Brighton have launched several names for the island’s biggest clubs over the past two years. The club from the south of the island received the biggest benefit from doing business with the London giants. Tottenham paid almost 30,000,000 euros for Yves Bissouma, Arsenal paid close to 85,000,000 euros for Ben White and Leandro Trossard, while Chelsea threw sacks of money in front of Brighton directors for three signings. Robert Sanchez was paid almost 29,000,000, Marc Cucurella over 65,000,000, while the highlight of Brighton’s business with others is the transfer of Moises Caicedo to Stamford Bridge for 116,000,000 euros!The AMEX team earned over 210,000,000 euros from Chelsea alone. If we add up the amounts of the ten most expensive sales – all of which took place in the last three and a half years – we arrive at an impressive sum of 402,000,000 euros! We should not forget that Brighton sold Alexis MacAllister to Liverpool for 42,000,000 euros, and there were sales that were not so eye-catching, such as the transfer of Dan Burn to Newcastle for 15,000,000 or Neil Maupay to Everton for 12,000,000 euros…Brighton have quickly gone from average to the club whose window is first looked at when it comes time to open the transfer market. It is for this reason that it is not surprising that the club was never more generous this summer and allocated as much as 100,000,000 euros for reinforcements.##NAJAVA_MECA_7781325##Once again, they followed the tried-and-tested methodology, so a balance was made between experience and youth. Mahmoud Dahoud and James Milner arrived without compensation, a new chance was given to Barcelona’s truncated pearl Ansu Fati on a one-year loan, while several interesting deals were concluded in the meantime. The Brazilian stopper Igor was paid over 16,000,000 euros to Fiorentina, the 20-year-old Anderlecht goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen was valued at 20,000,000 euros, Carlos Baleba was brought from Lille as a replacement for Caicedo and was paid 27,000,000 euros, while for the center-forward Joao Pedro Watford was paid a club record of 34,200,000 euros!The Brazilian was a double scorer in the victory away to Stoke (4-2), which secured Brighton the fourth round of the FA Cup. It was his 14th and 15th goals of the season and it is clear to everyone that the club’s record-breaking transfer is paying off handsomely. It was shown once again in action that Brighton’s scouting service is working at full steam, because with good work with Roberto de Zerbi, a new respectable sum of money could soon be poured into their account. The price will of course be influenced by the fact that he made his debut for Seleção in November and that he is seen as the future of the Brazilian national team, although all eyes are rightly focused on 17-year-old Endrick.##EDITORS_CHOICE##João Pedro arrived in English football as a teenager during the 2019/20 season and Watford paid almost 12,000,000 euros for him. That year he played only five games for the first team, but even then he started to build his name on the Island through good performances in the Championship. In three and a half years at Watford, he scored 24 goals in 109 games, although he is not classified as a classic “nine”, which is generally less and less common in today’s football. In the Premier League, he showed only signs of great talent, while he scored 20 goals in two seasons in the Championship. Brighton’s scouts saw in him the potential for much more than a team juggling between two levels of competition, which is why De Zerbi stepped in and said YES to the most valuable incoming transfer in the history of the Seagulls, aware that good strikers are still an expensive “commodity” today.”I love Joao Pedro and I know his potential. I know he can still improve and become an important player for us. The credit for his arrival belongs to the club. The scouting service presented me with his portfolio and before his arrival I didn’t know about him,” the Italian admitted at the press conference after the triumph over Stoke in which the Brazilian was the protagonist.22 year-old Joao Pedro has already bagged 15 goals in all comps this season for Brighton 🤯⚽️Only Erling Haaland (19) and Mo Salah (18) have scored more. Absolute baller from day one 🇧🇷💎 pic.twitter.com/0Bx5IbIWH5— Rising Ballers (@RisingBallers_) January 7, 2024 Pedro’s debut season in Brighton can be broken down as follows – he is among the ten best scorers in the Premier League with seven goals, with six more goals he leads the list of goalscorers in the Europa League, to add two more goals on Saturday night! As many as six of his goals had a direct impact on the victory, and only once did he hit the net from the box. He is currently on the same goal tally as Glenn Murray for the entire 2018/19 competition, which has been the best performance by a player at the club for the past five and a half years!The fact that only Erling Haaland with 19 and Mohamed Salah with 18 goals in all competitions are ahead of him speaks volumes for how much influence he has on Brighton’s game! As there has been more and more talk about the visits of Liverpool and Arsenal scouts to Brighton’s games in recent days, it is only a matter of time before a generous offer arrives…”I hope that João will stay with us for at least one more season, but after everything, it seems to me that it will be very difficult. He is our best player on the field. He plays phenomenally, while helping the defense for the whole 90 minutes as if he were a defender”, De Zerbi recently admitted.”I didn’t know João before” 😅Roberto De Zerbi heaped praise on Brighton’s recruitment team after admitting he wasn’t aware of João Pedro before he signed for the club 📝 pic.twitter.com/WtoqHxEgFq— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) January 6, 2024 Joao Pedro is currently the Brazilian in the best form. He was the only one to score 15 goals in all competitions, ahead of Rodrygo with 10, Gabriel Jesus with seven, and Savinho and Vinicius with six goals each… As he has a contract with Brighton until June 2028, the club can only relax and wait calls for negotiations, while behind the scenes the transfer of the Argentine pearl Valentin Barco, who is marked as the next investment with great potential, is already being prepared.De Zerbi sees Pedro as an almost unique striker. He recently compared him to something between Danny Welbeck and Alexis Sanchez, and described him as “a real ‘false’ nine”. Since he fit perfectly into the demanding system of the Italian coach and showed that he is much more comfortable with the style of play when his team has the ball at their feet, and not with long balls and counters, it is very possible that the next transfer will be to one of the clubs of the ‘Big Six’.
