João Gomes was sent off in the first half of Aston Villa’s 4–0 defeat by Brighton & Hove Albion on the 2026–27 Premier League opening weekend.
The Brazilian midfielder received his red card five minutes before half-time at the Amex Stadium. By that point, Brighton had already scored four times, leaving Villa with a difficult task even before playing the remainder of the match with ten men.
Gomes had joined Villa from Wolverhampton Wanderers during the summer. His dismissal was therefore particularly notable because it came in his first Premier League appearance for the club. The sending-off also made him the first player dismissed in the first half of a Premier League debut since QPR’s Samba Diakité in 2012.
Brighton ultimately maintained their four-goal advantage after the interval. The result became one of the clearest wins of the opening round, while Gomes’s red card was one of its most unusual individual details.