Jablonec vs Brighton prediction: six straight wins and an Aussie in the way

Brighton are on one of those runs where everything goes in. Six wins in a row across all competitions, 23 goals in seven games, and on Sunday they took Crystal Palace apart 5-0, three of them inside the first ten minutes, one of them a Diego Gomez strike from around halfway. Before that it was 4-0 over Kauno Zalgiris to open their Conference League campaign and a 2-0 win at Sunderland. That's not a side scraping through.

Jablonec are the honest underdog of this story. They went to Freiburg in round one and gave them a proper game, equalising through Antonín Rusek before Freiburg pulled away to 3-1, and then a bit of Aussie flavour in stoppage time: Australian international Garang Kuol pulled one back to make it 3-2. Credit to them, but they still conceded three in Freiburg, and Brighton are scoring faster than Freiburg were.

The worry with backing a heavy favourite on the road in Europe is always the rotation and the travel. Fair enough, but the dog here has already shown it leaks against this level, and Brighton's depth has been the whole story of this run.

The price: Brighton at 1.30 straight up is short and the books haven't budged in 24 hours. Asking them to win by two at -1.5 pays 1.80, which is where the story and the number meet. Kick-off is 3:45am AEDT, so it's one for the replay over brekkie.

Verdict: Brighton -1.5 at 1.80, because a side this hot doesn't tend to win by one.