Who To Pick From Brighton

Drafting from Brighton

One player holds top billing at Brighton on his own: Kaoru Mitoma, an 83-rated left winger from Japan, two clear of anyone else in the squad. That gap is the club in one line. A power rating of 80 puts Brighton tenth in a four-way tie, and with a spread of just 5 points between the best man in the XI and the eleventh-best there is no hierarchy to hide behind. Just 1 player at 82 or above, Mitoma himself, then a long flat run of useful footballers in a squad of 31.

There is no coin-flip to agonise over any more, because Carlos Baleba, the other half of what used to be a tie at the top, now plays for Manchester United; take Mitoma. Brighton's deepest quality is at centre-back, six players averaging 79, which tells you the club manufactures that profile, and manufactured profiles turn up again elsewhere on the wheel. An 83 in the left channel is a different kind of object. Take a centre-back and you have bought depth at a position you were always going to fill; take Mitoma and you have bought the thing that is genuinely hard to replace, because once Brighton is spent it is spent for good. The legends board says it louder: Kaoru Mitoma also sits on Brighton's legends card at 90, the same player seven points better.

What you surrender is real. Bart Verbruggen at 81 in goal, Pascal Struijk and Lewis Dunk at 81 and 80 in front of him, and, more annoyingly, the Verbruggen-Struijk Dutch pairing sitting there as a ready-made compatriot link that one pick cannot reach. Do not overthink the chemistry board, though: England is the biggest bloc at Brighton with 4 players out of 31, which is barely a bloc at all. This is a squad you pick on rating alone. And a warning for the spin itself, four strikers averaging 75 is the weakest group at the club, so if your XI still has a hole at centre-forward when the wheel stops here, Brighton is not going to fill it.