Right now is one of the most telling times of the Premier League season. It’s the winter, punctuated by a crowded slate of fixtures around Xmas Day. This is where teams confirm their title credentials and jostle for places below the league leaders. While seasons aren’t decided in December, they can certainly get a huge boost from a good run.
That brings us to Brighton and Hove Albion, one of the top teams in the Premier League through to the second international break of the campaign. Boasting the exact same number of wins, draws, and losses as Chelsea, Arsenal, and Nottingham Forest, it’s been a superb start under Fabian Hürzeler.
Still, the league is staging 90 games in 45 days, with Brighton drawing some fixtures worthy of the spotlight. With these clashes set to be the focus of the hefty window, here’s a look at just how difficult the fixtures list looks to be for the Seagulls as we move into the 2025 part of this season.
Up Against a Fair Few Relegation Candidates
While odds can fluctuate over the course of the season, early season odds are often a bit more telling as to the overall quality of teams and how they are expected to perform over a whole campaign. For this, the Premier League relegation odds read as Leicester City, Southampton, and Ipswich Town all being below evens to go down.
Just ahead of them at the time were Everton and Wolverhampton Wanderers. These are now five of the seven teams in the drop zone – just below Manchester United in 13th – with West Ham United and Crystal Palace also in the mix. In the next nine games, Brighton will face four of them, as well as a seemingly easy home match with Brentford.
Bookending the Southampton game in the season’s 13th game week is a trip to Bournemouth and a trip to Fulham, both of which Brighton can hope to get points from. The difficulty ramps up significantly as we look towards the back end of this run of matches, with Brighton facing two powerhouses of the Premier League at the end.
A Huge Test to Cap the Winter Window
Brighton have surpassed expectations this season, landing sixth after 11 games while outscoring the likes of Arsenal, Aston Villa, and, of course, Manchester United to the end of the November international break.
Still, while the first seven games of the next 45 days are somewhat welcoming, for the most part, at the end when the players are at their most fatigued, Brighton will face two huge tests. First, as one of the last three games of 2024 on 30 December, the Seagulls will travel to Villa Park. To end the run on 4 January, they’ll host Arsenal.
With betting sites featuring several outright markets on the Premier League, you’ll find Aston Villa at 6/4 to get into the top six despite trailing the 7/4 Brighton at the time of writing. Meanwhile, Arsenal are just about in the hunt for the title at 7/2, while Manchester City at 9/4 and Liverpool at 6/5 lead the odds.
Brighton will, understandably, be the underdogs in these two games either side of the New Year. That said, in August, Brighton managed to claim a point at the Emirates, making the most of Declan Rice’s red card to walk away 1-1, and they shocked the former Premier League favourites, City, 2-1 before the break.
Overall, Brighton and Hove Albion boast one of the more favourable winter fixtures lists, but they’ll be keen to not be lulled into a false sense of security before the big clubs come knocking right at the end of the run.