The 2022/23 WSL season is now well underway, with all 12 teams having had a chance to show what they can do and with fans having had an opportunity to form opinions of different players. The title battle has understandably attracted a lot of attention, with three or even four teams vying to lift the trophy, but there is an equally interesting fight taking place at the foot of the league, with a few teams already in danger of slipping down to the Women’s Championship at the end of the campaign.
One of those involved in the early scrap for survival is Brighton and Hove Albion Women, which has surprised many as they have generally been a mid-table side since their promotion to the top flight back in 2018. However, after a poor start to the campaign which saw them win just one of their first five games, the feeling was that they had become stagnant under former England manager Hope Powell, and her resignation last week after five years in charge at Broadfield Stadium showed that she also felt that the team needed fresh ideas.
This tactical analysis will look in greater detail at what did go wrong for Brighton this season, identifying the different tactics that they have tried to play with and the reasons that they haven’t worked. The scout report will also look at some of the improvements that they showed in their last match, a 5-4 away win at West Ham United Women (with Powell’s former assistant Amy Merricks in charge for that game), picking out why that performance demonstrated that there is still a good chance that the Sussex club can pull themselves away from the drop zone.
Data analysis
Before going into the details of Brighton and Hove Albion Women’s play this season, it is worth taking an overall look at their season and picking out some of the key statistics that show what has gone wrong.
The attacking section of this graphic presents a very simple story, in that Brighton’s high percentile rank for expected goals scored (xG) means it was thought that with the options they have available to them, they would be able to create a vast number of chances in the final third. However, with them ranking below the league median for every other statistic in this area of the chart, it is clear that the reality is very different.
Defensively, they were expected to be fairly watertight, with them ranking among the lower sides for expected goals against (xGA), and yet the fact that they have one of the highest percentile rankings for opposition xG per shot this season suggests that, again, they have not met pre-season expectations and their tactics have instead made them a very easy team to create chances against.
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