Fascinating that Brighton have benched Mitoma again tonight for the third game running, despite the Japanese scoring twice in those three games. In those three games, Fabian Hürzeler has preferred João Pedro, Simon Adingra and Yankuba Minteh at left wing, but Mitoma has come on to great effect from the bench. I’m just not sure Mitoma thought he would be playing that role when Brighton turned down a bid €65m (£54.4m) from Al-Nassr in January. Mitoma has two years remaining on his contract.
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Brighton v Liverpool: Premier League – live | Premier League Key events The teams!Brighton: Verbruggen, Wieffer, Van Hecke, Webster, Estupinan, Baleba, Ayari, Minteh, Gruda, Adingra, Welbeck. Liverpool: Alisson, Bradley, Quansah, Konate, Tsimikas, Gravenberch, Szoboszlai, Salah, Elliott, Gakpo, Chiesa. Fresh from scoring against Wolves, Brajan Gruda starts in the No 10 role for Brighton. Wieffer is retained as a makeshift right back, preferred to Hinshelwood or Veltman, while Simon Adingra comes in on the left wing ahead of Tariq Lamptey. Kostas Tsimikas, Jarell Quansah, Harvey Elliott and Federico Chiesa all come into Slot’s XI, with Andy Robertson, Virgil van Dijk, Curtis Jones and Luis Diaz all dropping to the bench following the last outing against Arsenal. This is still a strong Liverpool team, just not quite as strong as it could be. PreambleLiverpool may have taken the phrase ‘on the beach’ a little too literally in the last week – with manager Arne Slot pictured at Wayne Lineker’s beach club in Ibiza alongside former EastEnders actor Dean Gaffney Dean Gaffney (no, really) and the rest of the squad in other cultural destinations like Dubai for Trent Alexander-Arnold’s leaving do – but let’s see what sort of shape they are in tonight. Brighton (a) is a tough gig, even when the champions are firing on all cylinders and actually have something to play for, so this will likely be a tough test for Slot’s brave boys. The Seagulls are still in with a shot of Europe: finishing eighth is still a viable (although not certain) route to the Conference League. There are two ways that the eighth-placed team can get a place in the Conference League: 1) 2) In either of these scenarios, the Premier League would have 10 teams – half of the Premier League – playing in Europe next season. Here is the current league table before kick-off. Brighton are ninth but only need a draw tonight to go into the final day in pole position to claim eighth. So, quite the cherry for Brighton to play for, particularly as they have never won a major honour and would likely be the runaway favourites to win next season’s Conference League if they qualify. There’s a bigger question over whether the budgets of English teams in European’s minor competitions (West Ham 2023, Spurs/Manchester United 2025, etc) renders the rest of said competitions rather predictable but this is just a humble preamble and we won’t be answering those questions here! Instead, let’s look forward to a sun-drenched evening of football in Sussex, as the best team in England visit one of the nation’s most exciting sides. Kick-off: 8pm BST. Source link Posted: 2025-05-19 19:47:45 |
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