Brighton and Cameroon midfielder Carlos Baleba is a target for Newcastle as they look to replace Brazilian Bruno Guimaraes and Italian Sandro Tonali. (Mail), external
Want more transfer stories? Read Thursday's full gossip column
It is common practice these days for transfer fees to have performance-based add-ons. The theory is the selling club gains more if the player goes on to be extremely successful, while the buying club is to some extent protected financially if the transfer doesn't work out.
In some cases, the total value of add-ons is significant - Real Madrid could end up paying an extra £30m to Borussia Dortmund for Jude Bellingham depending on how successful he is over the course of his career in the Spanish capital, for example.
In others, like the potential £1.7m worth of add-ons Brighton's £29.78m signing of Greece Under-21 forward Charalampos Kostoulas, are less significant.
Clubs sometimes say add-ons are 'easily achievable' or 'difficult'.
Easier-to-achieve add-ons can include things like making a basic number of appearances, or scoring a certain amount of goals. Add-ons can also be attached to a team's success rather than the individual player's - a club may agree to an add-on requiring an extra payment if they qualify for Europe, for example.
Others can be more ambitious - tied to extreme levels of individual or collective success, like winning the Champions League or the Ballon d'Or.
An example of the difficulty add-ons can present when discussing valuations would be the claims made in the Portuguese media in 2022 that the first additional payment in Darwin Nunez's £64m-plus-add-ons move from Benfica to Liverpool was triggered by the Uruguayan making just 10 appearances.
Then Liverpool boss Arne Slot rejected speculation he had not started Nunez in some games because it would trigger an additional payment.
Whether Liverpool paid more for Nunez, or club captain Virgil van Dijk - for whom they paid a flat fee of £75m to Southampton in 2017 - cannot be determined without knowing exactly what add-ons were included in the Nunez deal, then figuring out which conditions he has and has not met.
To celebrate 125 years of the Albion, the club's 14-year journey from homelessness and near closure to a new community stadium is charted in this special documentary by BBC Radio Sussex.
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Listen to every Brighton game live on BBC Radio Sussex, with all the build-up and full commentary with Johnny Cantor and Warren Aspinall, and there is a full preview of all Seagulls' matches on Fridays at 18:00 in The Weekend Warm-up
Image source, Getty ImagesFormer defender Adam Virgo talks to Albion Unlimited after Brighton beat Roma 3-0 in a pre-season friendly: "I've been in pre-season games before where I've had successful pre-seasons and not a lot of injuries and plenty of wins and plenty of goals and then we go into the first game of the season and end up losing.
"It's just swings and roundabouts and I know there's a lot more detail in the pre-seasons now with your fitness levels and your minutes and what you can and can't do.
"When I saw the announcements of Roma and Bologna being two pre-season friendlies in the build-up to the Premier League season, I thought, yes, they're good fixtures to have.
"Two well-respected teams, two very good teams, even though you probably didn't see that from Roma on Saturday.
"I think I kind of like those games because it gives you a good indication of where you are at sometimes."
He continued: "I thought that the performance was solid. I thought there's periods of the play in the first half where Brighton were decent, but then there was other times where I felt apart from the goal that they could have taken a shot on a little bit earlier rather than the extra pass.
"There was little performances in the middle which I thought were decent and I thought the goals were taken very well and it was a solid performance.
"I listened to Fabian afterwards and he was very, very happy and I could certainly understand that and getting some minutes for some youngsters coming on, but then your kind of core players doing a decent job pre-season, not necessarily going at fifth gear, but getting through those minutes and having a decent performance along the way."
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