Aiming to extend their winning streak across all tournaments to three matches, an in-form Everton host Brighton & Hove Albion at Goodison Park in Saturday’s Premier League fixture.

The Toffees advanced to the EFL Cup quarterfinals by defeating Burnley in the middle of the week with three goals in a row, while Roberto De Zerbi’s team lost a 1-1 draw with Fulham the previous weekend despite holding a slim lead.

Match preview

James Tarkowski, an Everton defender who helped his team defeat Brentford in September, has been scoring goals against his former teams this season. He broke the deadlock against Burnley on Wednesday and could not help but smile.

The Clarets may have undergone a significant transformation since Sean Dyche handed the reins over to Vincent Kompany, but the ex-Clarets boss taught his old employers a footballing lesson at Goodison, as Amadou Onana and Ashley Young made the victory more emphatic in the second period.

An intriguing last-eight tie with Fulham has now been added to Everton’s Christmas calendar, and Goodison will be brimming with festive joy should Dyche’s side continue along the same road, having now come up trumps in five of their last seven fixtures across all competitions.

Three days before knocking Burnley out of the cup, Everton became the first team in 2023 to prevent West Ham United from scoring in a Premier League home game, as a solitary Dominic Calvert-Lewin effort saw the Toffees rise to 15th in the table with a five-point chasm separating them from the drop zone.

Only Liverpool have managed to breach the Everton backline in the Toffees’ last four games, and even then Dyche’s 10 men gave their Merseyside rivals a good run for their money, and the hosts could now march to three successive home wins for the first time since September 2021.

The Fulham curse continues to haunt Brighton & Hove Albion, who had not won any of their six Premier League meetings with the Cottagers prior to last weekend’s blustery South Coast clash, where Evan Ferguson once again made the league stand up and take notice with a crisp finish into the bottom corner.

However, as the weather worsened, so did the Seagulls’ finishing, as Fulham’s midfield fulcrum Joao Palhinha picked out the top corner with a stunning second-half strike to rescue a point for Marco Silva‘s side and leave Brighton still searching for their recipe for success against the Cottagers.

Having seen their EFL Cup journey come to a close against Chelsea in round three, the Europa League contenders have enjoyed a well-earned week without any competitive commitments as De Zerbi seeks to correct an indifferent run of form, which has seen the Seagulls win just one of their last seven games across all tournaments.

Three draws and one defeat from their last four Premier League contests has seen Brighton lose ground in the enthralling top-four race, as the visitors occupy seventh place in the table with 17 points to their name, six fewer than Liverpool in the fourth and final Champions League position.

No clean sheet in eight away games also makes for unpleasant reading for Brighton, who were memorably on the wrong end of an astonishing 5-1 annihilation when Everton visited the Amex in May, although the Seagulls had also silenced the Goodison crowd with a 4-1 Merseyside mauling in January.