Match Preview: Brighton v Everton

For seven out of nine Premier League games this season, Brighton have been the better team. It’s only in defeats to Manchester City and Chelsea that you can say the Albion weren’t deserving of at least a point.

This is obviously very nice. We’ve picked up praise left, right and centre from opposition supporters for our playing style and Graham Potter’s bold approach.

But sadly, you don’t get points for the opposition being impressed. The Premier League won’t think, “Bloody hell, Aston Villa fans liked the way Brighton played, let’s give them an extra point.”

Which is why it feels like we’re about to embark on a pivotal couple of weeks. The Albion have back-to-back homes games with fellow strugglers Everton and Norwich City over the course of the next fortnight.

Should we come away from those with just one or two points, then alarm bells may start ringing. We’ll be deep in the mire and for all the lovely football, Potter will only have two wins to his name in three months. That’s not good, no matter how well we’ve played.

Now is the time for performances to start deliver points as well as plaudits. Three against Everton will do very nicely.

A brief history of Everton
Ah, Everton. They’ve spent more time in the top division of English football than any other club, having played in the second tier for just four of the 131 seasons in which the Football League has existed. They’ve lifted nine titles, five FA Cups and a European Cup Winner’s Cup with their best period coming in the 1980s.

Under the management of Howard Kendall, they had a team packed with talent and were the dominant force in English football in the middle of the decade, coming extremely close to winning a treble of league, Cup Winner’s Cup and FA Cup in the 1984-85 campaign, only to lose the final of the latter to Manchester United. Their cross-city rivals Liverpool responded by going on a riot which killed 39 people at Heysel at the end of that season, securing a ban from European competitions for English clubs and denying Everton the opportunity to go on to conquer the continent.

The 1990s were a bit of a nothing decade bar an FA Cup win in 1995, the last major trophy that Toffees lifted. Since the turn of the century, they’ve been regular challenges for top eight finishes except for two seasons ago when they had a flirt with relegation before Big Sam rode to the rescue. In all that time, they’ve never quite managed to crack that glass ceiling to the big six though.

Everton this season
Since the summer of 2017, Everton have been big spenders with very little to show for their comparative outlay. They’ve also rattled through three managers; Ronald Koeman giving way to Big Sam who was then replaced by former Watford boss Marco Silva.

Silva might not have long left in the hot seat either. The Portuguese boss is under pressure after a dismal start to the season in which they’ve picked up just 10 points, looking at times like relegation fodder rather than a side who, given the travails being suffered by Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, should be pushing for the top six

It was after a draw at the Amex in October 2017 that Koeman lost his job. A Brighton victory this time around might see Silva follow suit, leaving us responsible for the sacking of an Everton manager for the second time in two years.

Head-to-head
With Everton’s record stint of 116 years of top flight football, meetings between the Toffees and the Albion have been few and far between. In fact, there have been just 15 previous encounters with Brighton winning just three.

One of those came in the FA Cup in the 1920s with two in the league – and each Brighton victory has been followed by a dire run of form immediately afterwards. After beating Everton 3-1 in February 1982, Mike Bailey’s side slipped from eighth spot in the top flight to a final finishing position of 13th, winning just four out of the final 19 games.

And then there was last season. Jurgen Locadia’s goal gave the Albion a 1-0 win at the Amex on December 29th, leaving us 12 points clear of the relegation zone. Fast forward five months and we’d only won two more times in 18 games, Crystal Palace had kept us up by beating Cardiff City and Chris Hughton had been sacked as a result.

On second thoughts, it might be worth us not winning this one…

Brighton’s head-to-head record with Everton

Last six meetings
• Brighton 1-0 Everton (Premier League, 29/12/18)
• Everton 3-1 Brighton (Premier League, 03/11/18)
• Everton 2-0 Brighton (Premier League, 10/03/18)
• Brighton 1-1 Everton (Premier League, 15/10/17)
• Brighton 1-2 Everton (Division One, 09/04/83)
• Everton 2-2 Brighton (Division One, 02/10/82)

Everton are yet to win at the Amex having drawn one and lost one of their two visits – and really, they should have tasted defeat on both occasions. The Albion looked to be heading to a 1-0 win when the Toffees came to town in October 2017 until Bruno inexplicably decided to elbow Dominic Calvert-Lewin in the head inside the Albion penalty area in the last minute. Wayne Roobey duly dispatched the penalty to earn the visitors a share of the spoils.

Team news
There’ll be at least one change to the side who started at Aston Villa with Aaron Mooy suspended thanks to his stupid red card a week ago. How Potter decides to replace him will be interesting. We don’t have an obvious like-for-like replacement, which is a real shame given how well 4-2-2-2 with two number 10s in front of two holding players has worked in the past two fixtures.

Leandro Trossard or Solly March could be a square-peg-in-a-round-hole solution. Davy Propper has also operated further forward with some success for the Netherlands, which would allow Steve Alzate to come back into the starting lineup. Potter could even go back to 3-4-3 if he doesn’t feel he has the personnel to start with four central midfielders.

Or he might just come up with something completely barking mad. We’ve had the four central midfielders, we’ve had four centre backs, we’ve even had four wingers. Four strikers perhaps? Four full backs? Maybe even four goalkeepers? Who knows.

Everton’s key players
On his day, Richarlison can be one hell of a player as we found out to our cost away at Goodison Park last season when he ran the show in Everton’s 3-1 victory. Gylfi Sigurdsson can also be a bit of a magician and Jordan Pickford has established himself as England’s undoubted number one over the past few years.

Then there’s Michael Keane. With so many Albion supporters obsessing over why Lewis Dunk hasn’t been called up to the England squad so far this season, there will no doubt be a lot of scrutiny of Keane’s performance. Brighton fans being Brighton fans, Keane could score a hat-trick at one end and make 10 goal line clearances at the other and there will still be people trying to claim he is shit.

A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Everton at home
There can’t have been many people who were happy when Everton’s visit to the Amex two years ago got moved to a Sunday lunchtime kick off so it could be shown live in India. We however were delighted as it gave us an excuse to come up with the idea of an Albion Indian Banquet in honour of the occasion, featuring such bollocks as Madrasper Ankergren Davy Propperdom.

A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Everton at home
Speaking of curry, the WeAreBrighton.com team had their Christmas Party after last season’s game against Everton at home. This consisted of around 20 pints followed by an unplanned 10pm curry. Clearly, the curry house weren’t happy to see us as they chucked so much spice into the food that one member of the team had to ask for a glass of milk to stop their mouth burning up – and they’d only ordered the tikka masala.

Our favourite player to play for Brighton and Everton
Not many players have swapped the blue of Everton for the blue and white of Brighton, but when they do they tend to be those who like a drink. Shane Duffy has played for both clubs but even his Guinness guzzling feats would be put in the shade by Kevin McLeod, a bloke who spent two-and-a-half years with the Albion picking up a pay cheque for doing bugger all – which he then duly frittered away on food and beer.

By the time he was released to join Wycombe Wanderers in February 2010, he was the size of a beluga whale and had spent the GDP of a large Asian nation in the White Horse in Ditchling. A man after our own hearts.

What we like about Everton
Sir Paul McCartney was born in the Everton area of Liverpool. Enough said.

Prediction
Plenty of pundits seem to think that Everton have turned a corner following their 2-0 home win against West Ham United last week. We’re hoping it’s just another false dawn. It will probably be somewhere in between, leading to a 1-1 draw and adding even more pressure to the Albion’s clash next week with Norwich City.