Brighton vs Swansea Preview: Classic Encounter, Key Battle, Team News & More

We're back to the Premier League this weekend after an unusually long absence consisting of FA Cup and Champions League action, with Swansea heading to Brighton looking for their sixth win of 2018 in all competitions. 

Brighton and Swansea sit just a point away from each other in 14th and 16th respectively, and as it's so tight around the bottom half the table that a win for either side could see a significant climb up the ladder. 

After such a dreadful start to the campaign for the visitors, they now look to be finding their feet a little under new manager Carlos Carvalhal, seeing off Liverpool, Arsenal and Burnley in recent weeks, not to mention their 8-1 thrashing of Notts County in the FA Cup.

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Brighton, on the other hand, have fallen slightly after such a promising start to the season as one of the newly promoted sides. Chris Hughton's side sat in eighth position after two months of action but have since taken scrapes with the relegation zone - their top flight future is far from secure.

Classic Encounter 

These two have been at each other's throats since the 1920's and when it comes to playing at different levels, they don't mess about. Swansea and Brighton have battled each other in pretty much every league you can think of including Division Three South, Division Three, League One, and of course the Premier League - you name it, together they've played it. 

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Most recently, Glenn Murray got the only goal of the day when Brighton travelled to South Wales back in November. After failing to score in their first three games in the Premier League, Hughton's side had now scored in seven of their last eight games in the competition.

Both sides have also taken chunks out of each other in all the domestic tournaments including the FA Cup, League Cup and League Trophy, the latter going by a number of different names such as the Johnson's Paint Trophy and the LDV Vans Trophy when the two sides met.

Key Battle 

Glenn Murray vs Alfie Mawson 

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Mawson looks to be back fit for this one so you can count on Carvalhal to entrust the solid centre back with the task of keeping Glenn Murray at bay.

Murray has eight goals and six assists this season so you could say he's on a medium heat rather than totally ablaze, nevertheless, Mawson is more than a match for the striker with eight clean sheets and even a couple of goals himself, quite the feat for a centre back in a relegation battling side.

Team News 

Swansea

The away side have a few notable injuries to their potential first team 11 including Leroy Fer, Àngel Rangel, Renato Sanches and Wilfried Bony. 

Surprise signing Sanches has seen his career dip quite a bit since winning the 2016's Golden Boy award not to mention Portugal's Euro triumph. Although now injured, he has struggled to make it onto the Swans' team sheet when fully fit. 

Alfie Mawson is back in training after a short spell out with an ankle issue and looks set to start on Saturday,

Potential Line-Up: Fabianski; Naughton, van der Hoorn, Fernandez, Mawson, Olsson; Carroll, Clucas, Ki Sung-yueng; Dyer, Ayew, J.

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Brighton

It's happy days for Chris Hughton and his staff as Brighton are without any first team injuries. Chelsea loanee Izzy Brown is the only absentee to actually receive minutes this time around, with Steve Sidwell and Jiri Skalak yet to feature this season with long term injuries. 

Potential Line-Up: Ryan; Schelotto, Duffy, Dunk, Bong; Knockaert, Stephens, Gross, Pröpper, Izquierdo; Murray. 

Prediction

It was probably a bit easier to predict the reverse fixture back in November when Swansea were doing so badly and Brighton looked like sure-fire candidates to remain in the Premier League. 

Since then, both clubs have converged to be within a point of each other so it's much harder to predict with no obvious team set to dominate the other - we certainly shouldn't see any manager set his team up to defend. 

Fabiański has only pulled three balls out of his net in Swansea's last five so you would be silly to think Brighton will have it easy in front of goal, though the hosts have found their shooting boots over the last few games. 

Brighton 2-2 Swansea