Premier League: Manchester United Claim Easy Win Over Brighton & Hove Albion

Manchester United can now breathe a shy of relief as they claimed a comfortable 3-1 home win over Brighton to move up to the seventh position of the table.

United was dealt a blow by Bournemouth with a 1-0 defeat scored by Joshua King last weekend but found their winning capabilities once again in the Europa League, thrashing Partizan Belgrade 3-0 in on Thursday to edge through to the knockout stage with one group match remaining to play.

Today's league match was comfortable for United and Andreas Pereira broke the deadlock very early into the game with a left-footed shot that deflected on Brighton's Dale Stephens to beat Matthew Ryan to the goal, and almost immediately, went two goals up with an own goal from Davy Propper after an attempt to save Scott McTominay failed.

Brighton converted one of the two attempts at the goal they had and narrowed the lead with a header from Lewis Dunk following a corner. In just two minutes United responded with the third goal from Marcus Rashford and even had another chance for the fourth goal but shot the ball wide.

In the end, United extended their unbeaten run against Brighton to 11 consecutive games as they won their fifth in six games during which Rashford extended his career scoring tally to 30 goals in all competitions.

"We should have scored many more goals. It was an excellent performance the lads," says Ole Gunnar Solksjaer. The table does not really matter at the moment, we need to keep improving and keep winning games and see where it takes us."

Until today, United were in 15th position but the well-deserved sent them up to 7th with 16 points, trailing Arsenal and Sheffield United by a point. Brighton remained in the 11th position with 15 points.