Brighton & Hove Albion meet Bournemouth in a massive clash in a fiercely competitive top-four race.
Victory will see Brighton climb to eighth if Aston Villa fail to win elsewhere, whilst Bournemouth can climb to fourth with a win.
Team News
Brighton could again be without Danny Welbeck after he missed their win at Southampton last weekend with an unspecified injury.
Jason Steele (shoulder), Lewis Dunk (rib), Joel Veltman (foot), Ferdi Kadioglu (toe), Igor Julio and James Milner (both hamstring) remain sidelined.
Bournemouth will be without Illya Zabarnyi following his red card in their narrow loss to Wolves.
Julian Araujo (hamstring), Adam Smith, Marcos Senesi (both muscle) and Enes Unal (ACL) remain absent.
When is Kick-Off?
Brighton host Bournemouth at the AMEX Stadium on Tuesday 25 February at 7:30pm GMT, live on TNT Sports 3 in the UK.
Stat Attack
- Brighton have won four of their last five meetings against Bournemouth (W4, L1).
- Bournemouth have won one of their five previous Premier League visits to Brighton (W1, D1, L3).
- Kaoru Mitoma has scored three goals in Brighton’s last two home games against Bournemouth (W2).
- Mitoma has scored in four of Brighton’s last six league matches (W4, L2), of which the Seagulls went on to win those four games in which he found the net.
- Bournemouth have failed to keep a clean sheet in their last four league matches on the road (W2, D2).
Prediction
With seven goals and two clean sheets in their last two outings, Brighton certainly seemed to have rediscovered their attacking spark which was evident in a ruthless win at Southampton, although they are in for a tough test of their chances at European qualification against a strong Bournemouth team.
Andoni Iraola’s Cherries however were uncharacteristically lacklustre in their loss to Wolves especially after Zabarnyi’s harsh red card for a fairly normal foul, but this is a great immediate opportunity to bounce back and return to winning ways ahead of their FA Cup clash against Wolves on Saturday (1 March).
Both teams though do have plenty of goals in them so I have a feeling that this could be a pretty entertaining battle with a point apiece.
Prediction: Brighton 1-1 Bournemouth
Result: Brighton 2-1 Bournemouth