Brighton & Hove Albion vs Aston Villa

Brighton and Aston Villa open the new Premier League season at the Amex, and it's a fixture loaded with contrasting storylines. Aston Villa arrive as reigning Europa League champions after seeing off Freiburg in the final, a triumph that also secured Champions League qualification on top of their fourth-place league finish. Brighton, meanwhile, scraped into the Conference League places, recovering from a bruising mid-season slump by winning seven of their last ten matches to close out the campaign. Both sides spent the summer rebuilding. Villa lost Morgan Rogers to Chelsea and Youri Tielemans to Manchester United as manager Unai Emery reshapes his squad. Brighton sold top scorer Danny Welbeck and brought in defender Luka Vuskovic, with Pascal Gross, now 35, tasked with steadying a much younger group. History favours Villa here, who once won 6-1 at Villa Park and beat Brighton 1-0 in their most recent meeting back in February. Our prediction: 1-1