Brighton with a very good start of the season faced against Arsenal who’s starting to pick up their form, arriving to the Amex stadium with 3 wins in a row. This piece will focus on Brighton’s setup in possession and how they gained positional advantage over Arsenal’s 4–2–3–1.
Positional advantage is one of the key elements when talking about Brighton. They don’t have players that can attain significant advantage in 1vs1 situations. However, by effectively pinning / standing in between opponents, moving from their original position to create gaps in the defensive structure, they progress up the field, trapping opponents in their own half in the end.
Personnel is another interesting factor to look into. With key players such as Bissouma, Welbeck, and Webster out, Graham Potter is forced to change his team’s structure week in week out. Although Brighton’s structure out of possession won’t be discussed further in detail in this piece, it’s usually more adaptive than their structure in possession so I will try to cover that in the future post (hopefully).
3–1–5–1 Set Up
They tried using Groß beside Lallana forming a 2 DM against Crystal Palace a week before facing Arsenal, yet quickly changed to 4–3–1–2 by bringing Alzate in for Burn, primarily due to their pressing not working as well with opponent’s FB overlapping while WG pinned Brighton’s WB. Therefore, it was debatable whether they would play with a 3–4–3 again with Lallana / GroB as the 2 DMs, Moder as one of the 3 FWs alongside Maupay as CF and Trossard on the right.
What Potter prepared was something different which I like to call it a 3–1–5–1. Some say it’s a 3-diamond-3 or 3–1–3–3 or 3–3–3–1 but there’s not much difference between all and it pretty much depends on how the person watching interprets the midfield and the structure up front.
Down below are animation and thread I put out showing how it worked in previous matches. This tends to be a very attacking system with only 4 players (3 CB + 1 DM) in the back. Moreover, with Bissouma out, it was concerning whether Lallana could manage such a big space around him.
Progression
When playing out from the back including the GK, Brighton formed a back 4 with GK and 3 CB. It’s a rare shape across the Premier League but Brighton tends to use it a lot. With Sanchez and Dunk being very skilled at passes in between the lines, they were able to progress quickly by using the numerical advantage in the middle. When Arsenal players chose to press the back 4 which they did in many cases, Brighton would easily get away with Lallana providing support for the ball holder and laying it off to a free CB. CM would drop off as well, providing aditional support for emergencies.
As highlighted in the animation as well, one of the positives using 3–1–5–1 against a defensive structure with back 4 and midfield 4 is that the attacking team can place every player through opponent’s gaps from their initial position.
Once the opponents press Brighton’s CB, the gap will open even more, freeing up player in the middle. For example, if Arsenal left WG were to press Duffy, it would open the gap between him and Thomas, eventually opening up Gross positioned in between the two. CM (Moder / Groß)’s movement to flow in between the WB and CB came very handy in a lot of situations to use this kind of gap in between opponent’s WG and DM.
In addition, these movements by the CM (not only lateraly but also vertically) attracted Arsenal’s DM, opening up big space in the center for others to receive in between the lines and accelerate from there.
It is also worth noting that these movements become possible all because of the WBs (Cucurella / Veltman) on both sides positioning very deep to pin Arsenal’s FB. By doing so, they can’t step out to press Brighton’s CM trying to receive in space. This was one of the problems in the 2nd half against Crystal Palace with nobody positioning or attacking deep areas on the right-hand side. These details all relate to the positional advantage; by taking a position, a more advantageous situations are created for the team. The deep & wide WBs will also provide a key role in chance creation which I will touch later on.
With the CBs being capable of driving forward in space, Brighton was able to progress easily when Arsenal’s WG decided to mark the WB (shown in the animation as well).
Simple Formula for Chance Creation
There’s a way that Brighton always creates chances which is to attack the gap between opponent’s FB-CB. The beauty of it is that there’s so many ways Brighton tries to exploit this gap, from simple patterns such as CMs running straightforward to complicated ones like DM combining through to attack the gap as 3rd man. Some examples are down below,
See how the WB is always positioning very deep which attracts the FB, opening up the gap for others to attack. Furthermore, the combination play is developed by a player supporting the ball holder laterally. Trossard and Maupay were the ones who was responsible for providing this support in many cases.
These chance creation methods are seen across a lot of teams all over the world, but Brighton tend to have an empahsis on attacking this gap more than any other team, a similar team being Manchester City. This formula to create chances, attacking gaps between opponent FB — CB and providing lateral support for the ball holder seems simple but yet is so effective to progress into the final 3rd.
These were the reasons behind why Brighton managed to dominate in possession and created a lot of chances against Arsenal, resulting in over twice as many shot attempts. It’s always enjoyable to watch small scale clubs maximizing their limited resource and competing against big clubs.
(First time writing about match analysis in a long time but hope you enjoyed!)
