Championship leaders Brighton and Newcastle vie for the top spot, and a tighter grip on automatic promotion, at 7.45pm on Sky Sports 1.

The Seagulls are 1 point ahead of the Toon, a deficit that would be overturned in the case of an away win on Tuesday night. Beyond that, however, there is a decent margin of error between both sides and those teams lurking in the play-off zone. Huddersfield are closest and even they are 5 points behind Newcastle and 6 off Brighton, with Leeds are 10 points adrift from the league leaders in 5th place.



Not that they should get to complacent. While their dominance in terms of points is self-evident, both Brighton and Newcastle have begun to slip up with increasing frequency in the past few months.

The former went unbeaten went on an 18 game unbeaten run in the between mid-September and mid-January, yet have only won half of their last 8 leagues games, not to mention their embarrassing FA Cup loss to Lincoln City. The latter, meanwhile, haven’t lost a game since their 2017-opener against Blackburn, but a trio of 2-2 draws, including a snatched point against Bristol a couple of weekend’s ago, has seen the Toon drop to 2nd place for only the 4th time since mid-October.

While they currently sit in 2nd, Newcastle are far and away the Championship’s top scorers with 64 goals. And though Dwight Gayle is the Toon’s leading light, with 20 goals in the league, injury prevents him from travelling to Brighton on Tuesday. That leaves the fiery Aleksander Mitrovic as their best shot going forwards, at a Super Mega PGM of 19-23, ahead of Daryl Murphy at 17-21 and Matt Ritchie at 14-18. Their south coasts rivals are no slouches up front either, with a 16 of their 57 goals coming from Glenn Murray, who sits at a Super Mega PGM of 27-32.

Earlier in the season the Toon beat Chris Hughton’s side 2-0 at St James’ Park. Rafa Benitez might not get so lucky this time around, however, with Spreadex offering a Brighton/Newcastle Goal Supremacy spread of 0.05-0.25 alongside a Total Goals spread of 2.25-2.45.