Brighton & Hove Albion
American Express Stadium
Brighton & Hove Albion FPL: Who To Own, Captain And Avoid — 5 Aug
The call — Brighton: buy the attack, don't pay for the sheets Here's the Brighton puzzle in one line: our model rates them the seventh-best attack and sixth-meanest defence in the league — and then hands them a fixture list that's kind to the forwards and miserable for the back four. Aston Villa (H), Chelsea (A), Leeds (H), Coventry (A), Arsenal (H), Sunderland…
Which is why the pick here isn't the shiny one. It's Pascal Groß at £5.5m. He's top of our list for a reason — projected around 21 points over the six, he starts every week, he's on everything Brighton produce, and he almost never blanks. About 1 in 10 managers own him, so you're not just buying the template. He's not going to win you a gameweek on his own, but he'll quietly pay for himself while flashier midfielders sit on your bench doing nothing. That's the job.
The defensive assets are where it gets awkward. Verbruggen at £4.5m is a perfectly good keeper — nearly 2 in 10 own him — and Kadıoğlu and Dunk at £4.5m apiece are the sort of prices that make wallets twitch. But look at the run again: Chelsea away, Arsenal at home, a Villa side who score. Our numbers say the clean sheets will be scarce over these six, and a defender who doesn't keep clean sheets is just a bloke standing near the goal. Verbruggen's save points give him a decent weekly return regardless, so if you need a cheap keeper he's fine. The £4.5m defenders? They're squad fillers, not starters, until the fixtures turn.
Gomez at £5.0m is the one to note and not buy. Barely anyone owns him (under 1 in 3 in 100, near enough), and the projected points don't justify the seat over Groß. If Brighton's attack produces, Groß is the one collecting.
The call: buy Groß at £5.5m — set-and-forget for six weeks. Take Verbruggen if you need a budget keeper. Leave the Brighton defenders alone until the fixtures stop featuring Arsenal and Chelsea.