23 min van de Donk wins a corner for Arsenal, who are in complete control of this match. Nothing comes of it.
20 min After a neat move down the left involving Little, van de Donk and Veje, McCabe’s close-range shot is blocked desperately by Fern Whelan.
13 min It’s been a comfortable start for Arsenal, who are controlling the pace of the game and lead through Vivianne Miedema’s howitzer.
10 min: Evans hits the bar! That was a strange incident. She slid to keep an overhit pass in play and lifted a cross from the byline that swerved slightly and hit the face of the crossbar.
10 min A Brighton free-kick on the left leads to a bit of a scramble in the Arsenal area, until eventually van Veenendaal falls on the ball.
It was all her own work. She won possession 25 yards from goal, looked up and hit a vicious shot that went through the hands of Hourihan, hit the underside of the bar and bounced down into the net. It was too hot for the keeper.
Updated
2 min An early chance for Beth Mead! She started the move with a nice through ball down the inside-left channel for Miedema. She angled a precise return pass into the path of Mead, who took the shot first time from 15 yards but shanked it across the area.
Joe Montemurro looks very relaxed. He has the posture of a man sitting in the park watching his Golden Retriever have a mad five minutes.
This is the first WSL game to be played at the Amex Stadium, and the crowd is in the thousands rather than hundreds.
Updated
Here’s the Arsenal manager Joe Montemurro “We’re pretty relaxed, actually. Our preparation has been good and it’s just another game for us. I’m really proud of what the players have achieved this season. We’ve created a fantastic base to sustain a long-term plan and way of playing. It’s very important that we win the trophies, but the big thing for me is sustainability.”
Team news
Brighton (4-3-3) Hourihan; Williams, Buet, F Whelan, Gibbons; Barton, Simpkins, Connolly; A Whelan, Green, Natkiel.
Substitutes: Hartley, Roe, Rafferty, Peplow, Nilden, Brazil, Umotong.
Arsenal (4-2-3-1) van Veenendal; Evans, Williamson, Quinn, Veje; Bloodworth, Little; McCabe, van de Donk, Mead; Miedema.
Substitutes: Harper, Arnth, Schnaderbeck, Mitchell, Kemme, Carter.
Referee Lucy Oliver.
Updated
Preamble
Good morning. What comes next in this sequence: 3, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3? We don’t know yet, but it’ll be either 1 or 2. Those are Arsenal’s league positions in the WSL since they last won the title in 2012. For a club like Arsenal, who won the league 14 times between 1993 and 2012, seven years without a title is an ocean of time.
It should end today. A win over Brighton at the Amex Stadium would seal the title. If not, they have another chance in their final game of the season on 11 May. But there’s a but. That final game is against their title rivals Manchester City, so anything other than victory would expose Arsenal to a title decider in two weeks’ time. (That’s assuming City beat Yeovil this afternoon, which they will.)
Human beings, as the former England cricket captain Mike Brearley observed, are wont to postpone the moment of performance whenever possible. But it would not be advisable for Arsenal to do so. They deserve to be champions for their remorseless form – 16 wins, no draws, two defeats – and will be desperate to clinch it today so that they can celebrate accordingly. After all, they’ve been waiting seven years to do so.
Kick off is at 12.15pm.