Liverpool-esque Brighton can prove Premier League title credentials against Reds
Tom Hancock
Liverpool don’t look like Premier League title contenders right now, but they could be the team against whom Brighton prove their own title credentials this weekend.
Why? Well, Fabian Hurzeler and Andoni Iraola are two sides of the same stylistic coin – the difference being Hurzeler’s Brighton are succeeding with what Iraola’s Liverpool want to do: high-pressing, chaos-inducing football that, executed most efficiently, can blow any team away.
Appointing Iraola as the successor to Arne Slot was ostensibly Liverpool’s attempt at reviving the ‘heavy metal football’ with which Jurgen Klopp delivered the club’s first Premier League title back in the 2019/20 season. So far, it’s yielded mixed results.
Not that Liverpool are struggling – they’ve won five of their last six games in all competitions, racking up 16 goals in the process – but Brighton, by comparison, are absolutely flying under Hurzeler, a self-professed Klopp devotee.
And the soaring Seagulls looked primed to produce a performance that might just turn the question of ‘Are they in the title race?’ into a statement of conviction when they head to Anfield on Sunday.
Let’s talk numbers. Brighton and Liverpool are among the most aggressive pressing teams in the Premier League so far this term – but Brighton are currently a level above.
Seven games into the campaign, Hurzeler’s side rank second for pressed sequences with 90, first for passes per defensive action (PPDA) with 8.6, first for sequence start distance (47.4m from their opponents’ goal), first for high turnovers, joint fourth for shot-ending high turnovers (12), and first for possessions won in the attacking third of the pitch (51).
By the same metrics, Liverpool rank seventh (80), third (9.2), third (43.9m), eighth (48), joint seventh (eight) and joint 11th (22).
So, what does this mean in practical terms? Well, Brighton thrive in the chaotic conditions they create. While they have scored the same number of goals from high turnovers as Liverpool (only one), that only tells part of the story – they create chaos from all areas of the pitch, scoring from all manner of situations and racking up a Premier League-high 23 goals, at least four more than any other team.
That much was evident as they thrashed bitter rivals Crystal Palace 5-0 last time out. They opened the scoring by forcing an own goal from a free-kick, doubled their lead through Diego Gomez’s almost certain goal of the season – a 0.01 Expected Goals (xG) stunner from just about bang on the halfway line – and went 3-0 up when Yasin Ayari finished off a slick team move that was simply too quick for Palace to keep up with.
And that was all within the first 10 minutes of the match. Brighton did similar in beating Aston Villa 4-0 on the opening weekend of the season, getting the job done after barely half an hour. They’re proving themselves to be highly adept at putting teams in positions they, psychologically as much as anything else, cannot come back from. They took longer to put three past Arsenal en route to a statement 3-0 victory, but they still left the reigning Premier League champions shellshocked.
They also have their much-improved defence to thank for that. Since suffering their only defeat of 2026/27 so far, a typically chaotic 4-3 loss at Chelsea in Matchweek 2 of the Premier League campaign, Brighton have conceded three goals in eight games in all competitions. They’ve kept clean sheets in six of their last seven outings, winning six on the spin until a rotated side were held to a 0-0 draw away to Jablonec in the Conference League on Thursday.
In the Premier League alone, Brighton boast the joint best defensive record alongside Arsenal (five goals conceded, four of which came in that defeat to Chelsea) and rank mid-table for xG conceded with 10.2 (although, again, almost a third of that came against Chelsea). Even playing with 10 men for most of the second half, they restricted Sunderland to 0.72 en route to a 2-0 win on the road earlier this month.
Objectively, Liverpool have kept things tighter at the back, giving up 8.3 xG and conceding eight goals in line with that, but Brighton have struck a considerably better balance between attack and defence – you need only look at their goal difference of 18 (compared to Liverpool’s one) to see that.
And it would be remiss of us to neglect another huge factor in Brighton’s early-season dominance: Bart Verbruggen. The Seagulls haven’t just got lucky with poor finishing from the opposition; in Verbruggen, they’re reaping the reaping the rewards of a goalkeeper at the peak of his powers. The Netherlands international ranks joint first in the Premier League with Manchester City’s Gianluigi Donnarumma for goals prevented on 3.1 (to put into some context how impressive that is, only seven Premier League ‘keepers – Verbruggen included – tallied that much or higher for goals prevented across the whole of last season).
In short… Brighton: very good side. Already on the fringes of the title conversation. Beat Liverpool and take even a point off Man City next Saturday and they will be firmly in it.
