Brighton have reinforced their status as the dark horses of the Premier League this season after thrashing rivals Crystal Palace 5-0, continuing an exceptional goalscoring start that gives the league’s heavyweights a competitor worth worrying about.
At the Amex Stadium, Fabian Hürzeler’s side turned the M23 derby into a display of sheer power on matchday seven—a victory carrying the sweet taste of defeating their historic rivals, adding to the Seagulls’ momentum and turning talk of them into more than just a fleeting surprise.
Brighton raised their tally to 16 points from five wins, one draw, and one defeat across their opening seven fixtures, a return that reflects their ambition to mix it up with the top tier. Most remarkably, the team accumulated these points while scoring 23 goals and conceding just five.
The hosts needed just ten minutes to take a firm grip on the derby; they went ahead through a Chadi Riad own goal, before Diego Gómez and Yasin Ayari added two more, with Charalambos Kostoulas and Jack Hinshelwood completing the five-goal rout in the second half. Brighton became the ninth team to score three goals within the opening ten minutes of a Premier League match, and the first since Newcastle against Tottenham in April 2023.
As for their tally of 23 goals from the first seven matches, it places the Seagulls in exclusive company; only three teams have scored more at the same stage in the competition’s history: Arsenal in 2009-2010 and Manchester United in 2011-2012 with 24 goals each, and Manchester City with 27 goals in the 2019-2020 season.
Their last six matches reveal the scale of the transformation: six consecutive victories across all competitions, 22 goals scored against just two conceded, and five clean sheets. During this run, Brighton defeated Arsenal 3-0 and knocked Manchester United out of the EFL Cup by overturning a two-goal deficit into a 3-2 win, combining the ability to crush opponents with resilience when games get tough.
The five-goal haul also carried historic weight, equaling the second-largest winning margin in fixtures between the two sides, behind Palace’s 6-0 victory in 1950 and mirroring a scoreline achieved by Brighton against their rivals in 1956. It is only the fourth time the Seagulls have scored five or more goals in a single Premier League match, with two of those coming this season against Coventry and Palace.
Behind this surge stands Hürzeler, the 33-year-old manager who arrived from St. Pauli in the summer of 2024 and recently extended his contract until 2029. The brilliance of 19-year-old Kostoulas, who finished the derby with a goal and an assist, provides a clear picture of a project empowering young talent to shoulder the responsibility of major matches.
Hürzeler outlined his vision upon renewing his contract in May, saying: “From the very beginning, our focus has been on building an identity, developing the team, challenging the big clubs, and raising our standards every day.” It is an ambition now backed by a winning run and historic statistics; Brighton possess enough attacking power and defensive solidity to make ignoring them a risk, giving the title race a dark horse running with supreme confidence.
