Brighton & Hove Albion head coach Melissa Phillips says that the initial aim this season is to be more competitive.
Since finishing in sixth place in the Barclays Women’s Super League table in 2020/2021, the club have failed to reach similar heights. The Seagulls have spent the last two seasons in the bottom half of table. Last season saw four different managers and coaches take charge of the club while only relegated Reading finished in a lower league position.
Brighton & Hove Albion have a long-term strategy for becoming a top-four club, however, head coach Phillips says that the next step is to simply become more competitive week-on-week.
“The ambition is very clear,” Phillips said when speaking in a recent WSL media session. “I think that’s what brought me into the club and what brought a lot of the key signings this summer is that we want to be a top-four club, that’s the ambition.
“We understand that you don’t go from the bottom of the mountain to the top in one step, so this is phase one, being much more competitive in the league.
“Of course, I’ll have to get them organised on the pitch. When you look at the goals scored and conceded last year, we were amongst the top in terms of expected goals and conversion rate, but we conceded 63 goals. It’s about making sure on both sides of the ball we become a bit better, so that we’re limiting opposition chances and we’re also a bit more resolute out of possession.”
All-but-one of Brighton & Hove Albion’s 11 summer signings have previously won a league title. Phillips said that it was important to bring players with experience of winning to the club this summer.
She said “I think in sharing ambition, at some point in the process, the player had to say ‘I want to win’ or had shown their experiences of winning. That’s always going to be important but what we really actually looked for was just senior professionals with good experiences.
“We have a lot of young, really capable English talent within the squad who need good leadership to run in the right direction of what it means to really be a professional, especially as the league has grown in England. It’s easy to say ‘I want to be a professional footballer’ but the sacrifice and the commitment that it actually takes to be a professional at the top was really important. We have players who understand that and respect it.”
Brighton & Hove Albion kick-off the new Barclays Women’s Super League season with a fixture at Everton next Sunday.