The Premier League will return in June – will Brighton survive?

Football is coming back. It has been confirmed – all being well – that the Premier League will return in the middle of June, meaning that if Brighton & Hove Albion are going to avoid relegation into the Championship, they will have to do it on the pitch.

Which is of course the way it should be. For the season not to be turned into a total farce, all 20 clubs need to complete their 38 games, playing 19 times at home and 19 times away.

Liverpool will then be crowned deserved champions and whoever finished in the bottom three can have no complaints – they will deserve to go down.

With nine games left to play, there is every chance that Brighton could fall into one of those relegation places when football returns.

A team in good form would look at the Albion’s remaining fixtures and break out in a cold sweat, let alone one who have won just twice in their past 19 games. Whisper it quietly, but Chris Hughton lost his job for two wins in 18.

Graham Potter has quite the job on his hands. Arsenal, Leicester City, Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City provide the opposition in five of those final nine fixtures, clubs who all still have designs on finishing in a Champions League spot.

Brighton’s performances since Christmas have been dire, a world away from the football that got so many Albion supporters excited in the early days of the Potter reign.

The manager’s selection and tactical decisions haven’t helped. Brighton were leading Aston Villa 1-0 at the Amex and Steve Alzate had done a fine job on Jack Grealish when Potter hauled off Aaron Connolly for Martin Montoya.

What followed was a game of positional musical chairs as Aaron Mooy pushed further forward to join Neal Maupay in attack, Alzate moved into midfield and Montoya took over at right back. Within eight minutes, Montoya had lost Grealish who duly scored to earn Villa a point.

At Plucky Little Bournemouth, Brighton were chasing the game when Potter introduced Solly March and Leandro Trossard at the same time as leaving Glenn Murray on the bench.

Five months on and nobody is yet to come up with a convincing argument as to how two wingers delivering crosses to Maupay and Connolly – aka Frodo and Bilbo Baggins – was supposed to overturn a 3-0 deficit.

At West Ham United, it took Potter 72 minutes to realise that introducing genuine width against the team with the worst full backs in the lead might be a good idea. Two goals in four minutes rescued a point at the London Stadium.

If Potter continues to tinker, the players continue to under perform and fail to take the opportunities that come their way – see Crystal Palace at home – then we are bang in trouble.

There is also the added complication of empty stadiums. Completing the season in neutral venues drew so much criticism because the theory went that it removed home advantage.

Clubs would lose the advantage of playing in familiar surroundings. They would lose the advantage of sleeping in their own homes the night before a fixture and not having to travel hundreds of miles for a ‘home’ game.

Or so we all thought. If the first few weeks of the Bundesliga’s return are anything to go by though, Brighton and their fellow Premier League clubs will see home advantage eroded even with the Premier League allowing them to play in their own stadiums.

There have been just five home wins in 27 Bundesliga games so far – 19%, down from 44%.

Before coronavirus brought the Premier League season to halt, England’s top flight had a very similar average of 45% of fixtures ending in home victories.

An Amex Stadium with 30,000 packed inside might have lifted the Albion to victories over Arsenal and Manchester United. It has done in the past – Brighton are yet to lose at home in the Premier League to those two opponents.

But without supporters there, the Bundesliga experience tells us that games are increasingly decided by talent. If what has happened in Germany translates to England, Brighton can expect nil points from those five games against the top four chasers.

Of the Albion’s other four opponents, Burnley are after their second consecutive top 10 finish. Clearly, a better team than Brighton.

Newcastle have six more points on the board than the Albion with Steve Bruce having done a seriously underrated job after replacing Rafa Benitez.

Southampton have been on the slide recently but Brighton are yet to beat the Saints in five Premier League games – in fact, you have to return to 2009 and Gus Poyet’s first game in charge to find the Albion’s last ‘South Coast Derby’ victory.

And then there is Norwich City. Bottom of the table and six points adrift. Easy pickings? Maybe, maybe not – after all, they have won just one less game than the Albion.

Daniel Farke’s devotion to attack means that they tend to either win or lose. It’s s**t or burst with draws more of a rarity in Norfolk than a marriage that doesn’t involve family relations.

It isn’t beyond the realms of fantasy that Brighton could fail to win any of their nine games left to play once the Premier League returns. That would make it an astonishing two wins in 28, which you suspect would be some sort of club record.

Suddenly, the 11/4 available on Brighton being relegated looks very tempting. And after reading all that, you are probably expecting us to advise you to put your mortgage on. But you would be wrong – the current feeling at WAB Towers is that we will just about survive. And here is why.

Brighton need three teams to finish below them in the table. Norwich will surely be one. For them to overhaul the Albion, they need to make up a nine point deficit.

They are 19 goals worse off too, which effectively makes that 10 points. It would take a seriously impressive effort for the Canaries to overhaul us from here, although they do have the easiest run-in of any of the relegation threatened sides with West Ham, Southampton, Burnley and Everton still to play as well as the Albion at Carrow Road.

West Ham have a run-in which, although not as tough as Brighton’s, features United, Tottenham Hotspur, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea. Good luck winning any of those. They are also in form nearly as wretched as Brighton’s, having won just two in 12.

Included in the Hammers four other games are Watford, Villa and Norwich. Any sides below the Albion taking points off each other is good news for our own survival bid. Pray for draws in those three.

Villa’s run to the Carabao Cup Final seriously derailed their Premier League campaign before the season was suspended. They lost all four of their league games after beating Leicester in the semi finals of the competition and with Wesley still ruled out with a serious knee ligament injury, Dean Smith’s side have to complete the season without their one goal scoring striker. Oh, and they have to face United, Wolves, Chelsea and Arsenal.

Watford have improved beyond all recognition since Nigel Pearson assumed the hot seat at Vicarage Road and just prior to the suspension of the season, they became the first side to beat Liverpool in the league.

With games against Southampton, Norwich and Newcastle to come, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Hornets easily close the two point gap to Brighton and finish the campaign above us.

But for the Seagulls to go down, it will take two other teams to do the same. Is that likely? Looking at the fixtures faced by Brighton & Hove Albion’s relegation rivals once the Premier League makes its return, it is hard to see that happening, bar someone defying the form they have shown gone in their previous 29 games.

And there is also the possibility that Brighton might even win a game or two themselves. Opponents will find playing against Potterball much harder in summer.

Chasing after a side who are happy to keep possession by stroking the ball from side-to-side will prove more tiresome in the heat.

There’s probably an analysis article there about Potter’s brand of football being more effective in the summer and why we looked so good in the first two months, but we will save that for a rainy day.

The other notable aspect of the Bundesliga’s return is how half-arsed clubs in mid table who have nothing to play for have looked.

Players seem to be going through the motions with nothing on the line, playing in empty stadiums while the outside world is still having serious concerns about the global pandemic going on.

While Brighton will have Premier League survival to fight for, by the time we get to facing Southampton, Newcastle and Burnley, those three clubs will almost certainly be on the beach.

Liverpool will have the title won by their trip to the Amex and that means that City won’t have anything to play for either.

If Jurgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola fancies sending down their rather than risking Virgil van Dijk and Kevin De Bruyne travelling to Sussex and catching coronavirus, then who knows what could happen in those two games.

The Premier League might be about to return, but it will be a different beast. For our money, Brighton should survive – just. There are three teams worse than us.

And even if we are relegated, will anyone really care that much? If the past three months have shown us anything, it is that there is far more important stuff going on in the world than watching 22 millionaires kicking a ball around.

People are beginning to crave normality, and the return of the Premier League does at least bring that back to life – after all, there is nothing more normal than Brighton & Hove Albion ruining the weekend.