Frida Maanum’s late goal sealed a comfortable victory for Arsenal, their fifth straight in the Women’s Super League, with Brighton suffering their fourth loss of the season.
Maanum finished off Arsenal’s final attack when Cloe Lacasse laid off Alessia Russo’s cross to add to the Gunners lead in the 95h minute.
Caitlin Foord scored her second goal of the season which gave the visitors some breathing room in the 80th minute, when she fired past Sophie Baggaley into the bottom left corner.
Embed from Getty ImagesSpeaking after the game, Brighton manager Melissa Phillips talked about the late goals and result saying her side were “sloppy” in conceding twice late on.
“1-0 is probably a fairer scoreline, 3-0 conceding those goals we’re definitely going to be disappointed by that but definitely can’t knock the determination of the group and there’ll be lessons that we can take from this”.
Stina Blackstenius gave the away side an early lead in the 12th minute of play with her team leading fourth goal of the season, she recovered from an initial miss-kick before putting the ball past Baggaley from inside the box.
The second half was a more evenly contested battle with both sides going end-to-end until Foord’s second goal helped to quiet Brighton before the game was put out of reach with the third goal.
With their win Arsenal picked up their ninth in ten games against Brighton in all competitions and added to an already impressive goal difference of what is now 23-0 in away matches against the Seagulls, the Gunners also closed the gap behind Chelsea to three points.
Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall said post-match “we gave them [Brighton] way too much space in the first half.
“In the second half we clarified which player in our team has time and space and in the second half we did really well in finding those players”
Eidevall praised Beth Mead’s performance noting today was a “huge step in her return to play to start a game and be involved in good goal creating opportunities, it gives us another really important tool”.
