Flying seagulls

Are Brighton finally learning from…Brighton?

Brighton and Hove Albion have been the doyennes of English men’s football for a couple of seasons now, with their scouting prowess in combination with savvy managerial appointments seeing them punch well above their weight in the Premier League. Yet on the women’s side of things, the Seagulls have not found themselves quite so highly regarded. Having successfully applied to join the WSL for the 2018/19 season, their highest finish in the league is sixth and they find themselves pretty far off their stated aim in 2015 to reach the Champions League within five years. But could the tides of change be about to be felt along the south coast?

It is fair to say that last season was not Brighton’s finest hour. The club went through a huge turnover of players in the summer ahead of 2022/23 and lost four of their first five matches (although to be fair to Hope Powell and her team, three of those losses were against Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United). The nail in the coffin for Powell’s tenure however was an 8-0 demolition by a Tottenham team who had never scored more than four in a WSL match. After five years at the helm of the club, Brighton were going to get a new manager for the first time ever in the WSL. 

This did not prove to be any of the seamless transition that onlookers might have expected from Brighton’s general ‘savvy’ reputation. Former Bayern Munich manager Jens Scheuer’s appointment lasted all of 68 days with Amy Merricks back in interim charge far quicker than she might have imagined. In the end, they appointed Melissa Philips who herself had taken a brief sojourn as an assistant coach at Angel City after leaving London City Lionesses in January. 

Philips did what she was required to do from that point and kept Brighton up, with seven of their 16 points coming during her seven game spell, although she did lose their final three. Generally, the mood around her appointment was positive with people feeling like Brighton had improved even if defensively they remained somewhat suspect. This season however more will be expected. 

That is because Brighton have had one of the most eye-catching summer windows of any club in the WSL. There have been ten different incomings with eight of those being paid for by the club. But it is not just the volume of players which have drawn attention, but who those players are. There is a Champions League winner, an NWSL first round draft pick, and the player with the best goals per 90 ratio of anyone in WSL history.

The changes taking place at Brighton this season were not only managerial. Zoe Johnson became the Women & Girls Managing Director in February having spent five years as the Head of Women’s Football at Sheffield United. She was replacing Polly Bancroft who had left back in October to become Manchester United’s Head of Women’s Football (a rather unenviable task in hindsight). Another intriguing appointment was a Player Recruitment Manager, Edward Gallagher, who had previously worked with Phillips as Sporting Director for the London City Lionesses. In a recent interview, Johnson also made clear that Brighton’s technical director David Weir is heading up the technical departments on both sides of the club.

It feels like no coincidence then that Brighton’s recruitment has clearly gone up a notch this year. Last summer, they brought in five players on permanent deals with a sixth, Chelsea’s Jorja Fox, on loan. Veatriki Sarri came in from relegated Birmingham whilst Rebekah Stott resigned with the club after returning to Australia for cancer treatment. Elisabeth Terland and Poppy Pattinson represented promising youngsters, whilst Park Ye-eun had not previously played outside of Korea (and has since moved on). It was a summer window fitting of a side that would find itself in and around the bottom of the table.

The profile of players this season has changed significantly, and can broadly be split into two groups: experienced players with some question marks about whether they have still got it and young players who are unproven at WSL level yet. On paper, it looks like a very promising group but there are quite a few ‘ifs and buts’ attached.

One of the best things that Brighton have going for them is that last season they were good going forward. In fact they were the fifth best attacking team in the league with an expected goals of 23.4. In broad strokes, they did this by having Katie Robinson create a lot of good chances for Elisabeth Terland. Terland’s non-penalty xG per 90 was 0.41, the 8th best in the league. Robinson was the subject of interest from Manchester United over the summer but keeping hold of her might have been one of the savviest bits of business that Brighton have done.

Adding Pauline Bremer to this attack will only improve it. Danielle Carter’s struggles with fitness meant that she only scored two goals from open play last season, although Bremer is hardly to be relied upon fitness wise. Bremer has an extraordinary goalscoring record, averaging 1 goal every 90 minutes over the past eight seasons in France, England and Germany but the reason that she is not spoken about in the same breath as Ada Hegerberg is that she has only started 23 matches in that time. Her incredible success at Manchester City was cruelly halted by a broken leg that kept her out for 13 months whilst she suffered an ACL injury almost as soon as she moved to Wolfsburg. One of her final acts in Germany was to knock Arsenal out of the Champions League with her goal in extra-time but if she is going to be successful at Brighton, she has to stay fit. 

Bremer is the bigger name but Madison Haley might be the player who becomes a real star. Part of the Stanford class which included Catarina Macario and Sophia Smith, Haley was a seventh overall draft pick but eschewed joining the Chicago Red Stars and instead spent a season at Sydney FC, where she played with fellow new signings Charlie Rule and Mackenzie Hawkesby. She scored 11 goals in 15 games there playing as a striker, but has the ability to drop deeper. Brighton certainly look well-stocked when it comes to goalscorers this season.

If the attack is in a good enough place to simply slot in these upgrades and rock n roll, the defence is in no such shape. Brighton were the second worst team defensively and they are effectively going to rebuild their whole defence this season. Centre-back Zoe Morse was ever present for the Seagulls in the second half of the year but has retired from football whilst goalkeepers Megan Walsh and Lydia Williams joined West Ham and Melbourne Victory respectively. Sophie Baggaley and Chelsea loanee Nicky Evrard look like they will compete for the number 1 shirt. 

In front of them, Jocelyn Carabali looks to be a very high quality addition. The Colombian centre-back impressed on their World Cup run starting every match at the tournament. At right-back, Brighton will fill the spot vacated by Jorja Fox with either Charlie Rule or Li Mengwen. 20 year old Rule was part of that same A League Women winning Sydney FC side whilst Mengwen arrives from Paris Saint-Germain where she played on the left and right. The success of these players feels less about the potential, and more about how quickly Phillips can get them to gel. Both goalkeeper signings were deadline day recruits, for example, so their relationship with their defence is going to be a work in progress.

Vicky Losada and Tatiana Pinto are high profile midfield signings too, although how much Losada will play is an open question. She struggled with injury at Manchester City but her experience in a young team will be invaluable. Pinto is a particularly fascinating recruit given she left Levante, the third best team in Spain as of last year, to join Brighton. The 29 year old Portuguese midfielder has 100 caps for her country and should offer a lot in build-up.

The level of players signed clearly suggests that there is a convincing project on the table presumably in combination with a reasonable amount of cash to persuade players away from traditionally bigger clubs. In the past, the WSL has not always been kind to clubs that have turned over large amounts of players in the summer with it easy to find yourself adrift early on in the season. But not many bottom third teams have recruited in such a high-quality way as this. If Melissa Phillips can organise them defensively early on, Brighton look set to be a fun watch.