Ayari's early goal earns Brighton victory at the Etihad
Yasin Ayari's 11th-minute goal gave Brighton a 1-0 win over Man City, extending City's winless run against them to six meetings.
By Harvey Watkins,
Brighton won 1-0 at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday. Yasin Ayari scored in the 11th minute, and it was the only goal of the afternoon. City trailed for nearly the whole match and did not find a reply, so Brighton left Manchester with a win on Matchday 9 of the Premier League.
On its own, a one-goal away win is a good day for the visitors and nothing more. What gives it weight is the record behind it. Man City have now gone six meetings without beating Brighton, and this was the first of those six in which City failed to score.
A run that keeps lengthening
The sequence goes back to November 2024, when Brighton won 2-1 at home. They repeated that scoreline in August 2025. In between, and since, the matches at the Etihad have finished level: 2-2 in March 2025, 1-1 in January 2026, and 2-2 only three days before this game, on 28 October.
Adding Saturday, Brighton have won three and drawn three of the six most recent meetings. City have not won any of them. Four of the six were at the Etihad, and City won none of those four either. Home advantage has counted for little in this fixture.
Goals for and against
Brighton have scored in all six of those meetings, ten goals in total. That is a steady return against a side many would expect to be harder to break down, particularly away from home.
For City, the change on Saturday was at the other end. In the previous five meetings they had scored seven times and found the net in every match. Their usual problem against Brighton had been keeping goals out rather than scoring them. This time they conceded only once and still lost, because they could not score at all.
Reading the result
Some caution is due. Six matches over two years is a small sample, and four of them were draws or one-goal wins, so the margins have been fine throughout. A single goal decided this one, and early goals change how the rest of a match is played, whoever scores them. A different bounce in any of these games could have produced a different headline.
Still, the pattern is consistent enough to note. Across this run Brighton have not lost, have always scored, and have twice won by a goal at home before managing it away on Saturday. Coming three days after a 2-2 draw on the same ground, the result suggests the draw was not a one-off.
The scoreline was narrow, and nothing in this record guarantees that the next meeting will go the same way. For now, though, this fixture has repeatedly gone Brighton's way, and Ayari's goal added another result to that run.