Were Brighton right to sack Melissa Phillips?

The decision came as a surprise, but should it have done?

The Women’s Super League suffered its first managerial sacking of the season as Brighton announced they had let Melissa Phillips go on Thursday afternoon. Despite the euphemistic language in their tweet, the body of the message was clear. 

“This is not a decision which has been taken lightly,” said Technical Director David Weir “but we feel is vital for the progress we want to see in the Women’s Super League.”

“We have invested heavily in the women’s squad and infrastructure going into this season, and results and performances have not been at the level we had expected, given that investment.”

The decision has largely been met with outrage. Phillips took the job in April of last season and helped keep Brighton in the division with two wins and a draw in their last seven fixtures. This summer Brighton recruited a huge number of players, many of whom were very high profile, but currently find themselves in 10th, six points off the bottom with three wins and two draws from twelve games.

It is fair to say that the timing of the sacking is bizarre. Phillips had done her press conference for Brighton’s weekend match against Manchester United just two and a half hours before she was let go. Reports suggested that the players were surprised by the decision and that Phillips was seen as well liked.

The general feeling seems to be that Phillips did not get enough time in a job which had involved a huge amount of player turnover and that Brighton expected too much too soon. Brighton have long had ambitions of rising up the table and clearly with the money that has been spent on bringing players in, are willing to invest in that vision. Unfortunately, the past seasons have had a significant amount of upheaval both on the pitch and on the sidelines.

When Hope Powell left in October 2022, Brighton appointed Jens Scheuer but his time in charge lasted just 68 days. Phillips did come in at a critical point of the season and ensured they were not relegated but the question is were Brighton’s expectations at the start of the season reasonable based on what Phillips has achieved?

As a club, Brighton have had huge success on the men’s side based on being very data-lead and that is a crucial context in which to understand Phillips’ sacking. Despite being two points off seventh position in the table, the underlying numbers are pretty damning. Brighton have the worst expected goal difference per 90 of any team in the WSL, averaging -1.26 per match. That is a result of having the worst expected goals allowed and second worst expected goals totals.

They have managed to keep just one clean sheet this season, in a 1-0 win away at Manchester City. If we simulate the potential outcomes from that match given the chances that Brighton gave up, City were more than 95% likely to score at least one goal in that game. They were almost twice as likely to have scored five goals in that match than they were to score zero. It is hard to seriously point to that result as evidence of Phillips improving this side given it was basically luck.

When looking at Brighton’s team profile as a whole, it shows how much they are struggling in almost every area of the pitch. The below radar chart compares them to teams across the world in top divisions and demonstrates how far below average they rank. Phillips is not only a long way off making this Brighton side one that can challenge the top four, she is a long way off making them even average. 

Phillips has also struggled to integrate new players. Pauline Bremer is one of the few summer signings who has played a lot, but has scored just once this season which is hardly surprising given she averages only 3.11 touches in the box per match. Both Tatiana Pinto and Li Mengwen have been in and out of the team. Whilst bringing through a lot of new players is an understandably tough task, the tendency to bring players in and then drop them out makes it feel unsurprising that Brighton have lacked consistency on the pitch.

Given all this, it is hard to argue that Phillips genuinely deserved to stay in her job. Brighton’s rolling xGD/90 has not gone above -1 this entire season and with twelve matches played, there is little to suggest that time alone is going to change that. Squad selections have been inconsistent with new players rotating in and out of the team seemingly at random.

Plenty of women’s teams wait far too long to sack managers, and perhaps that is why this has come as such a surprise. But when you take a look under the bonnet at Brighton, it is hard to find any evidence that Phillips was genuinely going to be able to turn these performances around.