The ‘silver bullet’ helping Brighton and Hearts punch above their weight in the transfer market | OneFootball

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Jamestown Analytics offers the transfer silver bullet everyone wants – but only a few know their secrets, and even fewer can use it.

As one football executive was arduously negotiating transfer business on a tight budget last summer, they found themselves deluged with names and suggestions. There was a lot to sift through – but also a responsibility to do so, since the right player can be worth millions. It instantly prompted a realisation.

“Imagine just having a number that tells you how good they are,” the executive remarked to a colleague.

That, essentially, is what Brighton have. Those at Hearts – one of the clubs using the data – describe it as “a football cheat code”. The Edinburgh club’s revival this season has only added to the ever-growing discussion around the model. As Brighton take to the field against Leeds United, there will doubtless be talk of their data system and how it keeps replenishing and improving the team.

That, tellingly, is usually where the discussion stops. Brighton’s data is spoken of as some great elixir for the game, and yet almost nobody knows what it’s made of.

The mystique around it is all the more remarkable given its profound effect on the Premier League and beyond.

Chelsea would love to have it, given how much they’ve paid Brighton over the three years of the Clearlake ownership. Sir Jim Ratcliffe is said to have become “obsessed” with it. It’s even part of one of English football’s most notorious fallouts – that between Brighton owner Tony Bloom and Brentford’s Matthew Benham.

Brighton have made hundreds of millions of pounds from this data, propelling themselves to another level as a club. And that looks set to continue.

This really is the difference everyone is desperate to uncover.

Part of it, however, is that it’s not even Brighton’s data at all. Bloom’s club are simply clients of Jamestown Analytics – who look set to become one of the most influential forces in football in the 21st century.

That’s where the secrets lie: in a data company said to be named simply after the street it’s based on.

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