For Brentford and Bournemouth, this is raiding season. Their mistake: both winning more Premier League matches in a season than they had before.
At this point, someone usually mentions Southampton, who became Premier League darlings for selling on-pitch assets for high prices to divisional rivals while remaining free from trouble, until the point that they completely borked the reinvestment element, made bad decisions and are now part of the yo-yo group with Premier League consolidation harder and harder.
Milos Kerkez and Illya Zabarnyi could also leave the Cherries in the coming weeks (Photo: Getty)But then three of Southampton’s major sales – Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana and James Ward-Prowse – were academy graduates, an approach that Brentford and Bournemouth haven’t really taken.
Raiding season is undeniably a reinforcement of the Premier League’s food chain.
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But at the same time, the Premier League “rest” are themselves moving higher up the global football food chain through their presence in the Premier League.
Those revenues are higher than Lazio, Werder Bremen, Valencia and Lille, to use one example from each of Europe’s other top four leagues.
This is the circle of life in football in 2025: you prepare for tomorrow by knocking on the door of someone probably doing the same.
You strive to overachieve as standard and, when that happens, the glass ceiling above you is simply reinforced.
There are times when that feels like the appropriate response in the heat of the moment when you’re smarting about losing heroes overnight. But that helplessness can also seep in elsewhere.
Salut, Adrien
We're delighted to announce the signing of Adrien Truffert on a five-year deal from @staderennais pic.twitter.com/dnqibKbFgN
The other option is to choose trust. See these these outgoings as compliments, proof that your club has methods that work and is probably in the rudest health of its entire existence.
All the while, you commit to the processes that got you here in the first place, maximising your advantage in identifying and ultimately allowing the next crop of players to fulfil their potential.
“We are aware that we don’t yet have the history or the brand of some clubs in the Premier League, so we have to work very hard to build both that and our revenue channels,” Brighton operations director Paul Mullen told The i Paper in April.
“We’re continuing to look at how we can improve, whether that’s on the pitch through recruitment, whether it’s off the pitch through new revenue channels, whether it’s whether we can change some of our facilities to adapt to medical advances. What else can we do to attract the best young talent? You never see a standstill.”
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It is hard and it is made harder by the drip-feed of information and the maelstrom of rumour and counter-rumour. We can find out too much without knowing what actually matters.
This column started with Bournemouth vs Brentford in March 2025. It ends with Bournemouth vs Brentford, this time in April 2009: two League Two clubs.
If wondering which manager builds your next Premier League team and who will be in it are the questions, the answer is that life worked out alright.
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