Match Preview: Liverpool v Brighton
Since August 2018, Liverpool have dropped a grand total of 19 points. They’ve won 42, drawn eight and lost just one of their past 51 Premier League games, which statistically speaking puts them up there as one of the greatest sides the top flight has seen since Sky Sports invented football in 1992.
Shall we go on? You’ve probably said no, but we’re going to anyway. In 13 fixtures in 2019-20, they’ve earned one more point than we managed in the entirety of last season.
Their 119 goals over the past two campaigns is over double what we’ve managed in the same period and they’ve conceded just 33 in that time – we let in the same amount in 12 weeks in the second half of 2018-19.
As the bloke in Jaws says when confronted with the size of that bloody great white shark, I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat…
A brief history of Liverpool
For many years, Liverpool’s record of 18 top flight titles made them the most successful English football club of all time. Yet it was only in the 1970s and 80s that the Reds established themselves as a major force in European football.
Bill Shankly started the domination and he was succeeded by Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Kenny Dalglish, all of whom helped lead the club to a haul of 11 league titles and four European Cups. Things went south in 90s and Liverpool haven’t been crowned champions of England since 1990. Not since Diana and Charles were happily married has the Kop seen a team win the league.
Liverpool this season
That surely has to change this season. As already noted, Liverpool have dropped only two points so far to sit eight clear of second placed Leicester City and nine clear of last year’s domestic treble winners Manchester City. To put it simply, it would take a major cock up from this point on for the Reds not to win the league.
Just don’t say that to any Liverpool fans. They’ve been here before of course, having rather hilariously gone from 10 points clear with 18 games remaining to finishing second last time out. As a result, they’ve got that wonderful football fan thing going on of suspecting everything is going to go horribly wrong eventually, even though it couldn’t be going any better at this moment in time.
What should help them this year is the fact they’ve got the trophy monkey off their back. For even the greatest sides in sporting history, winning their first piece of silverware often proves to be the hardest. With Jurgen Klopp and his squad having got the taste for success by lifting the Champions League back in June, they’ll now be hungry for more. That should stand them in good stead over the next six months or so.
Head-to-head
Given that Liverpool have spent most of their history being good and Brighton, well, haven’t, it will come as little surprise to see that it’s the Reds who dominate the head-to-head. You could be forgiven for thinking that fixtures between the two would be few and far between as a result of that disparity in quality, but we’ve actually met on 29 occasions.
Eight of those came in the second tier during the 1950’s, which is where one of the Albion’s two league wins come from. Cup competitions have thrown us together a further nine times with two of Brighton’s most famous ever victories coming against the domineering Liverpool side of the 1980s.
In 1983, Jimmy Melia’s Albion became the first visitors to win a cup tie at Anfield for nine years when they shocked the Reds 2-1 en route to the FA Cup Final. A year later and we were at it again, winning 2-0 at the Goldstone despite the fact that we were now a Division Two side and Liverpool were the reigning champions.
It would take an even bigger miracle than either of those occasions to win at Anfield this time around.
Brighton’s head-to-head record with Liverpool
Last six meetings
• Brighton 0-1 Liverpool (Premier League, 12/01/19)
• Liverpool 1-0 Brighton (Premier League, 25/08/18)
• Liverpool 4-0 Brighton (Premier League, 13/05/18)
• Brighton 1-5 Liverpool (Premier League, 19/08/17)
• Liverpool 6-1 Brighton (FA Cup Fifth Round, 19/02/12)
• Brighton 1-2 Liverpool (League Cup Third Round, 21/09/91)
Since winning promotion to the Premier League, we’ve lost to Liverpool on all four occasions and conceded 12 goals along the way. To be fair, last season’s efforts resulted in a couple of 1-0 defeats and they weren’t without controversy, particularly the clash at the Amex.
That was when Mo Salah’s quest for a place in the Egyptian synchronised diving squad at the 202 Olympics kicked up a gear as he won and converted a penalty for the only goal of the game.
Team news
Lewis Dunk is back from suspension, which is good news at least. Given that Graham Potter has used Dan Burn in every minute of Premier League football so far, Dunk will probably come back in for Shane Duffy. Whether it’s a 3-4-3 and 4-2-2-2 remains to be seen; Potter used the first of those formations in the away games at Manchester City and Chelsea with mixed performances while the latter was an abject failure in the first half against Manchester United.
Aaron Connolly is fit again and should have at least a spot on the bench while the return of Bernardo from injury offers another option. The Brazilian started only once in the league in Potter’s first four games in charge, since when he’s been ruled out. Burn has hardly been convincing as a left back in a back four though and after a promising start to the campaign, Solly March seems to have gone right off the boil in recent weeks.
It’s probably too soon for Bernardo to be chucked back in and you’d also have to be some sort of sadist to say, “Okay mate, go and play your first 90 minutes in three months at Anfield.” He does at least offer another option ahead of a busy period of fixtures in the run up to Christmas.
Liverpool’s key players
It’s probably easier to say who aren’t Liverpool’s key players. We know that Klopp will be without the outstanding Fabinho who is suspended. So central is he to everything that the Reds do, when we spoke to Anfield Index in the run up to the game, the absence of the holding midfielder was the one weakness in their side that they could come up with.
Can the Albion take advantage? Probably not – one of James Milner or Georginio Wijnaldum will take over Fabinho’s role and they’re not exactly bad replacements to have.
A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Liverpool away
One member of the WeAreBrighton.com team was still pissed from the night before ahead of our Sunday journey to Liverpool for the FA Cup Fifth Round tie in 2012. As a result, he made the huge error of forgetting to bring a coat with him.
By the time we arrived on Merseyside, the magnitude of this began to dawn and he had no choice but to buy a coat. The only shop that was open around Anfield and selling jackets? The Everton club shop. And so into the away end at Anfield he went wearing a brand new, £60 Everton manager’s coat. The looks he got on the way in were priceless.
A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Liverpool away?
We stayed in the easyJet Hotel after the final game of the 2017-18 season at Anfield. A room the size of Harry Potter’s shoe cupboard with no windows is not where you want to be finding yourself when you’ve been in the Cavern Club followed by Popworld until 4am.
Our favourite player to play for Brighton and Liverpool
Jimmy Case was a brilliant player for both the Albion and Liverpool. Not only that, but he remains the only Brighton player to get sent off for being deaf after failing to hear what the referee said to him away at Leicester City in 1994.
There’s also that cracking story about him being asleep in a bathtub at the Goldstone when we lost in the first round of the FA Cup in 1996. An unusual place to be at the best of times, but even more so when you remember that Case was the manager.
What we like about Liverpool
When you listen to some people talk about Liverpool, they describe it as though it’s on a par with downtown Damascus. Clearly, they’ve never been to Merseyside. It’s probably our favourite city in the country, especially as you’ll struggle to find anywhere with as many good pubs in such a condensed area.
Prediction
Liverpool 4-0 Brighton. We’d take that as a respectable result, too.
