Brighton leave Norwich behind, on and off the pitch
GULF: Brighton and Hove Albion's Julio Enciso celebrates scoring their side's third goal. Pic: Joe Giddens/PA Wire.
A multi-millionaire football club owner used to be enough to satisfy most supporters’ ambitions.
TV chef Delia Smith and her husband Michael Wynn Jones became Norwich City’s majority shareholders in 1998 and oversaw four promotions to the Premier League, although only one of them, in 2011, lasted more than a single season.
But they all added to the Canaries’ relatively rich top-flight history, which amounts to 27 seasons among the elite since their first elevation in 1972.
But no longer. Smith and Wynn Jones’s joint net worth is estimated at around £30m, which, these days, just won’t cut it. In October, the husband and wife stepped down in favour of Mark Attanasio, an American investment manager and the principal owner of Major League Baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers.
He is reported to be worth around £700 million and his declared aim is to return Norwich to the top level as a “competitive” Premier League club within five years.
Saturday’s match demonstrated rather starkly the scale of the task he has set himself. Injury denied Brighton & Hove Albion, tenth in the Premier League, the services of skipper Lewis Dunk, strikers Joao Pedro and Evan Ferguson and experienced midfield players James Milner and Mats Wieffer, while the newest arrival, Paraguay midfield player Diego Gomez from Inter Miami, was not deemed up to speed with his new team yet.
But they still had far too much for Norwich, whose head coach Johannes Hoff Thorup admitted: “They [Brighton] only needed one touch to make a pass and it’s those small details. It’s good for our young group of players to get out there and see what the next level is.”
That sentence could not have been uttered just a few seasons ago. Until 2017, Brighton had managed only four seasons in the top flight, between 1979 and 1983, and when they were playing at the converted Withdean Stadium athletics track between 1999 and 2011, the contrast with Norwich, an established club with a well-appointed 27,000-capacity stadium at Carrow Road, was extreme.
But since Tony Bloom took over as owner and chairman in 2009, the Seagulls have gradually outflown the Canaries.
Bloom’s net worth is unknown, although it is safe to say that it far outstrips that of Smith and Wynn Jones, and probably Attanasio’s as well. But it is the way he has run Brighton that is more important than the size of his bankroll - although that has unquestionably helped, not least in funding the 32,000-seater Amex Stadium.
His data-driven approach to player recruitment has enabled the club consistently to buy low and sell high, which plenty of owners have attempted but few have achieved - certainly not as successfully.
Showing a profit at Premier League level is almost unheard of, but Brighton have managed it and reinvested in players such as club record £40m signing Georginio Rutter, whose two goals late in Saturday’s first half, a far-post header and an angled shot under challenge, effectively decided the match. Paraguay striker Julio Enciso and long-serving Sussex-born winger Solly March rubbed it in after the interval.
Norwich’s cause might have been helped had Ireland and former Brighton defender Shane Duffy started the game rather than coming off the bench with his side 4-0 down. By then, Brighton had sent on Belfast-born Northern Ireland defender Ruairi McConville, 19, a product of the academy that Bloom has also invested in handsomely.
Ferguson is arguably its most promising graduate, but his recovery following his ankle injury has been handled cautiously by a remodelled medical department headed by former Eintracht Frankfurt club doctor Florian Pfab, another highly-rated summer acquisition.
Until Ferguson is back in training - “some more weeks” according to head coach Fabian Hurzeler - press reports of loans to clubs that have included Bournemouth, West Ham United and Leicester City sound fanciful, although a temporary change of scene might help to overcome a disconcerting loss of form.
Duffy, speaking to the Argus, the Brighton local paper, last week, said: “Every player goes through these moments in his career. He will be back all right. There were obviously a couple of niggling injuries he has had which have slowed it down a bit for him.
“I have no doubt about him, that he will be a top player. I try and help him as much as I can. I want the nest for Ireland, of course, and I want the best for him as well. He will get back soon - back up and running.”
Of course, the sad reality is that, as more American hedge funds and oil-rich nation states buy into Premier League clubs, even Bloom’s algorithms will probably not be enough to keep Brighton competitive indefinitely.
But Norwich are starting from even farther back.
Long 7; Stacey 6, Cordoba 7, Doyle 7 (Hills 46, 4), Chrisene 6 (Duffy 80); McLean 6, Nunez 7 (Hernandez 61, 5), Forson 6 (Fisher 46, 5); Schwartau 5, Crnac 6 (Sargent 80), Dobbin 6.
Steele 6; Veltman 7 (Moder 79), van Hecke 7, Webster 6 (McConville 71), Estupinan 6; Ayari 6, Baleba 7; Minteh 7 (March 71), Rutter 8 (Gruda 63, 6), Mitoma 6; Enciso 7 (Welbeck 63).
S Hooper 8.
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