By Andy Naylor and Thom Harris
Brighton & Hove Albion have a range of attacking weapons to hurt opponents with. The evergreen Danny Welbeck is showing he’s still got it a month before turning 35, twice scoring two goals in a game already this season, in wins against Chelsea and Newcastle United. Japan international left-winger Kaoru Mitoma is by now well-established as both an attacking threat and a Premier League star. Their record signing Georginio Rutter has demonstrated a capability to penetrate defences with a combination of pace and power since his £40million ($53.5m at the current rate) move from Leeds United last summer.
But the player causing the most headaches to rivals in the first two months of the new campaign is Yankuba Minteh.
The Gambian winger had an encouraging debut season at the club in 2024-25 following a £30million switch from Newcastle. Head coach Fabian Hurzeler used Minteh in 32 of the 38 Premier League fixtures, including 20 starts. Minteh scored six times, with Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur all victims of his finishing.
Minteh also contributed four assists, one of which came in the same game where he scored against United — a 3-1 win at Old Trafford in January. It took only five minutes for him to put Brighton ahead, with his right foot from close range, after Mitoma squared a cross into his path. Minteh repaid the favour with an hour played, crossing to the back post with his favoured left foot for his fellow winger to prod Hurzeler’s side back into the lead.
There were other occasions last season when Minteh looked raw and a little naïve in his decision-making. But there are signs the 21-year-old is developing into another Brighton player whose value is rocketing and who opponents fear as he returns to Manchester to face United again on Saturday.
Minteh has been one of the most effective wingers across the 2025-26 Premier League.
Only Jack Grealish — flying on loan to Everton from Manchester City — has carried the ball into the opposition penalty area more often this season. In addition to that, 32.8 per cent of Minteh’s carries were classified as progressive per Opta, based on figures up to Newcastle’s visit to the Amex Stadium last weekend. That was the second-highest rate of any Premier League player, behind only Nottingham Forest’s Dan Ndoye, across the opening seven matches.
Minteh is positive when he gets on the ball, not thinking twice about taking on his marker. At Chelsea in September, Enzo Maresca was forced into a tactical adjustment by the amount of trouble Minteh was causing Reece James. Maresca admitted after the game that he brought Malo Gusto on “because Minteh was many times one-v-one with Reece, so we tried to give Reece help in that situation to defend with two-vs-one.”
Brighton’s 3-1 comeback win that day highlighted how Minteh has added another ingredient to his game by proving he can be just as dangerous in Mitoma’s role on the left as he is in his normal one on the opposite flank. He had been switched to the left by Hurzeler after Mitoma was substituted on 67 minutes by the time he skipped passed Gusto to cross for Welbeck’s headed equaliser.
Minteh also supplied the cross, this time from the right, for Mitoma to head Brighton level in the 2-1 defeat at Bournemouth two weeks earlier, so he is already halfway to matching his Premier League assists total for all of last season. He opened his goalscoring account for the campaign in the 2-2 home draw against Tottenham played in between those two matches, running away from the defence onto Rutter’s through ball and calmly rounding goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario to finish into an empty net.
“I see a difference in how effective he is on the pitch,” Hurzeler said in his press conference before Saturday’s 2-1 defeat of Newcastle. “The output of his actions. He had a lot of actions also in games last season. But now, the output is just bigger. So, he creates more chances. He scores more goals by his actions. And I think that’s the main thing.
“It’s a very important step in his development. When I look back, for example, against Fulham this season (the 1-1 draw at home on the opening weekend in August), he had so many actions, but the outcome wasn’t there. And these are exactly the things where he needs to improve. It’s about scoring goals, making assists. So, have a clean execution. And I think that’s the main thing where he’s getting better and better.”
The improvement in Minteh’s final product was not always evident against his former club, but he evaded Dan Burn’s challenge to launch a move which led to Yasin Ayari almost doubling Brighton’s lead early in the second half with a shot which curled just wide of the far post. Hurzeler told reporters later: “It’s always important to bring our wingers into one against one situations, especially Minteh. He is a very fast player, so you need to get him into one against one situations. That is, in general, always the game plan. Sometimes it works better, sometimes not.”
Minteh will clearly rack up the goals and contributions if he gets the final pass or the finish right, because he regularly gets into dangerous areas. But it is not just what he does with the ball that is making him a standout performer. He has also made the most defensive recoveries of any Brighton player in the Premier League this season (34, four ahead of second-placed Ayari).
He showed a willingness and awareness to drop into the defensive shape and defend his flank when required against Newcastle. On one occasion in the first half — when goalkeeper Nick Pope collected a corner and threw the ball out to Burn — Minteh retreated rapidly to intercept a pass down the line intended for Anthony Gordon, thereby halting a potential counter-attack in its tracks.
Whether in possession or out of possession, Minteh is making big strides as a player to watch in the Premier League.
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