Formed by Hammers supporters Jack Elderton and Callum Goodall to offer their fellow fans in-depth but accessible analysis of their team and its players, Analytics United use performance analysis and data to examine how West Ham United and Brighton & Hove Albion could shape up…
Brighton & Hove Albion are a club often lauded for their off-pitch operations, with the ownership team focused on using data to drive strategy in both player and manager recruitment to create an improved level of sustainability in the club’s long-term performance. And with the appointment of young German manager Fabian Hürzeler, who has the club comfortably in the top half of the Premier League on 24 points, they’ve stayed true to form.
Often, the advent of new management can lead to an accepted period of adjustment as lots of factors change, but as the Brighton ownership team strategise from the top-down based on data-driven research to align coaches and player profiles, the Seagulls’ playing squad has certainly benefited from there being a level of continuity between what Hürzeler wants his team to do and what his predecessors, particularly Roberto De Zerbi, were trying to achieve across their respective tenures.
De Zerbi quickly become well known in the Premier League for his team's signature automatisms, with it being commonplace to see Lewis Dunk or Adam Webster with their studs on the ball, static, waiting for the opposition to press before initiating a set-play-like series of passes that allowed the team to progress the ball through the centre of the pitch at speed. These sequences are still a part of how Brighton look to circulate and progress play, and this season they've maintained their progressive edge, ranking as the fifth-most efficient progressive passing team in the league with over 8.5% of their passes moving them forward.
They achieve this efficiency by creating a tight-knit back-three with the goalkeeper and two centre-backs, and bringing their double-pivot towards the base three but maintaining close horizontal proximity to each other. This reduces the distances between the players involved in build-up, meaning Brighton can use this group to bait the opposition press forward whilst playing quick sideways passes facilitated by this proximity. Then, the receiver can look to play into the pivot, who can also make use of their shorter lateral distances to achieve the familiar third-man combinations to quickly play out into the middle third.
One key change is that the Seagulls are certainly less dogmatic than they once were, and, maybe in light of some goal-causing turnovers in their 1-3 defeat to Fulham, Hürzeler has introduced some more pragmatic tactical elements that allow the team to subvert opposition pressure directly and in fewer passes. Under De Zerbi Brighton rarely looked to play longer balls, with passes over 30 yards making up just 8.6% of their total passes, whereas this season there’s been a distinct jump to over 12%, suggesting Brighton are much more comfortable making use of long, direct passes than they were last season.
To enable this, Hürzeler instructs his wingers to stay high and wide, whilst his front two, most recently João Pedro and Georginio Rutter, are given licence to drop off into midfield, creating a dilemma for opposition centre-backs and pivot players in terms of who to mark. For more reserved teams, this can lead to a free man in midfield for Brighton, but with more aggressive teams that will ask their centre-backs to follow players into midfield, this can create gaps in the defensive line that can be exploited by out-to-in runs from the wingers. Both Bart Verbruggen and Jan Paul van Hecke excel at playing longer passes that travel in behind defences, with the former having the fifth-best long pass success rate among Premier League goalkeepers this season and the latter ranking in the top 12% of Premier League centre-backs for his long pass completion rate.
Without the ball, Brighton are well within the group of the league's most aggressive teams and currently rank ahead of Arsenal and Liverpool for press intensity. Rarely are the opposition afforded the luxury of time on the ball in ‘safe’ territory, with Hürzeler’s team ranking fourth-lowest for the number of touches they allow per attempted tackle in the deepest and middle third, restricting the opposition to an average of just 36.2 before a Brighton player attempts to intervene.
The signings of Rutter from Leeds and Yankuba Minteh from Newcastle may have been made with this in mind, as both ranked in the top 10% of their positional peers across Europe for attempted attacking third tackles for their previous clubs last season. But the most notable introduction has been that of Carlos Baleba, a young Cameroonian midfielder who combines press resistance with reliable passing and monstrous levels of defensive coverage in the centre of the park. He’s more than capable of making jumps to support the press, ranking in the top 8% of Premier League midfielders for attacking third tackles, and then also disrupting and controlling the midfield, placing in the top 4% for ball recoveries and interceptions.
Whilst Brighton are an intense out-of-possession outfit, there are some weaknesses when it comes to one-on-one duelling. In the air Brighton have tended to battle well, averaging the fourth-highest aerial duel success rate in the league (52.4%), but their struggles come when forced into ground duels with Brighton only ahead of relegation-threatened Southampton at a concerningly low 45.4%. At the individual level, the Seagulls have a reliable core of Dunk, Baleba, van Hecke and Yasin Ayari in the middle, all of whom average above 55%, but in the wide areas of defence, Pervis Estupiñán (50%), Ferdi Kadıoğlu (40%) and Joël Veltman (44.1%) all struggle.
This is a tough game against a good side wounded by a 1-3 home defeat to rivals Crystal Palace in their last fixture and if Julen Lopetegui’s team want to come out on top, they must look to make use of the dribbling talent of Jarrod Bowen and Mohammed Kudus to exploit potential mismatches in the wide areas – both wingers are ranked in the top 6% of Premier League wingers for successful take-ons per 90 this season. With returning German striker Niclas Fullkrüg and dangerous box-crashers like Tomáš Souček and Lucas Paquetá to aim for in the penalty area, these space-creating dribbles could open opportunities to cross or shoot with defenders retreating to protect against those threats.
*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Analytics United and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of West Ham United.
