I’ll start by saying that my vision for Everton is Champions League football and competing for titles and trophies domestically. Stirring stuff for a club that has finished in the Champions League-qualifing places once in the last 34 years. But I believe we can achieve this by becoming something along the lines of Everton & Hove Albion.
Critically, that doesn’t mean peaking at the same level as Brighton. We’re a bigger club and we can achieve much more.
We all broadly know about the Brighton story. Tony Bloom took over and used his betting industry data analytics for find value in an overheated transfer market. They buy and sell well. But after two seasons of hitting the Hurzeler glass ceiling, it wasn’t clear whether they remained on an upward trajectory or whether they had settled for life as a player trading facility, grooming Champions League style players for purchase by actual Champions League clubs.
It is early days this season, but it looks like they remain on that upward trajectory and could become a real Champions League places disrupter as Leicester were not so long ago.
As the dust starts to settle after the summer transfer window, and squads start to take real shape, it looks to me like Brighton now have the fifth-best squad in the Premier League. To my mind, they have better players (both First XI and strength in depth) than either of Manchester United and Spurs from the "Rich 6".
Obviously, this is completely subjective but, to illustrate, I think the best First XI from these three clubs would be:
Verbruggen, Maguire, Vuskovic, Porro, DeCuyper, Tonali, Fernandes, Fernandes, Minteh, Mitoma, Kostoulas
Six of the starting XI would come from Brighton. And even if you disagree with my selection – I have also excluded a few excellent players from Brighton’s huge squad such as Kadioglou, Gomez, Yalcouye and Ayari who are all heavily courted by Europe’s Champions League giants — and prefer some of the players from other clubs, it’s still hard to argue Brighton have an excellent set of players, many of whom are already Champions League standard.
Assembling this group of players has relied on:
* Tony Boom’s outstanding data analytics set up;
* Wider outstanding club operations (player development, use of the loan system, use of sister club in Belgium);
* Trading players for profit, rather than with a view to getting them into the first team; and
* Consistent investment in the playing squad.
On that latter note, Brighton’s squad overall cost €568m in transfer fees compared with the €333m we spent on our squad. To contextualise that, it is like having the following players available to us in addition to what we already have (along with some change):
* Kostoulas €35m
* Rutter €47m
* Minteh €35m
* DeCuyper €20m
* Kadioglou €30m
* Vuskovic €54m
You can play around with these options, but you get the principle…
Why is all of this of any relevance to Everton?
Well, whilst Brighton have spent a heck of a lot more than us, they have spent a heck of a lot less than Man Utd and Tottenham. Spurs have spent in excess of €1bn in transfer fees assembling their squad and Man Utd even more so.
Tony Bloom’s data analytics (and brilliant wider club operations in the loan market, etc) is giving them much more bang for their buck than more traditionally operated Spurs and Man Utd.
A lot of my old articles on ToffeeWeb banged on about the Leipzig and Brighton models, etc and it is a path we should still undoubtedly follow as best we can. It is not just delivering (relative) success for Brighton – this model (or versions of it) is also delivering for Liverpool, Brentford and Bournemouth in the Premier League; Dortmund, Leverkusen and Leipzig in the Bundesliga; Rennes, Lille and Monaco in France; Como and Atalanta in Serie A, etc.
There is no fairytale going on at any of these clubs – they are taking their time, they are investing heavily in the playing squads and club operations, with the point being to assemble genuine Champions League-quality squads at attainable value. Not all of them are managing it consistently year on year but by sticking to their principles they are well placed to rebuild and bounce back.
And one of the main reasons Brighton and many others need to regularly rebuild is that they sell a lot of players.
The reason for this is usually pure economics. Brighton’s revenues are such that they cannot afford big wages. Once a player becomes heavily courted by richer clubs at home and abroad, they have to sell sooner or later to avoid having an unhappy player or losing them on a free transfer. That is a large part of why the likes of Baleba, Van Hecke, Joao Pedro, MacAllister, Caicedo and Cucurella have all left in recent seasons.
Our economics will be more favourable once our revenue levels have stabilised. We have the seventh-biggest attendance figures in the Premier League, fast improving commercials and decent global appeal (at least compared to Brighton). This will soon allow us to outspend Brighton and retain our best players longer than the Seagulls can. Logically, it means our ceiling is much higher than that of Brighton, provided we can get close to their recruitment and development standards.
It is not going to make us the new Manchester City – spending (and cheating) our way to trophy after trophy after trophy — but becoming Brighton-plus can make us competitive within upper reaches of the Premier League and in European Competitions (including the Champions League).
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