Brighton vs Liverpool Odds
| Brighton Odds | +220 |
| Liverpool Odds | +110 |
| Draw | +280 |
| Over / Under | 2.5 -300 / +240 |
Liverpool look to rebound from their last minute loss to Tottenham when they head to the Amex to take on Brighton.
The Seagulls are coming off a bit of an embarrassing performance, as they were dismantled by Aston Villa 6-1 for their second loss of the season. With that being said, Brighton are still sitting in sixth place and have a perfect opportunity to grab three points off of a team they defeated twice last season.
The Reds almost pulled off the miraculous against Tottenham. Liverpool were down to nine men in the second half, but were holding on for dear life for the 1-1 before an own goal in the 97th crushed their spirits. Jurgen Klopp's team is still having some serious defensive issues that have been covered up by their attack scoring loads of goals. They're going to get exposed here at some point in the near future and Brighton could be the team to do it to them.
Let's get into this Brighton vs Liverpool fixture.
Brighton
Brighton aren't having as much success under De Zerbi as they did last season and quite frankly there are question marks out there on whether or not teams have "figured him out" or not.
The next stage for Roberto de Zerbi is painfully obvious, teams are starting to figure him out
They're just sitting off man-marking the double pivot and not pressing the defence, what his adaptation to this will be (if at anything) will be interesting
— Dharnish (@dharnishiqbal) October 5, 2023
The reality is teams are no longer taking the bait. Brighton's whole philosophy is to invite teams into pressing them to create space for the center backs to pass the ball to a teammate in the open space that was vacated by the opponent pressing forward. What that does is Brighton then move the ball as quickly as possible forward to create transition-like opportunity to run at the opponents defense.
Liverpool tried to press De Zerbi's team twice last season and is resulted in six goals in the back of their net. So, if Liverpool decide to sit off and not take Brighton’s bait, De Zerbi is going to try and overload the wide areas of the pitch to get Mitoma and March in 1 v 1 situations against Liverpool’s fullbacks.
Trent Alexander-Arnold is most likely going to start this match, which puts Liverpool in a big quandary. If they decide to invert him in build up play that often means that when Liverpool lose the ball, his side of the pitch is wide open.
Even though Brighton conceded six goals to Aston Villa, it was a pretty fluky result. Aston Villa scored a lot of low quality chances, multiple deflection goals and only ended up with 1.7 xG in the end.
Liverpool
We didn’t learn much from Liverpool’s 2-1 loss to Tottenham on how they would deal with elite build up sides because of the early Curtis Jones red card, but for the first 20 minutes the Reds were pressing with pretty good intensity. They were sending Jones from his midfield position up to press the Tottenham center backs, which was working to varied success.
Now they don’t have Curtis Jones, or Diogo Jota or Cody Gakpo for this match, which really hampers Jurgen Klopp’s ability to try an employ a high press. Going back to last season, in the second Premier League meeting at Brighton, the Seagulls were able to build up with great success against the Liverpool high press, winning the match 3-0, controlling 61% of the possession and outshooting Liverpool 16-to-6.
They even tilted the field at 74% and had a 90% build up completion percentage against what was supposed to be one of the best pressing teams in the world. They played in the FA Cup 15 days later and Klopp didn’t take the bait, he had his team sit off, not press Brighton and try to not allow passes through the middle of the pitch. It was better than the first meeting but Brighton still scored twice and took 10 more shots than Liverpool.
The problem with Liverpool is they can’t press high because it would leave them even more exposed defensively than they already are. Mac Allister playing as a makeshift six (defensive midfielder) doesn’t work against teams like Brighton that can overload and build up through the middle of the pitch. This is confirmed by the Reds being 15th in high turnovers, 14th in opponent build up completion percentage allowed and 14th in progressive passes and dribbles allowed.
Brighton vs Liverpool
Pick & Prediction
While some teams may have "figured out" De Zerbi, the teams that have had success slowing down Brighton are typically teams that are already set up to play passive and defend in a mid to low block like West Ham and Aston Villa. Liverpool really don't fit the profile of a team that can sit in a low block type structure without a true defensive midfielder in the middle of the pitch.
So, I think that will actually make it pretty easy for Brighton to either overload the middle of the pitch, or if they struggle to try and build through there, they can just do what they did to Manchester United and overload one side of the pitch.
Unless Liverpool start Endo, which I highly doubt they do, then they are going to struggle to stop Brighton's build up play.
Even just looking purely at expected goal differential from when De Zerbi took over at Brighton, the Seagulls are at a +0.65 xGD per 90 minutes while Liverpool are at +0.68, so there is really no reason why the Reds should be a road favorite at the Amex.
I have Brighton projected as a +132 home favorite, so I love the value on the Seagulls +0.5 at -129.
