Brighton away has never been an easy match for Arsenal and this has been a team that seems to always give Arsenal trouble, even if the team has found a way to get all three points.
Fabian Hürzeler seems like a bit of a dick but there is little doubt that he knows a thing or two about coaching and was able to present Arsenal with a number of problems that they struggled to work out a solution to.
I was cautiously optimistic about this but could help but feel like the level of opposition plus coming as the 4th away match in a row that this would be a tough one for Arsenal. It was all that and more as Arsenal suffered their first loss of the season.
Let’s break it down.
Brighton vs Arsenal: The Graphics
Brighton vs Arsenal: The Debrief
11 - Shots for Arsenal in this match, with just 7 from open play, this is the third time this season out of five league matches were Arsenal have failed to take more than 11 shots (Sunderland - 11, Aston Villa - 7)
1.5 - Expected goals for Arsenal, including a Bukayo Saka shot that might have been ruled offside had it been converted
1 - Shot taken by Arsenal in the opening 44’ of this match
Overall in this match, Arsenal did end up creating two very good scoring opportunities but this wasn’t a match where the volume of chances was ever remotely high enough for the game state that Arsenal faced.
At 0-0 it was 4 shots to 1 and 0.2 - 0.02 on xG
At 0-1 it was 4 shots to 2 and 0.17 - 0.42 on xG
At 0-2 it was 2 shots to 1 and 0.25 - 0.17 on xG
While this game was competitive that makes this 10 shots to 4 and 0.61 to 0.61 on expected goals. Down 3 goals at 60 minutes isn’t impossible to come back from, but for this match and the way that Arsenal were playing, it was as good as game over.
One of the areas where I think that Brighton deserve a lot of credit for and was a big part of why I think that they looked superior was that they disrupted Arsenal’s buildup significantly. This was especially the case in the opening period but even later when Arsenal started to get a bit more of a foothold in the match they never were able to create the suffocating control that is the team’s trademark.
Brighton were able to win possession consistently up the field and made Arsenal look incredibly uncomfortable on the ball.
They failed to capitalize on this for creating chances but it created so much of that sense of threat and worry that something bad was going to come for Arsenal.
Jon Mackenzie has a great short video on what Brighton did here that was unique that is worth the two minutes if you haven’t seen it.
Hyper analysis of the goals conceded
0.04 - The expected goals value of the Pascal Gross shot. It was from 27 yards out, from regular play, taken by foot with low pressure but a shot clarity rating of 2.
Here is the full video of the shot and the actions that led up to it.
There isn’t a ton in this for me as a massive defensive mistake by Arsenal. I think that obviously they can do better but on the scale of defensive screw up to attacker good execution, this one falls more towards crediting the attacker.
Brighton’s striker had dropped into midfield and that has thrown off the marking a bit. Gabriel Magalhães was marking Gross but he drops off and looks to just cut out space. Riccardo Calafiori has to be aware of the Yasin Ayari run, and Christos Tzolis has to stay with Ferdi Kadioglu.
That does mean that when the shot happens that there is quite a bit of space for him but it is not exactly a clear look at goal at all here or an “easy” shot.
0.06 - The expected goals value of the Charalampos Kostoulas shot. It was from 28.7 yards out, from regular play following a direct attack, taken by foot with low pressure but a shot clarity rating of 2.
Here is the full video of the shot and the actions that led up to it.
This one comes after Arsenal had a great opportunity to equalize from their own transition. That broke down and Brighton took advantage of the broken play to create a transition of their own. Arsenal do fairly well to not get outnumbered here and they stop them from getting a good look at goal.
When Kostoulas receives, Gabriel looks to support Tzolis on Diego Gómez. Both Declan Rice and Ezri Konsa have the opportunity to apply pressure here but neither really does and he has lots of time and space to face the goal
By the time that he has turned to shoot, both Konsa and Gabriel have gotten into position to block the shot and haven’t given him a clear shooting lane.
His shots splits between them going just over their legs and has enough power to beat Raya’s diving attempt to save it.
Overall, looking at these two shots, they have opportunities where the Arsenal players could have or should have made it tougher on the shooter. I also think about these shots and ask myself, “If this hadn’t been scored, would I be thinking we got away with it?” and I think that the answer is a pretty clear no.
These shots are generally low probability events that do not turn into goals very often. You don’t want to allow shots, you don’t want to allow unpressured shots, but if you have to ones like this are not the worst ones in the world to concede especially if you can get bodies in the way to try and block off the amount of goal that you can aim at.
I have seen some people talk about how the actual xG ratings of these opportunities was underrated. I thought that this was an interesting question so I looked up shots that had similar characteristics and wanted to look at the outcomes there. Here are all of the footed shots taken in the Premier League from 25-29 yards out, with a pressure rating of 1 and a goal clarity of 2 that match the shots that Brighton had here.
The conversion rate here is under 5% and the expected goals rating from my model slightly overrates the actual scoring rate by a bit more than 3%.
I don’t think that this is something where the scouting report would have said that either of these players were sharpshooters that you would sell out to go close down.
We have a larger sample size with Gross and he is rated below average with fairly high confidence.
I don’t have a ton of shots from Kostoulas in my database but what I do have doesn’t show him as an amazing finisher before this shot.
Sometimes players catch it just right and the ball finds the back of the net from a low probability event.
That doesn’t take away that for large stretches of this match, Brighton outplayed Arsenal and forced uncharacteristic mistakes. Arsenal had the right combination of being able to recover and luck that many of those situations weren’t punished that maybe on another day does directly lead to better opportunities but didn’t here.
I think that if you play this match back, more often Brighton come away winners more often than Arsenal, this is also a scoreline that flatters them.
There are things that Arsenal must do better after this match but this is not a “normal” 3-0 scoreline where you think that there are fundamental problems that have been exposed or something that makes you reassess how good of a team Arsenal are.
Bruno Guimarães struggles in first PL start for Arsenal
40 - Pass attempts, 33 passes completed for 82.5% pass completion percentage with a 92.0% pass efficiency compared to expected passing
1 - Final third entry passes completed
0 - Progressive passes completed
-55.4 - Progressive pass distance towards goal, in yards (backward passes subtract)
2 - Forward passes completed
5.0% - Forward passes as a share of every pass he attempted
10 - Defensive third passes attempted
8 - Defensive third passes completed
80.0% - Defensive third pass completion percentage
0 - Progressive carries
-36.9 - Progressive carry distance towards goal, in yards
1 - Possessions lost on the ball
This wasn’t a day that any of the Arsenal midfielders will think that they played well in but I think that Guimarães might come away feeling the worst here. He was handed his first Premier League start with Arsenal and it was coming on the back of an impressive cameo against Sunderland and he did not play at the required level.
It was also surprisingly uncharacteristic where he really struggled to execute any of the passes where he could help Arsenal get up the field and he seemed to wilt under the pressure that Brighton applied.
He’s a much better player than this and I am sure he will show that this is a one off and not a long term issue but it was something that really hurt the team here today.
Do you think this is a kind of blueprint to stifling Arsenal or just Brighton are so good at pressing others won’t be able to do that? And the sort of lack of direct from deep buildup to attack quick strike attack isn’t a big worry. I see flashes of it on and off last few years but this was a game you needed it
I see various comments about arsenals lack of pace on the break and to counter a high press. But Gyokeres is pretty quick. Maybe start him more against teams adopting this tactic and play it long. Arsenal defenders have the technical ability to do this as does Raya.