BHA: Team Insight
Brighton's attack is set up nicely for the opening six — their defence, less so.
The read. Our model has Brighton as one of the five sharpest attacks in the league over gameweeks 1-6, and the fixture run backs it up: Aston Villa at home, Chelsea away, then Leeds at home, Coventry away, Arsenal at home and Sunderland away. Take out the two big ones and that's a kind set of games for goals. The defence is rated meaner than most — top six in the country on our numbers — but the fixtures don't do it any favours, so clean sheets look like the hard part.
Top of our list is Verbruggen at £4.5m. At that price he's not a clean-sheet bet so much as a busy keeper who racks up saves, and our model has him around two-and-a-half points a game across the six. Roughly 2 in 10 managers already have him, which tells you he's a known cheap option rather than a secret.
Then the interesting ones. Groß at £5.5m is the pick of the attacking bunch — our model has him as the highest scorer at the club over the window, comfortably better than three a game, with the set-piece involvement that means he can post a big one when things click. Almost nobody has him. Welbeck at £6.0m is the forward call, around three a game with genuine upside on his day when the home games come round, and again barely owned.
The nuance. Don't buy Brighton for defence. Kadıoğlu at £4.5m looks tidy on paper, but with Chelsea away and Arsenal at home in this run, the shutouts our model likes aren't the ones the fixtures offer. Gomez is behind Groß for a reason too — the points look fine, but he's the lower-upside version of the same job. And "favourable" doesn't mean easy: two of these six are against sides who'll dominate the ball.
FPL VERDICT. Buy Groß — £5.5m for the best-projected player at a top-five attack, owned by hardly anyone, is the standout. Welbeck at £6.0m is a solid watch-turning-buy if you need a cheap third forward. Verbruggen is a fine £4.5m hold as your keeper. Avoid the Brighton defence for now, and look elsewhere for the armband.