Arsenal vs Brighton: Complete head-to-head record

For most of their respective histories, Arsenal and Brighton have operated at opposite ends of the footballing pyramid.

In the same season that saw Brighton teeter on the brink of extinction, one defeat away from dropping out of the Football League entirely and plunging into financial ruin, Arsene Wenger took charge of Arsenal, ushering in decades of sustained success.

However, Brighton’s own revolutionary – in the form of owner Tony Bloom – has led the Seagulls into the Premier League and European competition.

Here’s a look at the history between these sides that now find themselves on the same footing.

After brief dalliances under the suffixes of United and Rangers, Brighton & Hove Albion were founded in 1901. Yet, the Seagulls had to wait until 1979 to reach England’s top flight.

FA Cup holders Arsenal travelled to the south coast for a glamorous opener. Brighton manager Alan Mullery tried to counter the nerves coursing throughout his squad which had risen from the fourth tier to the first in 14 years.

“They’ve only got two feet, same as you,” Mullery accurately pointed out. “Now listen. We know them, but I’ve just been talking to their physio, Fred Street, and they haven’t a clue what to expect from us.”

Evidently, Arsenal didn’t need a dossier on their hosts, waltzing to a 4-0 thumping to give Brighton a brutal introduction to top-flight football.

Wenger announced that he would be stepping down as Arsenal manager in April 2018 but the end seemed to have arrived a month earlier. Brighton were deserved victors on a day that forced even Wenger to accept that Arsenal‘s ambitions of finishing in the Premier League’s top four were over.

A desperately limp 2-1 loss, played to the backdrop of vicious ‘Wenger Out’ demands, was Arsenal’s fourth defeat on the spin – the club’s longest losing sequence in 16 years.

While Wenger glumly admitted: “It looks like we lack leaders,” Brighton’s squad was stuffed with them in a successful first season back in the top flight.

Brighton had been a Premier League team for two years but first hinted at their skyward ambitions with a dominant 2-1 victory at the Emirates in December 2019.

After losing 15 of their first 16 matches at the various…