Albion Analytics: West Ham crushed at the Amex

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Once again this season, the numbers back up a dominant Albion performance.

Liam Tharme

Albion Analytics

2023-03-06T09:45:00Z

Lewis Dunk skippered the team to back-to-back victories over the Irons this season.

Brighton beat West Ham 4-0 at the Amex to maintain their place in eighth in the Premier League.

The win continues Albion’s immense form against the Irons since promotion in 2017. They remain unbeaten now in 12 fixtures against them, their most games without losing against any Premier League opponent.

Unsurprisingly, Brighton have won more games (6), scored more goals (26) and won more points (24) against West Ham than any other side. This is also their best fixture for goal difference (+14).

West Ham was Brighton’s best individual game of the season for xG (3.5) and open-play shot-creating actions (33), underlining how consistently they were able to pick the visitors apart. There were four different goalscorers and three different assisters (four if you count Kaoru Mitoma as assisting Alexis Mac Allister for the penalty won). It was the fifth time this Premier League season that Brighton recorded a minimum of eight shots on target — they achieved that feat just once in 38 games last season.

But Brighton broke more significant records on Saturday. Danny Welbeck wrapped up the scoring with Albion’s 43rd Premier League goal of this season - that breaks the club’s Premier League goals record (42 goals from last season), with a massive 15 games still to play.

Only four Premier League teams have scored more than Brighton, with De Zerbi’s side collecting the sixth-most points (17), registering the fifth-most xG (20.44) and scoring the fourth-most goals (20) since the post-World Cup restart.

Moises Caicedo celebrated his contract extension this week with yet another solid display in central midfield. He attempted (109) and completed (100) the most passes of any player, and impressively completed 18 of his 21 final-third passes, with only Mac Allister (21) and Mitoma (19) bettering him in the latter metric. The Ecuadorian’s press resistance and tenacity under pressure were pivotal to Brighton playing their way through the West Ham press.

No Brighton player recorded more ball recoveries than Caicedo (7) and he attempted the most tackles plus interceptions (8) of De Zerbi’s starting XI. He was fouled more times than any player on the pitch too (3).

Extrapolating Brighton’s Premier League record under De Zerbi makes for promising future reading. “We respect the shirt” said the head coach at full time.

Across a full 38-game season, Brighton’s 2022-23 form under the Italian head coach is worth over 55 points (1.47 points/game) and they would earn over 15 wins (41.1% win rate), scoring over 71 goals a season (1.88 goals/game). All of those numbers would eclipse the current records (51 points, 12 wins and the already-broken 42 goals, all from last season).

At their current rate, Brighton are on track to record 18 Premier League wins this season (47.8% win rate, winning 11 of 23 so far), accumulating over 62 points (1.65 points per game) and score a mammoth 71 goals (1.87 goals per game). Opta Analyst’s model give De Zerbi’s side over a three-quarters probability of finishing in the top seven.

The Seagulls are one game from only a second-ever new Wembley trip and FA Cup semi-final this Millennium, as well as chasing a first-ever European campaign. Perhaps the biggest positive is that the underlying numbers see this as no fluke — Albion are genuine contenders.