Albion Analytics' big season preview for the new Premier League campaign

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Albion will be aiming to build on last season's eighth place finish.

Liam Tharme

Albion Analytics

2026-08-22T06:00+01:00

Fabian Hurzeler enters his third season as Brighton head coach. 📸 by James Boardman.

Brighton start their tenth Premier League season with the visit of Aston Villa to the Amex, as Fabian Hurzeler’s side hope to build on the eighth-place finish they achieved in the last campaign.

It was their fourth top-half final position in the past five terms.

A haul of 53 points in 2025/26 represented Brighton’s third-best as a Premier League club. While the summer departure of top scorer Danny Welbeck — he netted 13 times last year, one quarter of the club’s league goals — means the attack requires some reconfiguring, they ought to be confident about their defensive capabilities.

Brighton put up their best defence (46 goals conceded) for five years, since only allowing 44 in 2021/22. The challenge is how proliferate attacks have become in England’s top-tier, reaching record-breaking levels in 2023/24 and remaining close to three goals-per-game since.

Bart Verbruggen kept ten clean sheets in the Premier League last season. 📸 by BHAFC.

Only the top two, Manchester City and Arsenal, were more watertight than Hurzeler’s team, and a key detail behind that was how effectively they pressed. Brighton led the Premier League for final-third regains (192), their most in a game being 11 in the 2-1 home win over Nottingham Forest.

With physical intensity an emerging and defining trend across the division, it bodes well that Brighton can compete with opponents in that side of the game. Hurzeler spoke last season of an “emphasis on defending together” which includes the striker having the “mindset of the first defender.” Pre-season wins over strong Serie A sides Roma (3-0) and Bologna (1-0) both came with clean sheets.

Other areas of success for Albion include the impact made by youngsters. Across the past two seasons there have been 30 goals scored by Brighton players aged 21 or younger, the most in the league ahead of Bournemouth (25), while the rest of the entire division in that time (Bournemouth included) has 135. It is for that reason that Hurzeler is optimistic about Greek duo Stefano Tzimas and Charalampos Kostoulas stepping up.

Diego Gomez has recently signed a new five-year contract. 📸 by Paul Hazlewood.

Meanwhile the position shift for Jack Hinshelwood last year, moving from No 8 to No 10, was rewarded with seven goal involvements (3 goals, 4 assists). Diego Gomez returned double digit goals across all competitions, and the Paraguayan has just signed a new contract until 2031.

Wingers Ibrahim Osman, who spent last season on-loan at Auxerre and then Birmingham City, and Amario Cozier-Duberry, the Arsenal academy graduate, are in position to make first-team breakthroughs. “The replacements don’t always have to come from outside. Sometimes they can come from inside the club,” Hurzeler said in pre-season. Cozier-Duberry hit eight goals and set up 11 more to help Bolton Wanderers win the League One play-offs last season, attempting the third-most take-ons in the division (146).

Hurzeler and his staff will want to see a repeat of the set-piece strengths that Brighton showed as the Premier League became dominated by inswinging corners and long throws — they scored more (9) than they conceded (7) from corners last term and were among the top four best defensive teams by the second metric.

Luka Vuskovic joined Albion from Tottenham this summer. 📸 by James Boardman.

The arrival of Luka Vuskovic, signed from Tottenham Hotspur (with Jan Paul van Hecke moving the other way to north London), adds height and aerial quality to help in those scenarios. Brighton only conceded once from an open-play cross in 2025/26, better than anyone else.

The biggest challenge for Brighton and Hurzeler? Dealing with European football. Their Conference League play-off round matches against Tromso of Norway sandwich the opening Premier League game against Villa, and, while most teams inevitably suffer some domestic drop-off with a more packed schedule, the hope will be to do better than in 2023/24 — when Brighton finished 14 points and five places lower than the 2022/23 season.

Albion entering a decade as a Premier League club means they will go level with Stoke and Burnley for time spent at England’s top table. Consistency and mid-season success ought to be an ambition this year. Hurzeler, curiously, has never won a Premier League game in December (7 draws and 5 defeats) and, while Brighton ended 2025/26 with an excellent streak of seven wins from their final 12 matches, they gave themselves a lot to do following a run of nine points from 13 games.

Fabian Hurzeler has won 30 of his 76 Premier League games in charge of Albion. 📸 by Paul Hazlewood.

Starting the season strongly, often a cliche, has rung true for Albion. They have won four of their last five opening round matches, last losing on MD1 to Chelsea in 2020/21 — this is their longest such run since the 1970s.

However they do have a tough season start, hosting last season’s champions Arsenal and fourth-place Villa in their first five matches. Leeds United (14th last year) also visit the Amex, and Brighton make trips to Chelsea and Championship winners Coventry before the September international break. As per Opta, it’s the fourth-hardest start for any Premier League team.