JeffreyDiddum

We should’ve gone 3-0 up in the first half, when we were well on top, conceded a desperately poor equaliser from our point of view from a host of poor mistakes first from O’Riley, then Dunk, then finally a bit of fortune with the attempted cross and our keeper getting beaten on the near post… again. Second half we started brightly again, and again had chances we just didn’t finish. Then you made your triple change and the match completely swung in your favour. You dominated the midfield, with us making two changes which really hurt our shape in return. We suddenly made loads of mistakes, and at 2-1 midway through the second half it was clear you were going to equalise and maybe win it. After your equaliser, your players barely celebrated and were back at the half way line ready to kick off before we were. Mentality wise, that told me your players felt we were on the rocks. We looked tired, and you were pressing like crazy after taking Vardy off - and we couldn’t cope with it. Belief is an incredible thing and your supporters were making a good noise, whereas we were playing poorly and the atmosphere completely changed in the stadium in the home stands. It filtered through to the players and they made even more poor mistakes. By the end, apart from Solly March looking bright for us, we were fortunate to draw based on how the momentum had turned in the game. With better finishing, the game should’ve been done and dusted from our point of view, but we lacked quality in front of goal today and your triple change gave you the boost you needed. I realise you’ve lost to worse teams than us, but it does bear repeating that we are currently without Rutter, Webster, Veltman, Lamptey, Van Hecke, Igor, Mitoma, Kadioglu and Milner. We have the worst injury record in the Premier League by some distance, and even many of the players we picked are only just now returning from injury and wouldn’t be picked otherwise. Today we had one fit centre-back (Dunk) and no striking options whatsoever on the bench. Our best central midfielder was playing at centre-half. All of these things are reasons though, not excuses, and all in all after your subs you looked like a completely different side.

I didn’t think it’s possible, but you’re somehow being a sore drawer 😆 see you in a few seasons I imagine!

Just leaving the Amex, this is what I posted in your pre-match thread. That was standard for us at home against the lower placed sides guys. The annoying thing is we’ll lose at home to West Ham and beat Liverpool. Our home record against the bottom six in the last seven seasons is the worst in PL history, so this was very predictable for me. Well played, based solely on the second half you could’ve easily won that, we went to pieces.

Just a heads up, we’ll definitely get the three points if you pick Buonanotte, as it’s against PL rules for a loan player to play against their parent club.

Every club in the world, I think, has the “it’s always us” mentality, when it comes to bad refereeing, ex-players scoring against them (especially those who left acrimoniously), or being Charity FC. But I’m a Brighton fan, and have very real concerns. Despite you being a really desperately poor side under RVN, factually speaking our record for many, many years is absolutely dire at home against teams towards the bottom of the table. This season at home we’ve been held by Ipswich, Southampton(!), Wolves, drew to you away (and nearly lost the thing), and lost to Everton at home. Meanwhile we beat Fulham, Manchester City, Spurs, Manchester United, Chelsea, Bournemouth. I don’t think this will be as one-sided as many fans of both clubs are predicting. We just don’t turn up for these types of matches, and it’s been going on since Potter was here.

Social media admins are usually the last to know anything, I wouldn’t read much into that

Don’t flame me. But I can’t quite believe what is happening at Leicester City. You were no great shakes under Cooper, but outside of the LCFC fan community, I think it would be reasonable to say most neutral football supporters didn’t see this ending well from the start. I appreciate that as a fan who watches every week, supporters have a unique perspective of what’s going wrong at their club, but from my perspective Cooper was pretty low down the list of issues. Again, I appreciate many fans who have to watch every week may have found the football turgid, but given Leicester’s squad and financial limitations, most neutrals thought he was doing okay. It’s clear the owners picked the wrong man, and it’s clear you’re going down. In my opinion, the sensible and pragmatic thing for Leicester to do is thoroughly consider a managerial shortlist in the coming weeks, forgoing reputations and “exciting” names, and seek to bring in a head coach/manager to rebuild the squad during the summer, ready for what will be a gruelling Championship campaign. I have real concerns that due to the aforementioned existing financial issues, a summer root and branch rebuild will be next to impossible, so in my view you will need to hire an experienced, pragmatic manager with the ability to get the most out of limited players and drive their ambition to return to the Premier League. RVN has to go ASAP, to give time for the stench to dissipate, I fear for you that the longer he stays, the more possible a double drop becomes.

How was he last night?

And there are dozens more quotes like this. As you can see below from my assessment of the player when he joined you, your experiences are now lining up with ours and the reason we let him out on loan was hopefully to fix these issues. After a cracking start, he seems to have lost momentum for you under RvN, and he is nothing but a confidence player. When he loses confidence and starts overcompensating he becomes a weight for the team to carry. I hope from both of our perspectives that he turns this around, but given the quality of your side presently it might be difficult with you guys in such a difficult spot. Oh and atrocious decision tonight, you were absolutely robbed and it was a disgusting injustice. Big club bias - again.

Any good today?

I’m sure you meant playing for us again, but remember that Buonanotte has played about 50 times for our first team. Shades of when Leeds “discovered” Ben White, despite his previous loans and the odd first-team appearance for us. Much like Buonanotte, we extended his contract before he went on loan not only to protect our interests, but to signal to the player this is isn’t a permanent thing and we see his future at the club. You may well be right that he moves on after his loan, but with a contract until 2028 we’ll be doing well financially off the deal. And, not replying to you specifically on this, but assuming he continues his superb form you, £35m is way, way off the mark.

Hiya, this is what I wrote back on Page 4, before he’d played for you just after he signed. I’ve edited the post down to show the relevant parts.

No suggestion of a recall clause, and a loan fee paid for the season is almost definitely involved anyway nixing that. You’ve got him for the whole season, short of season-ending injury. And with Gomez arriving in January, Buonanotte would be up against Minteh, March, Adingra, Mitoma, Enciso, Gomez, Rutter and Pedro for a place, so wouldn’t get a look in currently. Rutter has two goals and two assists in his last three games (Chelsea, Spurs and Newcastle). We haven’t seen the best from him at our club in his development so far (he was only 17-19 when playing for us!), but given his contract until 2028, if he has an incredible season for you any fee we receive will be astronomical. Our entire model is built around exactly this happening, so I don’t think the fans would be heartbroken if he was sold for a big fee. We paid £5.3m plus a further possible £5.3m in add-ons, so if we got £50m+ for him and Rutter continues his scintillating form, I don’t think the fans will be too disappointed.

Rutter scored a lovely goal against Spurs, then assisted Welbeck’s headed winner with a nice cross a few minutes later. Then he assisted Welbeck’s winner with a nice through ball against Newcastle. The assist you’re missing, which for some reason doesn’t show on any of the stats sites which I assume you’ve got your info from, is here: Skip to 2:15. This actually makes his record 2 goals and 2 assists in the last three games, Chelsea, Spurs and Newcastle. His winning assist and winning goal actually mean his goal contributions have directly earned us two wins on the trot.

It’s been discussed a bit before, but the South American market is notoriously hard to operate in. Transfers take ages to work out, with players often being part-owned by other parties, and it is often unclear who a buyer even needs to negotiate with when multiple agents are concerned. Then there are work permit issues and so on. South American clubs and agents are said to be quite mistrustful and take a long time to form relationships. We had an “in” to South American markets when we signed a flop called Billy Arce. That one didn’t come off, but it built trust with a couple of the top representatives, who put us in touch with others. It’s about getting a foot in the door, saying “your client could be the next Caicedo or Mac Allister” and having a pathway lined up.

This problem is, this is what Leeds thought when we loaned them Ben White. He became their player of the season, they thought it was a given he’d sign so offered £25m then £30m. We said no, their fans launched a hilarious #freebenwhite campaign with t-shirts and banners and whatnot. The club then trolled them by giving him shirt #3 (3 Ben White!) and he played the season for us until we sold him for £50m to Arsenal. The only thing which will matter is the highest bid and if the player is willing to join. Usually this is for the most prestigious club, which is also usually the highest paying.

I don’t doubt that as top clubs are monitoring all the most promising young talents in the world. Brighton are constantly monitoring players using scouts, analytics and contacts and we are no Real Madrid. It’s just stating the obvious that top clubs are monitoring smaller clubs’ best young players.

This is the final paragraph: ”Valued at 18 million euros, Brighton will not let him go for less than 30 million euros, both Manchester City and Liverpool would be willing to accept the amounts offered by Brighton, due to the great talent of the young Argentinian” I’m going to go ahead and “press X to doubt” on this entire article. 😂 what does it even mean? Valued at €18m, but we’d take €30m? Surely his “value” isn’t just an arbitrary number, but the number we ask for as a fee. Therefore his “value” is €30m, if we are to believe that article. Besides, those figures are incredibly low. If he continues in this form, we’d get three times that or more. It’s pure speculation (for now).

Hi again everyone. So pleased to see him doing so well for you so far. We are all following his performance with great interest. Just a reminder of what I’ve posted before, that when he signed on loan for you, he extended his contract at the same time until June 2028 in order to protect his value, should be have an outstanding season with you. This was entirely deliberate and to prevent him having his breakout season and then only having a year or two to run down and leaving cheaply. In other words, the loan is going entirely to plan for everyone. Being realistic, should he continue this superb form through the season, the ball will be in his court whether to stay with us or leave for a top club. Obviously, if Manchester City/United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Real Madrid, PSG, Barcelona, Bayern came in for him, the player would want to move and it would be a case of negotiating the fee. There would be only a small group of teams in Europe able to match his valuation. If nobody came forward for him, he’d be in our first team squad again as an improved player. If he has a great season with you, it doesn’t really make any difference whether Leicester are relegated or not, when it comes to his future. Looking optimistically from a Leicester fan point of view, another season loan with fee is the best possible outcome. But if he’s that good we’ll want him back or sell him for as much as we can get to a rich club. Probably Chelsea again. *sigh*.

I can’t speak for others but as an Albion fan I think the huge admiration for your title win overrides that. It soured a lot when you sacked Ranieri, but then a lot of sympathy for the terrible helicopter accident. Overall quite like Leicester.

This is what I wrote at the time back on page six; and largely I think was the club’s view. He played a lot of games for us, and frankly wasn’t a world beater yet. If you read back through the thread, I went into more detail on this. We all like Buonanotte, and we’re happy to see him doing well. It could well be the player falls in love with Leicester and wants to stay, but he is under contract for a further three years at the end of this season and any fee reflect this - and obviously his form and any interest from elsewhere if the player were to move permanently. We have seen this before as a club with Ben White, who we loaned to Leeds and became their player of the year. Leeds fans naturally thought it was a shoo-in that he’d sign permanently and offered £25m, which we rejected. We sold him shortly afterwards to Arsenal for £50m. But here’s my main point; I think there is still an expectation that if little old Brighton loan out a player, he isn’t good enough for such a no-mark team, and therefore is available to buy. The facts are actually that we very often sign young promising players, then loan them out. They get sold when the time, and price, is right. This was the case for Mitoma, Mac Allister, Caicedo, White, Sanchez. The ones who didn’t follow this pathway, such as Ferguson, Buonanotte were seen as first team ready and as such have played a lot of minutes. So yes, it’s possible Buonanotte has a great season and wants to stay, but a lot would need to be resolved for that to happen, none more so than matching Brighton’s valuation.

I’m a bit confused though; comments are making it sound as if Leicester had a say in whether or not the deal was permanent, or included a buy clause. I think the reality was more that we (Brighton) strengthened very heavily this summer and couldn’t accommodate Facundo - right now. A season long loan seems a great solution for both clubs and the player.

Glad to see he is doing well for you!

Loving seeing him do well for you Also, eventually, ker-ching!