Arsenal Women 5 Brighton 0 Analysis: Gunners Blindside Brighton

After Arsenal’s 5-0 win over Brighton, Arseblog News asked Renee Slegers whether her team targeted Brighton in the channels. The first three goals all featured finding attacking players in the half spaces. Slegers said that, while they always look for those spaces, they had a methodology for turning Brighton around and putting them in vulnerable positions.

‘We had a way of manipulating that today against Brighton, looking at how they act and manage those kind of runs…In general, us facing their back line, they would drop. If we set it up really well in a structured way, like we did a couple of times in the first half, we could create those 2 v 1s on their back line.’ So that is exactly what we are going to look at.

Brighton set up in a 3421 shape with Thorisdottir sliding across to right-back and right wing-back Madison Haley pushing right up. Brighton essentially leave their wide 10s, Kirby and Seike and their centre-forward Nikita Parris up the pitch for counter attacks. But it also means they leave spaces in the channel as Brighton slide between a back three and four and their wide players are so attacking.

Russo drives down the left from a throw-in here, something we saw a lot against United and Bergsvand, one of the centre-backs, follows her.

As Russo tucks the ball back to Foord, Foord isn’t even marked. But look at the run inside from Lia Walti which is completely untracked. Arsenal found these spaces inside the wide players all through the first half.

Walti is able to set the ball back to McCabe and Slegers talked about Brighton’s centre-halves and their propensity to drop and we see it here. The forwards are well marshalled in the area but the players immediately behind them are not.

Another tactic Arsenal used frequently in the first half was to drop Frida Maanum in the build-up to create an extra player against Brighton’s midfield double pivot. Arsenal have a free-kick here and Maanum drops late from her advanced position to show for it.

Maanum meets the ball with a first time touch to Mead but we can see that Bergsvand has left her station in defence to meet Maanum.

Mead plays the one-two with Maanum and look how disorganised Brighton now are. Bergsvand is sprinting back towards her defensive station because she can see the gaps and Haley is not aware of McCabe running off her shoulder.

Maanum finds the pass to McCabe and Arsenal are in a good situation.

Arsenal often used Russo in the same way to drop away from the front line and take defenders with her. Williamson again opts for a clipped pass here.

Carabali comes to meet her this time and, again, you can already see that Haley is ball watching and unaware of McCabe’s run on the left. This move didn’t amount to much in the end but the idea is clear. Drop a forward, attract a Brighton defender out and play into the space behind.

In the build-up to the opening goal, we see the idea of dropping Maanum lower repeat. Look at how deep she drops here as Zinsberger is in possession.

As Williamson picks it up here, Frida again drops deep to show for it, taking Brighton players with her as she does.

Williamson finds her with a clever angled pass and now Maanum is free and Arsenal have a four v four. Maanum attempts a pass to Foord on the left here which Thorisdottir just gets a toe to to put it out for a throw.

As Catley receives the ball, Maanum again drops to receive. Look at Seike on the nearside of the screen. Seike is a striker really and you can see she is ball watching and not aware of potential runners.

Maanum and Little play a one-two and this is really poor play from Brighton. Kirby doesn’t track Little’s run off her shoulder and Symonds doesn’t work hard enough to track Maanum either. Poppy Pattinson at left-back has her body position too squared towards her own goal. Her shoulders should be far more outward.

So when Maanum delivers the pass to Mead, she cannot readjust and make the interception. Mead chops in here and scores but just look at how disorganised that Brighton back line looks. There are five defenders who are essentially in touching distance of one another.

That is a CLASSIC Beth Mead goal 🤩#BarclaysWSL @ArsenalWFC pic.twitter.com/aG0Zymo2WO

— Barclays Women's Super League (@BarclaysWSL) November 8, 2024

As Little shovels the ball out to Emily Fox here, Seike is roughly where she should be, supporting Pattinson. But you can see again that, as Slegers said post-match, in certain phases the Brighton defence is very quick to drop towards their own goal which can leave space for runners ahead of them.

Seike loses concentration very easily here and Little is easily able to jog into the space behind her.

This gives Little the chance to drive the ball across goal and Foord meets it to make it 2-0 as, again, Brighton just don’t pick up the blindside runs.

What is worse from a Brighton perspective is that Seike has seen the run from Little but just points to someone else to pick it up (who?) and simply stands in space. Brighton were very poor at picking up runners all first half.

Arsenal defend this attack from Brighton and Mead comes away with the ball.

Maanum has once again dropped to receive it and Arsenal are away. Maanum is not exactly dealing with a lot of Brighton pressure on the ball here.

She switches to Foord and Arsenal are away and in space again.

The level of ball watching here as Maanum runs beyond Thorisdottir, Symonds and Losada is genuinely astonishing.

The ball is worked wide to McCabe and, once again, Maanum finds it very easy to simply stroll into space. Thorisdottir has been attracted away from the back line and Haley doesn’t do enough to block the passing lane into Maanum.

With right wing-back and right centre-half out of the picture, there probably isn’t a player in the WSL you would want in this position more than Frida Leonhardsen Maanum.

Here is a good illustration of just how pliant Brighton were. Zinsberger kicks long and Carabali wins the header uncontested.

The header from Carabali is bad and goes straight to Mead and three seconds after a pretty hopeful ball forward from the goalkeeper, which Arsenal don’t even get first contact on, they are one-on-one with the goalkeeper. Foord hits the post here and it’s just woeful stuff from the Seagulls.

The ease with which Williamson is able to roll the ball through to Maanum here on her left foot and the total lack of pressure on Frida as she is once again allowed to turn and shoot is lamentable from a Brighton perspective. They were a very obliging opponent for Arsenal indeed.

The second half fell into more of a lull with Arsenal managing the game ahead of a big UWCL match away at Juventus on Tuesday. Brighton gave them a nice easy training game and Arsenal obligingly created situations with blindside runners and where they knew they could tempt Brighton defenders out of position. Players like Losada, Kirby and Parris are of great quality and very experienced WSL campaigners but, it perhaps stands to reason that they, as well as very aggressive wing-back choices, were not exactly going to press Arsenal to death in possession either.