The former Brighton midfielder is full of praise for Fabian Hurzeler's side, and hopes to see them still challenging at the top of the league come the end of the season.
Steve Sidwell says Brighton’s start to the Premier League season has been “seriously impressive”, and believes his former team are currently playing the top-flight’s most exciting brand of football.
The Seagulls are currently third in the table, two points behind Manchester City and five behind league leaders Arsenal, and they have already beaten both of the top two sides this season.
Fabian Hurzeler’s side are third favourites with 14/1 odds in the Premier League betting to lift the title, and Sidwell says he hopes they are still in with a chance during the run-in.
“Brighton had a tough start to the season on paper, but beating Arsenal convincingly and going to Manchester City and winning was seriously impressive, and I think they’ve scored the most goals in the league so far, so it’s been an unbelievable start,” he says.
“Can they keep it going alongside all the European games too? We’ll have to wait and see, but they’ve got some real quality in that squad, and they are undoubtedly playing the most exciting football in the Premier League at the moment. It won’t be easy when the games start to mount up heading into Christmas, but Brighton are everybody’s second team at the moment, so it would be great if they can stay up there challenging.”
Brighton have long been praised for their recruitment under the ownership of Tony Bloom, and this season they have again seen some new signings come to the fore with impressive performances. Sidwell picked out Brighton’s 19-year-old centre-forward as the best of the bunch.
“They just seem to unearth these talents time and time again, and they’ve been doing it for a long time now,” he says. “De Cuyper has really impressed me, as have Yalcouye and Gomez in midfield, but Kostoulas has probably been the one for me. He’s still only 19, but he’s leading the line so well and has been scoring some great goals, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how he progresses.
“Vuskovic is another really exciting young player who’s done really well since arriving from Spurs, and he’s really settled in well next to Lewis Dunk, so it’s exciting times down there.”
Sidwell joined Brighton in 2015 and spent three seasons at the club, playing a major role in their promotion to the Premier League at the end of the 2016-17 campaign. He finished his career with the Seagulls, and says he could see at the time that they were destined for big things.
“I’ve known Tony Bloom for a long time, and as soon as the club made contact with me, I was really excited about going there. We were in the Championship at the time, but you could see they were a club on the up and destined for the Premier League. We lost in the playoffs the year before we eventually went up, but you could just tell from the way the club was structured that it was only a matter of time.
“Everything from the hierarchy at the top down to the first team squad and the academy was very impressive, and when I worked with the youth team in a coaching capacity after I retired, you could just see the talent they had. I look back on my time there very fondly, and hopefully they can continue going from strength to strength.”
