Joao Pedro was the marquee signing that Brighton & Hove Albion never used to make.

Strikers are expensive. Former head coach Graham Potter repeatedly used the phrase “silver bullet” during transfer windows, explaining that a goalscoring No 9 was too rare and expensive a profile for Brighton to sign. But Brighton’s continuous success in developing and selling academy talent (Robert Sanchez, Benjamin White), as well as signing players and flipping them for significant fees (Moises Caicedo, Alexis Mac Allister, Leandro Trossard), meant they had a budget to work with this summer, especially after a best-ever Premier League finish that gave them a debut Europa League campaign.

Advertisement

They spent £30million to bring Joao Pedro south from Watford, smashing their transfer record for a forward who had shown glimpses of talent in the Premier League in 2021-22 and scored 20 goals across two Championship seasons.

Under Roberto De Zerbi, the No 9 role has needed technical prowess. They have to be capable of dropping deep to link play and receive with a centre-back touch-tight.

That was evident in Brighton’s away win over AEK Athens, who pressed them high and played with their back four on the halfway line. Their centre-backs aggressively man-marked Brighton’s front two; Joao Pedro was up against Cameroon international Harold Moukoudi, a physical centre-back with Champions League and Africa Cup of Nations experience. Strike partner Evan Ferguson battled Domagoj Vida.

Here, Joao Pedro drops into his own half to receive from centre-back Lewis Dunk. Moukoudi tracks him, and tackles him, with Joao Pedro having to quickly recover and pass back to his goalkeeper.

Brighton tried to use Joao Pedro and Ferguson as decoys for midfield runners in behind the centre-backs. Here, Pascal Gross makes that run, but Dunk overhits the through ball.

Joao Pedro wears No 9, and at 6ft looks like a conventional centre-forward. But he is better in space rather than duels, more suited to pulling wide and creating overloads to combine, or using dribbles to unpick defences. He times runs into the box excellently, as shown by his goals from crosses away to Nottingham Forest and Manchester United. He is best summed up as a player by not yet having a six-yard box shot for Brighton but being their top scorer.

The physicality and necessity to duel went against his strengths in the first half in Athens, as Joao Pedro was consistently dispossessed and forced into errors by Moukoudi. Brighton suffered waves of AEK attacks because the ball could not stick to the front two — in the opening 54 minutes, Joao Pedro had the most possession losses of any Brighton player (14).

“He can play better with his team-mates, he can play better in our style, he can improve to become a complete player,” De Zerbi said of Joao Pedro in September.

Advertisement

“He has incredible potential and I want everything from him. He can play No 10 and in that situation, he can be smarter so he can find the right position to receive the ball between the lines. When he plays like a striker, he has to be smarter to attack the space.”

De Zerbi has spoken of Joao Pedro’s unique profile. Danny Welbeck is the only forward that De Zerbi views as similar. Over the past year, Inter Milan’s Alexis Sanchez was the closest statistical match for Joao Pedro — a pure false nine.

Ansu Fati has been the primary partner for Joao Pedro, with the pair starting together four times in all competitions. AEK was the second time Joao Pedro and Ferguson had lined up together, after the 3-1 win against Newcastle United. They did play most of the match in the 3-2 away win over Nottingham Forest (when Joao Pedro scored twice and Ferguson got the other) after Fati went off early with an injury and Joao Pedro replaced him.

Joao Pedro said on arrival at Brighton that former club Watford were “more long ball and counter-attack. Here, we think more about playing with the ball and moving at the right time.” Adapting to De Zerbi’s meticulous style takes time, but he is clearly a stylistic match. His performances led Brazil interim head coach Fernando Diniz to give Joao Pedro his first cap against Colombia.

He is the type of player that does not need to be in the game to turn a match on its head. On 54 minutes, he picked the ball up in space and beat three AEK players: first, he skipped past right-back Lazaros Rota, who came sliding in at him, then held off Nordin Amrabat as he tried to cover for his full-back, and, as he got into the box, was sent tumbling by AEK captain Damian Szymanski.

It took VAR to award the penalty, like it did for both of Brighton’s penalties against AEK at the Amex Stadium on matchday one. Szymanski fouled Joao Pedro that night for the second penalty. The trio of penalties all came about from Joao Pedro’s smart movement, footwork, and reactions to have his body in the right place — his 39 fouls suffered are the most of any Brighton player this season, across all competitions.

Advertisement

In Athens, there were two minutes and 42 seconds between the foul and Joao Pedro taking the penalty. Longer delays are correlated with higher miss rates, but the 22-year-old always looks relaxed and composed as he waits to take. It was the same at the Amex on matchday one, with delays of almost three minutes for both penalties. On all three occasions, Joao Pedro sent the goalkeeper the wrong way. He did the same to Pau Lopez away to Marseille on matchday two. His penalty record is perfect — nine from nine.

Joao Pedro's perfect penalty record

He is only the third player to score four penalties (shootouts excluded) for an English club in a major European season, after John Wark for Ipswich Town in 1980-81 and Bruno Fernandes for Manchester United in 2020-21.

The goal in Athens was Joao Pedro’s ninth in less than 1,110 minutes this season. Six of those might be penalties but he has won five of them himself, with no other player at a Premier League club winning more than two in all competitions. Brighton needed a consistent spot-kick taker — they famously missed two penalties in the same Premier League game, away to West Bromwich Albion in February 2021.

“There’s a motto I always carry with me — I never lose, I either learn or win,” Joao Pedro said ahead of the AEK game. He’s learning and winning under De Zerbi right now and has sent Brighton through to the knockouts.

(Top photo: Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)