Match Preview: Chance to experiment for Brighton against West Ham
The chance to write a match preview for a dead rubber in Brighton & Hove Albion’s four year Premier League stay so far has occurred very rarely, making the visit of West Ham United to the Amex an interesting opportunity for Graham Potter.
Normally, the Albion leave it late to secure their place in the top flight which means there is only one game in which to try new things. In 2020-21 however, safety has been achieved with three games remaining and Potter has the chance to experiment.
Brighton have a lot of promising players on the books – the key word there being promising, as several of them have hardly been tested at top flight level.
Albion fans talk about the likes of Michal Karbownik, Moises Caicedo, Andi Zeqiri and Percy Tau taking the place of established first team players should Tony Bloom decide to cash in this summer on some of the family silver, but the truth is that nobody knows if any of those on the fringes of the senior squad are actually good enough.
Now would be a good time to find out. Three pressure free games are coming up, starting with West Ham. What better opportunity to see what lies in reserve than a dead rubber against the Hammers?
If the answer is that the Albion’s squad depth is not quite what we all thought it was and West Ham leave the Amex with all three points, then Brighton can have a more informed transfer policy ahead of the summer, knowing that if big sales do happen then new faces may be needed to replace the departing.
Defeat for the Seagulls would not only help Potter learn more about this squad, but it would also take the Irons a step closer to Champions League football.
It would be fantastic to see David Moyes lead his side into Europe at the expense of some of the European Super League elite. Stick that in your pipes and smoke it, Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea.
West Ham United this season
Pep Guardiola might have delivered another title for Abu Dhabi’s great sportswashing project funded by billions of petrodollars, but the Premier League’s real Manager of the Season has to be Moyes for the job he has done at West Ham..
The Irons avoided relegation to the Championship by the skin of their teeth last season. Fast forward a year and they have been transformed into contenders for the top four.
You would have got long odds on that back in pre-season when Mark Noble was tweeting criticism of the Irons board for their transfer policy in selling Grady Diangana’s to West Bromwich Albion for £18 million and quite a few pundits were tipping the Hammers to be 2020-21’s established club who gets unexpectedly dragged into the bottom three.
What makes West Ham’s season even more impressive is that it has been achieved with not much money spent by top flight standards. Moyes has instead maximised the talents already at the London Stadium and done some shrewd business where required.
If Brighton and Graham Potter are wondering how to go from bottom six to top half of the table in the space of a single summer, then they could do a lot worse than take a look at the past 12 months at the London Stadium.
Recent form
The bad news for West Ham is that their form has started to desert them at just the wrong time as we enter the business end of the season with the battle for the top four very much still up in the air.
Three defeats from their past four matches have put a serious dent in the Irons’ hopes of European football. Losing to Chelsea and Everton were not major shocks, but a 3-2 defeat away at Newcastle United was a big blow.
West Ham now find themselves in sixth spot, six points off Chelsea in fourth but with a game in hand. Below them, Arsenal, Everton and Spurs are all within three points, meaning that the Irons really need a win at the Amex to maintain their challenge for Europa League qualification at the very least.
West Ham United v Brighton head-to-head
Brighton and West Ham were regular opponents in the Southern League between 1901 and 1915 and they also clashed frequently in wartime football, explaining why there have been 68 previous meetings between the clubs despite their very different paths in the Football League.
West Ham being consistent members of the top two divisions since 1920 also explains why they dominate the head-to-head with 30 wins to Brighton’s 17. 20 of the previous matches have ended in draws.
Brighton’s head-to-head record with West Ham United
Last six meetings
• West Ham United 2-2 Brighton (Premier League, 27/12/20)
• West Ham United 3-3 Brighton (Premier League, 01/02/20)
• Brighton 1-1 West Ham United (Premier League, 17/08/19)
• West Ham United 2-2 Brighton (Premier League, 02/01/19)
• Brighton 1-0 West Ham United (Premier League, 05/10/18)
• Brighton 3-1 West Ham United (Premier League, 03/02/18)
The head-to-head record mentioned above has been steadily improving since Brighton won promotion to the Premier League in 2017 and our recent meetings section of our preview makes for very pleasant reason with West Ham yet to beat the Albion in seven top flight attempts.
You have to go back to April 2012 to find the last Hammers win in the fixture. I would love to be able to tell you something about that day, but unfortunately I abandoned ship at Upton Park with only 20 minutes played and Brighton already 3-0 down. Gus Poyet’s He Who Must Not Be Named’s Albion would go onto lose 6-0.
Team news
As already noted at the beginning of this preview, the visit of West Ham provides a chance for Potter to experiment without the pressure of needing to pick up Premier League points.
Lewis Dunk and Neal Maupay miss out after collecting silly red cards in last week’s defeat at Wolves. Joel Veltman and Adam Lallana are probably going to be absent through injury. That leaves four spots normally filled by regulars up for grabs.
The easy thing for Potter to do would be to move Dan Burn to centre back, recall Jakub Moder at left wing back and put Alexis Mac Allister into the number 10 role with Leandro Trossard moving forward alongside Danny Welbeck.
A more bold approach would involve giving the likes of Karbownik, Caicedo, Tau and Zeqiri opportunities. If Potter fancies giving his selection wheel a particularly vigorous spin, he might even end up throwing Reda Khadra, Jenson Weir or Teddy Jenks in. Now that would be exciting.
West Ham United’s key players
Lukasz Fabianski remains one of the most underrated goalkeepers in the top flight, Declan Rice has really come of age for club and country which is good news going for England into Euro 2021 and Tomas Soucek has been superb in midfield since turning a loan move from from Slavia Prague into a permanent deal for a bargain £13 million in the summer.
Since January though, one man has taken all the headlines – Jesse Lingard. Seemingly unloved and unwanted at Manchester United, the one-time Brighton loanee has revitalised his career following his temporary switch to the London Stadium, notching nine goals in 13 appearances. He too will surely be on the plane alongside Rice for the Euros.
Let us just pause our Brighton v West Ham match preview for a second and imagine a world in which United are desperate to sign Yves Bissouma or Ben White this summer and the Albion are willing to accept a reduced fee, providing Lingard comes the other way as a makeweight.
Okay, so his wages put him more out of reach than Prince Andrew from the FBI and this loan spell has whacked his market value up significantly to the point where United can probably expect to get a massive fee of their own should they cash in. But you cannot blame a bloke for dreaming of Lingard on the end of the numerous chances the xGulls create every week.
The betting value for Brighton v West Ham
The past four meetings between Brighton and West Ham have all ended in draws, including at the London Stadium back in December. That returned at a very healthy 5/2 with a slightly better price of 13/5 available for round two in Sussex.
An interesting subplot
It is rare that Brighton come up against ex-players in the Premier League so the return of Lingard to the Amex with West Ham gives us an opportunity to play the former player scoring against old club subplot in a match preview.
Speaking of which… who remembers when Bobby Zamora produced an astonishing miss at Withdean in Irons colours at the back end of the 2004-05 season?
The game that day finished 2-2 and went part of the way towards helping Mark McGhee lead the Albion to Championship safety. A conspiracy theorist might go so far as to suggest that Zamora missed on purpose to help Brighton stay up… just when you thought you couldn’t love the guy any more.
A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of West Ham at home
Jose Izquierdo seemed to go completely berserk whenever Brighton played West Ham, none more so than when he scored a stunning goal from 30 yards and way out on the left in a 3-1 win over the Hammers in February 2018.
Glenn Murray and Pascal Gross were also on target in what still ranks as one of Brighton’s best home performances in the Premier League.
A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of West Ham at home
We like KFC as much as the next man over here at WAB Towers, but Kevin Nolan’s chicken dance in front of the North Stand as West Ham won 1-0 at the Amex in October 2011 was enough to put us off buying a Family Bucket from the Colonel for at least a week.
West Ham United’s most famous fan
Mick Carter, landlord of the Queen Victoria pub, has been going through a rough time of it lately. In the past year, his wife has battled alcoholism, he discovered he had a child as a 13-year-old with a woman who abused him, his sister has gone missing (possibly murdered by Gray Atkins although Mick does not yet know this), he contemplated suicide and now his wife has revealed she is pregnant with Max Branning’s baby after a one-night stand.
Thank God West Ham are having a half-decent season to keep him sane with all that going on.
Prediction
Every Brighton v West Ham preview seems to end with the prediction of a draw so why change the habit of a lifetime? Seagulls 1-1 Hammers.
