After turning a corner with three consecutive wins, Spurs travel to face Roberto De Zerbi’s unpredictable Brighton. We look ahead to what promises to be a goal-filled game with our Brighton vs Tottenham prediction and preview.
Brighton vs Tottenham Stats: The Quick Hits
- The Opta supercomputer predicts a tight affair in this game, with Spurs slight favourites to win. Their chances of victory are rated at 36.3%, compared to 35.6% for Brighton.
- Brighton have scored in each of their last 17 Premier League home games. However, they’ve also conceded in each of their last 12 at the Amex Stadium.
- Tottenham have only failed to score in one of their 20 Premier League away games in 2023.
Match Preview
Brighton and Tottenham return to action after relatively long breaks for Christmas – in Premier League terms, at least – with Spurs enjoying a five-day hiatus since playing on 23 December, and Brighton getting a full week off since their 1-1 draw with Crytal Palace. The fixture list for the festive period has been fairly kind to the hosts, who have another five days before their next game after this one – at West Ham on 2 January.
A bit of rest will be welcomed by manager Roberto De Zerbi, who has been navigating his side through an injury crisis of late – something that has severely affected Brighton’s recent form, with his team having won only two of their last 12 league matches. They are still hard to beat, though, losing only two of their last nine Premier League games, those defeats coming away to Chelsea (3-2) and at Arsenal (1-0).
That loss at Arsenal was the only time in their last 34 Premier League games that Brighton have failed to score a goal. At home, though, the Seagulls have found the net in each of their last 17 Premier League home games since a 1-0 loss to Fulham in February.
However, they’ve also conceded in each of their last 12 at the Amex Stadium since beating Manchester United 1-0 in May. Up against an in-form Tottenham, who have scored at least once in 19 of their 20 Premier League away games in 2023, including each of their last 15 since a 1-0 defeat at Wolves in March, goals will likely be on the cards here.
This game pits two teams together who have had mixed seasons but are still very much within touching distance of where they would like to be in the league standings. A win for either side would therefore be crucial to achieving their goals for the season. With the hosts having fared well at home of late and the visitors boasting a good record on the road, something will have to give at the Amex Stadium.
Brighton are unbeaten in their last seven Premier League home games (W3 D4) since a 3-1 loss to West Ham in August, but Tottenham have the best points-per-game away record in the top flight in 2023-24, averaging 2.00 points per game on the road since Ange Postecoglou took over in the summer. Spurs fans may be further buoyed by the fact that three of Brighton’s last four home league defeats have come against London-based sides (Arsenal, Fulham and West Ham).
The problem for Postecoglou going into this game is that – as has been the case for a while now – he has a long list of absentees to contend with. On the team news front, there was more bad news on Wednesday when the Spurs manager confirmed that Cristian Romero “had a scan and he’s got a hamstring strain. We’re looking at four to five weeks with him.” With Micky van de Ven still out, Emerson Royal is likely to return at centre-back, where he partnered another full-back in Ben Davies for three games while Romero was suspended last month. They will also still be without the suspended Yves Bissouma, though Destiny Udogie returns having served a one-match suspension against Everton.
There is cheerier news up front for Spurs, where Richarlison looks to have shaken off the knock that forced him off in the win over Everton last week. The Brazilian has been on something of a hot streak in front of goal of late, having scored four in his last three Premier League games after only netting twice in his first 39 games for Spurs.
Tottenham will be hoping he and captain Son Heung-min can provide the goals here. Son has been involved in eight goals in his last seven Premier League away games, scoring seven and assisting one. His seven away league goals are more than double that of any other Tottenham player this season, with his total accounting for 35% of Spurs’ away goals this term (7/20).
Brighton, meanwhile, will be sweating on the fitness of star winger Kaoru Mitoma, who is carrying an ankle injury and facing a late fitness test. De Zerbi will still be without Ansu Fati, Julio Encsio, Joël Veltman, Pervis Estupiñán, Adam Webster, Tariq Lamptey and Solly March. The Brighton manager recently bemoaned the depth of his squad, and he may well be looking forward to the January transfer window opening next week.
Brighton vs Tottenham Head-to-Head
After winning two and drawing one of their first four Premier League home games against Tottenham, scoring in all four games, Brighton have lost their last two without scoring in either. Indeed, in what was a poor season for Spurs last term, they did manage to do the league double over Brighton. That was the fifth time they have won consecutive games against Brighton; they have never won three in a row against them.
Spurs could miss the influence of former striker Harry Kane, who found the net in each of the last six games that Tottenham have scored against Brighton. The last time Spurs scored against Brighton without Kane getting on the scoresheet was almost five years ago, a 1-0 win in April 2019, when the goal came from Christian Eriksen.
Recent Form
After winning five of their first six Premier League games of 2023-24, Brighton have slumped to a run of two wins in 12, sliding down the table to ninth heading into this game. They have, however, lost only two of their last nine league games in what has been an inconsistent run for De Zerbi’s side.
They have conceded the first goal in each of their last six games, but have taken eight points from those matches. Indeed, only Liverpool (19) have won more points from losing positions in the Premier League this season than Brighton (13). Last time out, they needed an 83rd-minute equaliser from Danny Welbeck to rescue a draw at rivals Crystal Palace.
Tottenham hope to have turned a corner, recording three consecutive wins to take them right back into the top-four battle. That run of form comes after a period in which Spurs took only one point from five games, losing four games in which they had scored the first goal. Having extended that run of scoring first in games, Spurs have now scored the opening goal in each of their last 12 Premier League matches. Only Brentford have dropped more points from winning positions in the Premier League this season than Tottenham (16).
Having seen off Nottingham Forest, Newcastle and Everton to make it three wins in a row, Spurs will be hoping they have left that tendency to throw away leads behind them.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off in this game, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Brighton vs Tottenham Opta Player Ratings
The Opta Player Ratings are something we introduced ahead of 2023-24. For a quick primer on how they’re calculated, you can check our explainer here.
Before kick-off in this match, here are the top five performing players from both teams in the 2023-24 Premier League according to the Opta Player Ratings:
Brighton
Pascal Groß: 79.5 (out of 100)
Evan Ferguson: 75.6
Billy Gilmour: 73.9
Igor Julio: 71.3
Jan Paul van Hecke: 71.2
Tottenham
Son Heung-min: 84.6 (out of 100)
James Maddison: 76.0
Dejan Kulusevski: 75.4
Guglielmo Vicario: 71.4
Pape Sarr: 70.7
Brighton vs Tottenham Prediction
The Opta supercomputer is predicting a very tight game at the Amex, barely able to separate the sides in its pre-match simulations. Tottenham are just about deemed favorites, winning 36.3% of the supercomputer’s simulations, putting them just 0.7% ahead of Brighton (35.6%). That makes the draw only slightly less likely (28.1%).
In the supercomputer’s latest round of 10,000 simulations of the 2023-24 season (at the time of writing), the league position in which Tottenham are most likely to finish is fifth (39.4%). Brighton are most likely to finish in eighth (19.9%), though there is also a decent chance of them finishing sixth (15.8%), seventh (18.7%) and ninth (16.5%).
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