Opposition report: Brighton (A)

After securing their first win against Wolves, what can the Blades expect as they head to Sussex?

Sam Parry

Living in London has its upsides: buses are outrageously cheap, the average temperature is three degrees warmer than Sheffield, and sourdough bread grows on trees next to great lakes of flavoured butter. The big downside is that every United home game is more like an away game. And perhaps the biggest downside of all is that, despite there having been a plethora of convenient away games in and around London, none of them has yielded a result. Not yet at least.

And so I find myself, after weeks of doggedly defending Paul Heckingbottom to naturally pissed-off fans in the concourses of West Ham, Fulham and Arsenal, with a sense of renewed hope. Brighton away — we can win we this one, can’t we?

Look, I’ll be the first to say that Brighton are an impressive side with some impressive players and an impressive record of recruitment and succession planning. In many ways, they are the model club. It’s easy to fawn over their stability and to believe that we’ve got no chance against those unearthed diamonds like Mitoma, Groß, and Estupiñán. They beat Ajax 2-0 the other night. What hope do we have?

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All that considered, Brighton are not Spurs, not Arsenal, not Man City, not Newcastle. And for once this season, I half-wonder if we overestimate their quality a touch. Of course, they are better than us. Of course, if you play this game 100 times over, they probably win 80 of those matches. Still, I think there’s hope that we can take something from this game.

Aston Villa beat Brighton 6-1, and I reckon — all due consideration about the relative quality of players — that’s equally embarrassing as our 8-0 loss to Newcastle. They lost 3-1 to West Ham. All in all, they’ve conceded 21 goals in 11 games: that’s 1.9 per game! So I make ours a half-decent chance of nabbing a goal.

What will matter here is whether we can keep it out. Because Brighton, despite conceding 21, have notched 25 and scored in every single game this season so far. And as we know, we’ve conceded in every game.

However the long the odds are, this is the first match this season that follows a win. That’s an unquantifiable recipe. Will we see a more confident United? Will we find greater motivation now that a place outside the bottom three is — despite everything that happened in the run-up to beating Wolves — within our grasp?

There’s every possibility that we get spanked here. But there’s something about the gap between expectation and reality that seems inflated regarding Brighton. If we felt any confidence at all against Arsenal or Man City or Newcastle or West Ham, then we should have no less confidence on Sunday.

As for the team, I can’t see it changing from the XI that started the second half against Wolves. So that probably looks like this:

Anyhow, so ends the touchy-feely section of this opposition report. Let’s see what the stats say — steel yourself for the cold, hard logic of Riley Roberts on the data.

Riley Roberts

I was growing increasingly worried that I’d never get to write anything even slightly positive about us this season, but a win against Wolves at the Lane last time out has given us all a much-needed boost in confidence. Not only that but also a valid reason to get excited again.

Get this: our opponents Brighton haven’t tasted a league victory for five (five!) games since beating Bournemouth 3-1. Okay, if you look at the small print, it tells you that they have had a tough run, facing the likes of Villa, City and Liverpool, all of whom are top opposition.

One thing that could give us quite the boost going into this is that Brighton are notable for their struggles in breaking down deep defensive blocks, and we’ll doubtless adopt that setup on Sunday.

In their last outing, versus a notoriously well-drilled outfit in Sean Dyche’s Everton, Brighton had a staggering 79% possession. That does sound like something which would potentially be a worry for us. However, when digging a little deeper we can see that they used all that possession to create just 0.5 xG worth of chances and their only goal in that game came through an own goal. 

This wasn’t a one-off. When sorting their games in all competitions — highest to lowest — by the % share of possession, none of their top 4 most possession-heavy matches (vs Everton, West Ham, AEK Athens and Fulham) resulted in victories. This confirms something that a lot of people have already noted: low blocks are Brighton’s kryptonite.

They tend to struggle more against teams who are happy to concede possession to them, whilst they thrive against teams who make more of an effort to press high up the pitch. One reason for this is that Brighton’s build-up play is dependent on inviting the opposition’s press before exploiting vacated space. When that happens, they tend to play direct into their wingers who make darting runs in-behind. This plan obviously falls short if the opposition doesn’t take the bait, refuses to engage, and restricts the space in-behind. If we can do this, we can copy the blueprint that has previously limited the effectiveness of their key wide men such as Kaoru Mitoma, who has the most goals and assists of any Brighton player this season with 6.

When digging even further into the numbers, it’s clear to see how much Brighton struggle, not just offensively but also defensively against sides who sit deep. Brighton have conceded 17% of their xG against this season from counter-attacks, a number which places them as the very worst side in the division when it comes to giving up chances from counter attacks.

All of this means that, despite Brighton’s impressive results over the last year or so, this is actually a game where we probably have a better chance of getting something than most expect and it means that, for once, I can be a little bit optimistic, which I’m sure is to everyone reading’s collective surprise and hopefully delight.

Sam Parry

It’s pretty unusual for me to adopt the role of cynic in these Opposition Reports, but given Riley’s balanced optimism, allow me to calm the footballing gods by saying, Brighton are a team stacked with quality beyond our own and even if our low block keeps them out for a bit, it’s unlikely we’ll stop them for 90 minutes.

That out of the way, we’re going to win, aren’t we?

Let’s go: Brighton 1-3 Sheffield United (VAR, 3, 61, 90+10)

Oh, and don’t forget to vote for us at this year’s FSA Awards — it only takes a second.