Premier League REVIEW 19 Sep 2026: Brighton take Arsenal apart as the model's coin-toss lands and its safest call falls at the City Ground

Five fixtures, and the model finished the day with its firmest opinion in pieces and its vaguest one vindicated. Before a ball was kicked we gave Nottingham Forest close to three chances in five at home to Coventry City, the surest read anywhere on the card, and that was the one that broke. The tie we could barely separate, Brighton and Hove Albion against Arsenal, we split three ways with the draw and an away win both alive, settling on the narrowest of home picks; it came in, and it came in emphatically. Two of the five went our way, and the two that did not both punished us for trusting the obvious.

Brighton and Hove Albion 3-0 Arsenal is the homework we are happiest to mark. Pascal Gross curled in from the right of the box on 31 minutes, Charalampos Kostoulas struck from range on the stroke of half-time, and Chema Andres rose unmarked to head in a Gross corner on 57. Arsenal were not short of the ball and not short of territory; they were short of anyone able to beat Bart Verbruggen, who pushed away a Kai Havertz effort with the forward clean through, and by the hour the afternoon had gone. It was Arsenal's first defeat of the season, on the day Brighton marked 125 years since their first professional match. Mikel Arteta hid behind none of it: "Extremely disappointed. But first I think we have to congratulate Brighton for the victory."

The reverse entry reads Nottingham Forest 0-1 Coventry City, and by our own reckoning it is the heaviest upset of the day. Jay Dasilva killed a long ball from goalkeeper Carl Rushworth and beat Matz Sels on 55 minutes, and that single moment was Coventry's first goal of the season, their first win of it, and the club's first top-flight victory in twenty-five years. Forest had the better of the opening half on shots and possession and thought they had rescued the game on 86 through Igor Jesus, only for the goal to be ruled out after a review found a foul in the build-up. Our model read that fixture one way, the market read it the same way, and the City Ground emptied knowing both had been wrong.

The two we called wrongly pulled in opposite directions. We made Tottenham Hotspur favourites in the day's opening game and they lost 2-3 to Aston Villa, undone first while briefly a man light as Micky van de Ven had a facial injury treated off the pitch: Johan Manzambi finished in first-half stoppage time, Nicolas Jackson added a second on 67 and Emiliano Buendia found the top corner from distance on 79. Conor Gallagher on 86 and Jan Paul van Hecke, eight minutes into stoppage time, left a scoreline kinder to Spurs than the match had been. At St James' Park we went against the grain entirely and picked the visitors; Newcastle United 2-1 Hull City was all but settled before it started, Joe Willock scoring on 3 minutes and Lewis Hall on 7, both created by Harvey Barnes. Konstantinos Tzolakis then turned a Yoane Wissa penalty round the post just before the interval, and Mohamed Ali Cho's goal on 67 made the closing stages awkward without ever quite turning them.

That leaves Everton 1-0 Ipswich Town, the one call the model made with real confidence and duly collected, though it needed a slice of luck to do it: James Tarkowski's effort from distance struck Thierno Barry on 11 minutes and wrong-footed Christian Walton. Ipswich were competitive for an hour and then reduced to ten men on 67 minutes, Abdul Fatawu Issahaku collecting a second booking for simulation, and Everton had a Barry header disallowed after a review judged an offside player to have obstructed the goalkeeper. One goal was all it took, which is roughly the shape the model had drawn.