Potter’s magical transformation of Brighton
Graham Potter signed a contract extension until 2025 at the end of November, a mere 6 months after he joined from Swansea. It’s a considerable gesture of faith from the Brighton board who are evidently impressed with the impact that their manager has had already during his short tenure.
Potter’s unorthodox methods off the pitch at Östersunds FK, including the annual tradition of the players completing a cultural project of some description, are well documented but his methods on the pitch are less well-examined. Sunday’s home game against Wolves was a great example of how innovative he is as a tactician as well as a man manager.
Fluidity and versatility are probably the greatest hallmarks of Potter’s work so far in England. At Swansea he showed an ability and a willingness to adjust the shape of his team while adhering to the same general possession-oriented principles that underpin his side’s approach, frequently changing between playing a back 3 or a back 4 depending on the type of system his opposition employed. He also regularly tinkered with the structure of his attack, alternating the type of centre forward he played: Oli McBurnie when he needed more of a physical presence, Dan James when he needed a runner in behind to stretch the game, Nathan Dyer or Wayne Routledge through the middle as a false 9 sometimes. On occasion he paired McBurnie with Courtney Baker-Richardson when he wanted to use a front two.
These ideas were on show in this game against Wolves. Having utilised a more standard narrow 4–4–2 system during the midweek win against Arsenal, with Neal Maupay and Aaron Connolly working in tandem as a hard-running strike partnership, Potter made an interesting switch to help his side deal with the absence of Connolly over the weekend.
Against Wolves, Brighton played with a 4–4–2 diamond shape in possession that dissolved into a 4–3–3 shape out of possession. This in itself isn’t particularly unusual — often with this diamond structure in midfield, the two centre forwards will split to cover the wings, leaving the number 10 as a pseudo-striker when their team doesn’t have the ball.
But Brighton did something a bit different to this and came up with their own interpretation of this shifting shape.
As the right-sided CB, Adam Webster is on the ball, Brighton settle into a standard diamond structure, with the full-backs level with Dale Stephens at the base of the diamond, Mooy and Pröpper staggered as the two wide points, and Pascal Groß at the tip, just behind striker Neal Maupay in this shot.
Groß’s position is the most intriguing part of this as he’s wandered into this central zone from his ostensibly right-sided position. It’s clearer to see this in this next shot where Brighton don’t have the ball.
As Wolves attempt to build from the back, Brighton’s forwards are arranged in a typical front 3, with Trossard on the left, Maupay through the middle, and Groß applying enough pressure on the ball to force Romain Saïss into playing a long ball. Pröpper supports from a slightly deeper position to make a pass into central midfield difficult for the Wolves defenders.
Shortly after, Brighton regain possession and reorient themselves back into the diamond with Groß inside once more:
As Stephens picks up the ball as his team’s 6, the most advanced player for Brighton in view here is Trossard (number 11) which gives a better impression of the centre forward role he’s playing. Trossard makes a darting in-to-out run to the left wing, which he continued to do throughout the first half.
It’s quite an elegant solution to the major problem of playing with a diamond midfield, i.e. defending the wide areas against attacking opposition full-backs. Going with this fluid front 3 shape rather than splitting the strikers makes more sense as it allows more diligent, defensively effective players to cover the flanks and it also enables the most dangerous attacking player to be positioned centrally for any potential counterattacking opportunities that might arise from turnovers.
Brighton’s defensive structure worked well high up the pitch, effectively limiting Wolves’ build-up play…
… but when the visitors did manage to pass their way through the press, the lack of athleticism in the back half of Brighton’s team cost them.
During the build-up to the opening goal, Brighton press man-to-man too aggressively and Adam Webster throws himself into a challenge on the halfway line that he doesn’t win. This leaves Brighton’s structure exposed.
Steven Alzate has to move inside from RB to pressure the ball carrier, which opens up the left channel for Raúl Jiménez to run into. Dale Stephens desperately tries to dash backwards to fill in at CB but he gets tunnel vision with eyes only for the ball and that allows Diogo Jota to peel off round the back of him to apply the finish. Dan Burn on the far side can’t get across in time to block the shot either.
The second goal is easy to write off as an individual error, but it’s one borne of the system that Brighton are trying to play. Stephens drops in between his two CBs to pick up the ball and plays a ball straight into Pröpper, who has his back to goal. The Dutchman plays a blind first time pass round the corner to Alzate but undercooks it. The stray ball is intercepted by Jonny who combines with Jota to punish Brighton. Pröpper tried this pass a few more times throughout the match (to greater success, generally) so it’s clearly an automation that Potter has tried to bake into his team’s build-up play.
It’s quite a useful way of transitioning the ball out to the full-back as the original straight pass by Stephens invites the opposition to press Pröpper and if he can sweep that ball out wide successfully first time, it immediately gets Brighton on the counter. It’s one of those instances where the idea is great but the execution isn’t quite there yet, either because it needs more drilling or because Pröpper isn’t quite technically good enough to pull off this role consistently.
The diamond had its faults in possession too. In theory it made a lot of sense — Wolves’ deep-lying 3–4–3 shape leaves them with two central midfielders so positioning a diamond against them gives your team depth in behind and in front of their CM partnership. It granted Stephens a lot of time on the ball because neither Jota nor Adama particularly want to work hard to close down inside and Groß drifting into central areas let Brighton play 1vs1 up against Wolves’ 3 central defenders.
But they struggled to access Groß in that pocket of space centrally which limited his influence on the game, largely due to Jonny and Matt Doherty’s efforts to support their midfield by narrowing the team’s shape, successfully cutting off forward passing lanes for Dale Stephens and the two Brighton CBs.
Tellingly, Brighton’s opener came from Stephens bypassing the midfield completely with a ping over the top for Maupay to chase:
The second Brighton goal though was aided by the team’s structure. In particular, Trossard’s tendency to drift out to the left from his central starting position made a difference:
The compact midfield diamond allows Brighton to win the ball back in the middle of the park and the close proximity of the central midfielders afforded by that midfield shape enables Pröpper to slide the ball forward to Mooy quickly to get his team on the break. Mooy combines with Trossard down the left wing before lifting the ball back to the penalty spot for Pröpper to nod home. It’s worth noting Groß’s movement during this move — he drifts from the right wing into the number 10 role on the edge of the area, before pushing into the 6-yard box when Mooy gets into the box. With the RB Alzate also supporting the attack from a wider position, these two players drag the Wolves defensive line back towards their own goal, which opens up the space for Pröpper to attack from a deeper starting position:
With 20 mins or so to go, Potter made a double change and took off Trossard and Groß for Murray and Jahanbakhsh. Although there were period where Murray and Maupay would take it in turns covering the left flank, making the shape resemble a 4–3–3, generally they both played quite narrowly with Jahanbakhsh holding his position wide on the right like a traditional winger. The rest of the midfield flattened out, leaving Brighton generally operating in a more orthodox, if slightly asymmetrical, 4–4–2 shape.
Although this looks like a back 5, Jahanbakhsh is just holding a deeper position to encourage the switch of play out to Jonny here. He stationed himself wide on the right side of the midfield 4, whereas Aaron Mooy roamed inside a bit more.
This might seem like a bit of lazy comparison considering that he’s currently flavour of the month and they both managed Swansea, but I think the closest analogue to Graham Potter is Brendan Rodgers — both generally favour a build-from-the-back, dominate-possession style of football, but they’re both adventurous enough to adapt their approach to combat their opponent’s strengths.
Last week against Everton, Rodgers shifted from the 4–3–3 Leicester have regularly used to a 3–5–2 in the middle of a game to exploit the weaknesses of Marco Silva’s 3–4–3 shape.
This weekend, Rodgers himself went with a diamond, dropping regular wingers Harvey Barnes and Ayoze Pérez for Dennis Praet and Kelechi Iheanacho.
Rodgers’ diamond was generally more successful and it’s worth a brief consideration of why that is, beyond the obvious “Leicester have better players” point.
For starters, there’s a major difference between the type of player they were playing at the base of their diamond. Dale Stephens is primarily a ball circulator but, as we saw with his assist on the Maupay goal, he’s not afraid of attempting more expansive passes. His role for Brighton was to completely dominate their build-up, regularly dropping in between Webster and Dunk to initiate his team’s passing moves.
Wilfried Ndidi, meanwhile, is much less aggressively involved in possession than Stephens is. (Schmeichel mostly plays his goal-kicks longer, preferring to clip the ball out wide up to the half-way line rather than passing it short to his CBs, so Leicester’s build-up play is less structured than Brighton’s anyway.)
When Leicester are circulating the ball across their backline, Ndidi sits in front of the defence, providing an option for the CBs that is rarely used. Instead, Jonny Evans and Çağlar Söyüncü attempt to play longer, straighter passes along the floor to the wider midfielders in the diamond.
From there, the wide midfielder (in this case Praet) lays the ball off first time to a forward-facing Ndidi who can either get the team moving forward by slipping it through the middle to Maddison or by switching it out to the full-back on the opposite flank.
So whereas Brighton’s general passing pattern out of the back was in-to-out (Stephens>Pröpper>Alzate), Leicester’s is outside-to-in (Evans>Praet>Ndidi).
Occasionally Ndidi will get the ball in space and he’s assured enough to carry his team forward on the dribble.
In this scenario, his pass into Maddison’s feet isn’t quite good enough and the move breaks down. That’s the danger of having a less of a natural passer at the base but it’s a small price to pay for the defensive cover Ndidi provides and it doesn’t damage Leicester’s build-up much as Evans and Söyüncü are so confident in their ability to reliably progress the ball out of the back.
The other key way that Leicester’s set-up differs from Brighton’s is how much more mobile the front half of Leicester’s team is. Maupay and Trossard aren’t slow but they’re not quick to the same degree as Vardy and Iheanacho are. It’s in the midfield quartets though that it really shows: Stephens/Mooy/Pröpper/Groß is so much less dynamic than Ndidi/Tielemans/Praet/Maddison.
That Leicester four’s ability to get around the pitch so quickly makes them a much better team at winning the ball back and a much more dangerous threat in transition. Vardy’s opening goal against Villa showcases this nicely:
Maddison and Praet are able to trap Wesley and Douglas Luiz against the touchline by closing them down and smothering their passing options. They force the turnover and slide the ball down the line into Iheanacho’s feet, who dribbles inside and plays through Vardy. They used their diamond to execute this squeeze-intercept-break move multiple times against Villa, frequently releasing Vardy to run in behind but having a forward like Iheanacho who is comfortable dropping off the frontline to pick up the ball gives variety to Leicester’s attack.
The extra mobility in midfield also let Leicester utilise some positional rotations to give Villa something different to contend with. Ricardo Pereira and Ben Chilwell played much higher up the pitch than Dan Burn and Steven Alzate did because their greater athleticism doesn’t compromise the team’s shape in the same way it would for Brighton if their full-backs got caught up the pitch.
As a result, Leicester attack through Pereira/Chilwell quite regularly. When those two have the ball wide, the quickness of their midfielders allows them to create problem for the opposition by switching position:
Pereira’s just combined with Praet here who had run ahead of the ball down the right from a deeper starting position and Maddison drops back from the number 10 position to offer a pass inside.
The stylistic similarities between Rodgers and Potter are starting to become more clear. If Potter can get his Brighton team working even half as well as Rodgers’ Leicester are currently, Brighton will be a force to be reckoned with in the coming seasons.
