Brighton v Watford: Visitors can clip Seagulls' wings

Is opening day win a sign of things to come for Seagulls?

Brighton started the season in style with a fine 2-1 win over the ever-resilient Burnley last week.

They deserve a lot of credit for that one because even the best sides in the league have found it hard work to go to Turf Moor and come back with three points.

In the end it was thanks to two inspired substitutions that they turned the game around, with Jakub Moder providing the assist for their first goal and Alexis McAllister scoring the winner; both came on as substitutes.

Perhaps more impressive was the fact that this was no smash and grab job. They dominated possession (64%) and had eight shots on target to Burnley's three.

After a couple of seasons of serious struggle, Brighton fans will be hoping that their number one priority of beating the drop, doesn't come so late on in the season this time.

Hornets started in style

The end result may have been the same - an opening day win - but Watford certainly went about things very differently last week.

They went 3-0 up at home to Aston Villa and ended up 'only' winning 3-2, though in truth Danny Ings' goal was scored so late on that there was never any real danger of them not holding on.

This looks quite a different side to the one that was relegated two seasons ago and with all due respect to the players who fought hard not to go down at the time, it looks a better one.

Yes, Abdoulaye Doucoure in particular is a fine player now doing his stuff at Everton and Etienne Capoue always brings something to the table as well and those two are sorely missed.

But Will Hughes and Tom Cleverley bring a nice combination of calmness and good passing to proceedings. Let's wait and see if livewire Ismaila Sarr stays or goes.

Take on overrated hosts

For me, it takes a lot to deserve to be an odds-on shot in a Premier League game.

Yes, Brighton have now been in the Premier League for quite a few seasons in a row while Watford haven't, and they're at home for this one.

But that's pretty much where the arguments end as to why they should be just 1.84/5 on the Exchange to win the game.

Yes, Brighton weren't relegated last season and the drop was never really in doubt but it's worth remembering where they finished: 16th. Curiously, based on Expected Goals value, Brighton should have got 67 points rather than the 41 they did get. But what does that tell you? It tells me that their finishing is really poor, and I think it will cost them time and again.

And if Brighton won last week, then so did Watford, as we pointed out already.

But what really settles the deal for me is the head-to-head record. In the last 16 games in the league between these two, the Seagulls have won just three times.

There were five Watford wins and eight draws, so it's not like Brighton have had the upper hand in this fixture.

A lay of the hosts is definitely the way to go.

Unders definitely the call

I think the key to finding a good 'over/under 2.5 goals' bet is generally to find cases of the outsider of the two deserving to be favourite.

Now, that isn't the case here but there's an argument to say under 2.5 goals is actually pretty generously priced at 1.758/11.

That's a price very much in line with Brighton's record last season of 58% of their games staying under three goals.

But look at Watford's numbers from last season in terms of goals when they were on the road: a massive 78% of their games went 'unders'. Yes, different league and everything but it's pretty clear the Hornets aren't particularly interested in open games when they're on the road.

For good measure, just one of the last 10 between these two produced three or more goals so you can see why I think that quote on 'unders' is pretty decent.

Half-time stalemate and low on goals

Over in the world of Bet Builders, there could be a decent wager going.

I've already made it clear that the stats all point to a low-scoring affair and therefore under 2.5 goals at 8/13 is a good starting point.

And to that I think we can add the half-time draw.

Things have been extremely tight between these two over the years with a load of draws chucked in there.

The full-time draw is a considerably bigger price at 5/2 but given both teams saw plenty of late goals last week, I'd rather stay on the safe side and go with the stalemate at the break, an even money shot.

The double comes to 2.53.