for sharing this, very insightful and informative. I knew a few things but I didn't have a clue how close the owners of Brighton and Brentford were, although I spotted similarities in their approach to running their clubs respectively.
Also, is it true something like that Brighton and/or Brentford didn't pay too much attention and resources to their youth academy, at least until recently, and that more focus was on the reserve team, signing players to play there until they are ready to replace first team players sold for a profit, rather than wasting time and resources on developing players from a very young age?
To describe it simply, let other clubs develop players from the youth ranks and then offer them a better pathway to first-team football.
Interesting question and thank you for your response.
I wouldn’t say we are too different to yourselves in this regard, truth be told. Back in the day, we didn’t have much of a youth recruitment network; we’d get cast offs from “centres of excellence” of big clubs occasionally, but only once it was very clear they weren’t anywhere near the level required for the clubs they were at. Anyone of talent who started with us locally was poached by bigger clubs (such as Gareth Barry). But the club is unrecognisable from those days now.
Comparatively, nowadays, there isn’t a huge gap in terms of
truly home grown players between our two respective clubs.
Locally of course you have the excellent Rashford, and I know McTominay was developed somewhat by you. From our side we have Solly March and Lewis Dunk being born very locally - Brighton and Lewes. I actually played youth football with Dunk and his brother Carl, although Lewis was twice my size and 100x my skill and two years younger!
A lot of our signings are immediately loaned out to Europe, usually for work permit reasons. Mitoma and Caicedo, for example, both spent time on loan in Europe for this purpose before even being considered for our squad. It is useful for the club too, because while Bissouma and Trossard were plying their trade, the conveyer belt was rolling with the next ones to replace to them. We are doing the same right now with Simon Adingra, and a hatful of other prospects out on loan in European leagues.
The club model relies on its “succession planning”. Yasin Ayari, for example (from AIK in Sweden, £1.8m) is being developed clearly as a Caicedo/MacAllister replacement. De Zerbi was already in mind before Potter was even approached, Caicedo was in mind for Bissouma, etc.
Our PL2 (U23’s) side is comparatively weak though, because the ones we seem to have big first team hopes for are out playing in good competition levels mostly in the top leagues of unglamorous European football. Weirdly, the ones who look like they may not make it with us (Khadra, Miller, Richards, Furlong and a few others) have remained in Britain! If one brought back the loanees though and put them in the U23’s we’d have an excellent team.
One thing our club seem to excel at is fostering relationships. For example, a key reason for landing Caicedo was the fact we bought a low risk flop, Billy Arce, from the same club (and same agent), so we had an “in”. Similarly, we got Evan Ferguson based on relationships developed with clubs and agents which gave us first option on exciting prospects.
Whilst we have “boys” teams and always have, even our successful local lads have been recruited back from elsewhere. I can’t think of a single player we’ve had since League Two who has been with us since, say 14 years old. Dunk is the closest.
I hope this answers your question!
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