Brighton’s games on the road this season have been packed with entertainment. Fabian Hurzeler’s side have seen 49 goals across their 14 away games this season (3.5 per game), scoring 25 of these themselves and conceding 24. This record suggests that Brighton can struggle to fully kill off games, but do offer an attacking threat to the opposition.

Brighton ran out 1-0 winners in the league meeting at St James’ Park between these sides earlier in the season, but that result wasn’t truly reflective of the performance of Newcastle who managed 21 shots culminating in an xG of 2.02 which suggests that on another day they would have found the back of the net at least once, if not gone on to win the game. Bart Verbruggen was also on top form in that game, making 6 saves – 4 more than his average across the season as a whole (2.60).

This selection has landed in each of Newcastle’s games against Birmingham and Bromley in the FA Cup so far, even though these games were against lower league opposition, they show a slight trend in the cup this season. Eddie Howe’s side also saw this selection land in their recent 4-3 win over Nottingham Forest at St James’ Park. Newcastle have only kept 1 clean sheet across their last 5 games across all competitions which indicates that Brighton should get some attacking joy here, but Newcastle should be able to put right the league result here having improved massively since that initial encounter between the sides.

Freiburg have made the most of the underperformance of some of the Bundesliga’s top sides this season. Leipzig and Dortmund have failed to live up to expectations which has resulted in an intriguing race for Europe away from Bayern Munich running away with the title yet again.

Freiburg sit 4th, a more than decent standing for a side that finished 10th last season. A win here would actually match the total number of points they managed across the entirety of the last campaign, further highlighting their improvement domestically this season. They’re on a run of 4 straight wins coming into this game against an Augsburg side that still have an outside chance of making a late push for Europe, but this looks unlikely given their recent form with just 1 win from their last 5 games across all competitions.

The initial meeting between these sides saw this selection land in a 3-1 Freiburg victory, something that they should be able to replicate given their recent run of form but not without Augsburg causing them problems. Augsburg aren’t the most prolific scorers at home but what does stand out is the increase in the number of goals Freiburg are conceding on the road. They’ve conceded 23 goals across their 12 away trips in the Bundesliga this season (1.91 per game), only a handful of sides have a worse away defensive record in the German top-flight this season.

Despite this concern when it comes to Freiburg’s away form, the initial meeting suggests that Freiburg should have enough attacking quality to compensate for the lack of defensive rigidity on the road this season. They had double the number of shots on target in their 3-1 win over Augsburg (6-3) and may be able to edge this game on motivation alone with a Champions League finish a real possibility for Julian Schuster’s side.