You do everything right: appoint a forward-thinking coach who has travelled Europe to hone his expertise; collate a group of experts to take charge of recruitment and scouting and outperform most other clubs in the country; commit to financial sustainability without that impeding the goal of continuous improvement; rise beyond a point that any reasonable supporter believed was possible. And then one of the bigger boys declares themselves so impressed that they will have that, like a footballing Burglar Bill. Welcome to Brighton’s existential crisis.
At the very top, the rewards for success are obvious: trophies, European qualification, a significant rise in revenue, increase in your global marketing reach. But below that, they are blurred and foggy. You can create memories; they are not to be dismissed. But when a super-rich club decides that it likes your model and will lift it wholesale it does leave you wondering quite why you exist at all.
In February, Brighton lost their technical director Dan Ashworth to Newcastle United’s new mega-project. In September, Chelsea took their manager, coach Bruno Saltor, assistants Billy Reid and Bjorn Hamberg, goalkeeping coach Ben Roberts and recruitment analyst Kyle Macauley. They are reportedly in talks with Paul Winstanley, the club’s head of recruitment. Brighton, the Premier League’s darlings of worldwide scouting and sustainable progress, have been gutted.
For some, the response will be “so what?”. That’s free market economics, folks; the biggest get bigger and the richest get richer and everyone below them is forced to say thank you in their best Sunday voice. Wealth buys you privilege and privilege brings with it tangible entitlement. Chelsea supporters online, because this is how tribalism works, will reject any argument against it: can seagulls even “cry more”?
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It’s difficult to blame Chelsea here. We don’t yet know if you can transpose a successful model from one club to another wholesale despite vastly different budgets and expectations, but we’re about to find out. Why would you put in the hard work, enduring the peaks and troughs of sustainable improvement, when you can simply take one from someone else on the cheap?
Brighton supporters would not change their last three years. Potter has taken them to unforeseen places, literally – last season was their highest league finish in the club’s history. But it is the shared sense of dispiritment that is the killer. What’s the point in trying to be better when you can lose it all so quickly? This is the price of success. You’re better off slogging between 13th and 17th, collecting your broadcasting revenues and staying quiet. Brighton can build again under a new manager, but who’s to say that it won’t happen again?
“The sense of demotivation is the big thing,” says Brighton supporter David Hartrick. “You can’t help but feel that big clubs just lift models rather than create their own so what’s the point? I understand that there is a hierarchy of club, but the gap is so big anyway that why bother trying to finish higher than 17th or do anything different?”
“I’m completely deflated about our future because Chelsea have taken so many component parts of our model and this is after Newcastle came and took Ashworth at any cost. I’m just not sure that you should be able to take six staff members from one club in mid-season – there’s a huge sense of unfairness there too.”
What is the answer here? An intra-league managerial transfer window, so clubs can’t take under-contract managers in midseason? A limit on the number of personnel, similar to the loan rules, that one Premier League club can take from another in one season? A manufactured transfer market with managers, with set release fees written into contracts?
Sorry, trick question. There is nothing you can do to stop the relentless assault of the richest teams. The Premier League has an established food chain and its apex predators will feast when they want on who they want. Enjoy your quaint success, little clubs; someone will be along shortly to restore the natural order.
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