‘Grew up a Spurs fan’: Brighton CEO jokes that Arsenal find it tough to do business with him

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Speaking on the What The Footie Podcast, Paul Barber has been discussing how he keeps hold of his star players and dealing with Arsenal.

Barber is the CEO of Brighton and he knows all about dealing with Arsenal.

The Gunners have been a real thorn in Brighton’s side in recent years, they’ve signed both Ben White and Leandro Trossard from The Seagulls in recent times, and if they had their way, they’d have signed Moises Caicedo in January too.

Arsenal haven’t been able to just take Brighton’s players though. They had to pay big money for both Trossard and White, while Brighton knocked them back in their £70m bid for Caicedo.

Barber joked that he finds it very easy to play hardball with Arsenal due to the fact he grew up a fan of Tottenham.

With Arsenal still interested in Caicedo, Barber suggested that it will be seriously tough for the Gunners to get the Ecuadorian this summer.

Tough for Arsenal

The Brighton boss gave some great insight into the process of player sales.

“Well, When Arsenal come calling it’s easy. I grew up a Spurs fan, so it’s tough for those guys and they don’t like making that call to me. I think sometimes because of the size of the club we are we have to get full value for our players, when we take the risk in the first place, we spend two or three seasons developing them and we need to make sure we get our return. Big clubs can sometimes think they can bully us a bit and they think it will be easy, but it’s my job not to make it easy,” Barber said.

Not just Arsenal

Barber may have joked that it’s tougher for Arsenal to take players from Brighton due to the fact he supported Tottenham as a youngster, but the reality is that it’s tough for any club to deal with the Seagulls.

As Barber told What The Footie, Brighton don’t let themselves get bullied by the big clubs. Chelsea had to pay way over the odds to sign Marc Cucurella in the summer, while Newcastle didn’t get Dan Burn on the cheap either.

Brighton are one of the best teams in England when it comes to recruitment, and they always seem to get their player sales spot on.

Barber says that he won’t allow Brighton to be bullied, and that’s an ethos he’s always stuck by.