It was a grey and misty Sunday afternoon as Leicester City were the visitors to the Broadfield Stadium. The word ‘grey’ could so often have been used to describe the Albion’s home form in recent years, but not so thus far, as Brighton are now three wins from three in Crawley and are still undefeated including our single game at the Amex. We have to be happy with that, even if this wasn’t quite the same attacking performance that has seen us score four in both prior games at the Broadfield this season.

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You can read the full match report courtesy of Charlie Hanson on the BHAFC website HERE, and if you’d like to watch the highlights you can head over to the official WSL YouTube channel HERE.

After positive feedback on the name, here are my thoughts on the game, agree or disagree in…

The SheGulls Summary

Brighton & Hove Albion

• This game was a difficult one to assess because I thought the team played well, though not anywhere near their potential, which made it difficult to have an overarching opinion one way or the other.
• This is down in part to how we deal with teams who want to sit in a low block and counter attack us. Leicester are not an attacking force, they’ve scored just two goals in six games, with their best forwards injured at the moment. Clearly their game plan was to hit us on the break, and I think, being slightly wary of that, we perhaps weren’t as aggressive as we could have been.
• We had 16 shots, which arguably shows how dominant we were in the Leicester half, but just 3 on target probably sums the game up. Their defence was excellent, but equally we were a little toothless when it came to creating real cast iron chances to score.
• Even the goal came from a ball that ping-ponged around the box until Madison Haley got the ball wide to Jorelyn Carabali whose cross was deflected towards the head of Nikita Parris who nodded home from close range. It wasn’t beautiful, but it did the job.
• I thought Haley was excellent all game. What impresses me most about her is she just has that willpower, that drive to be involved, provide her teammates with an option, recover the ball and move forward. I’m not sure her best position is out on the right, but she was excellent there yesterday afternoon.
• The defence was solid for the most part, only having a minor wobble towards the end of the game when it had started to become clear that we were going to have to hold on to a 1-0 lead.
• Dario brought in Rachel McLauchlan at right wing-back and Marisa Olislagers dropped back to form a three in the centre replacing Maria Thorisdottir. Effectively this meant if Poppy Pattinson pushed forward at left wing-back, McLauchlan could drop into a four as the right-back with Olislagers becoming the left-back. Equally if McLauchlan went forward, Pattinson could drop in at left-back and Carabali could shift to the right to also form a four when required. Not only was the positional flexibility a useful tool, but it gave us more pace in defence to deal with the Leicester counter attacks as well as freeing up our wide players to get further forward.
• It is perhaps further forward where we could do with some of that positional dexterity as Parris felt quite isolated up front at times, particularly in the second half when Leicester were a little higher up the pitch.
• Couple of penalty shouts I’ll weigh in on – we’ll come to the referee later. 1) Haley on 84 minutes – from my angle it looked like Sophie Howard cut across her run and body checked her. Unfortunately the only angle I can find is one where it is impossible to tell how big the impact was, and how much Howard cut across Haley to block her. One thing to consider, Howard in my opinion makes no attempt to play the ball. 2) Guro Bergsvand on 98 minutes – would have been harsh as not only is Guro falling, but it’s also hit from point blank range. You’ve seen them given, but IMHO not a penalty.
• I’ll keep saying it – we won one single home game last season. Even that was against a team that was relegated with just six points to their name AND we needed a goal in stoppage time to do it. This season we have won all three of our games at Broadfield and we have 13 points after just 6 games. For context last year it took us until the 3rd of March and 15 games to eclipse that amount of points. We are good, we can be even better, and you bet I’m here for it.

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Leicester City

• I feel a little bit sorry for Leicester. Not only were they without Lena Petermann and Jutta Rantala, two of their most potent goalscoring threats, but another of their top forwards, recent signing Noemie Mouchon, fell victim to the dreaded ACL curse just last week.
• Their defence was resolute and they still concede on average less than a goal a game, so whilst the attack was lacking they are clearly talented at the back, perhaps Howard being the pick of the bunch.
• As if they needed another injury, Sam Tierney was stretchered off in the second-half with what appeared to be an ankle issue. Hopefully it’s not too serious, we’re a football family in the women’s game as I always say, and nobody likes to see any player get injured.

Other Business

• We were fortunate enough to be granted a table in the Fanzone area prior to the match in order to promote SheGulls by handing out flyers, song-sheets, posters, stickers, and a few other goodies I had tucked away. Claire and I headed up the welcoming committee and we were generally blown away by how many people came and said hello, took some items away with them and stayed to talk about the Albion and SheGulls in equal measure. What made us equally proud was how many people who came up to us and said they followed us on Twitter (X), Instagram (cheers Steve), Facebook – and listened to the Podcast! It was great to see so many kids there as well and hopefully whether it was with an annual, a stick of rock, or some women’s football cards, they all went away with a smile on their face too – helping to build a younger generation of supporters is so important to us!
• The crowd topped out at just over 2,000 which I found a tiny bit disappointing. I know it was a dreary Sunday and ‘only’ Leicester, but I had hoped for a boost off of the Manchester United game. Just a reminder that we all need to continue to work hard to get more folks along to see what is now a very promising team to support.
• I don’t think the referee made any absolute clangers, but once again I couldn’t help but come away feeling that the officiating was very inconsistent. A shove was a shoulder barge one minute, a foul the next. He’d call three or four niggly fouls in a row then start letting them go. I just don’t agree with fluctuating degrees of stringency throughout a game.

I won’t be there Friday night for logistical reasons, but it promises to be an intriguing game. Hopefully those that travel have an awesome time and I would encourage everyone to check out this incredible Arsenal away guide courtesy of Alice from Her Game Too HERE.

For more in depth discussion please do check out the SheGulls Podcast, recording Tuesday for release Wed/Thurs, where Duncan, Ben and Claire will dissect the good, the bad, and the rest from Sunday and look ahead to Friday – available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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