Leandro Trossard’s 2022-23 Season

Leandro Trossard’s 2022-23 Season

Few Premier League campaigns have been split so dramatically down the middle as Leandro Trossard’s 2022-23 season. The Belgian forward began the year as one of Brighton & Hove Albion’s most productive attackers, weathered a mid-season fallout with his manager, and ended it as a Premier League title challenger at Arsenal. Along the way he authored one of the individual highlights of the entire season with a hat-trick at Anfield, and he closed the campaign as a key contributor to Mikel Arteta’s chase for the top of the table.

A Fast Start Under New Management

Trossard entered the 2022-23 season as an established figure on the south coast, having joined Brighton from Genk back in 2019. The opening weeks brought upheaval, as Graham Potter departed for Chelsea in September and Roberto De Zerbi arrived to reshape the team around quick, possession-based football. Trossard adapted almost immediately. Across his first seven league matches he produced seven goal contributions, combining five goals with two assists, and he settled into De Zerbi’s front line as a central figure in a Brighton side that was suddenly playing some of the most eye-catching football in the division.

History at Anfield

The signature moment of Trossard’s autumn arrived on October 1, 2022, in just De Zerbi’s second match in charge. Brighton traveled to Anfield and left with a 3-3 draw, secured by a Trossard hat-trick that included two well-taken finishes and a close-range tap-in from a Kaoru Mitoma cross. It made him the first Brighton player to score a Premier League hat-trick, and only the third visiting player to manage the feat at Anfield, a list untouched since Andrei Arshavin’s four-goal display there in 2009. The result turned the Belgian into one of the most talked-about attackers in the country heading into winter.

International Interlude

That form did not translate into regular minutes for Belgium at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Despite his club form, Trossard was restricted to substitute appearances against Canada and Morocco before starting the group finale against Croatia, playing only a limited number of minutes under manager Roberto Martinez. Belgium’s golden generation exited at the group stage, and Trossard returned to Brighton with a point to prove domestically.

A Contentious Exit from Brighton

By January, relations between Trossard and De Zerbi had cooled considerably, and reports emerged that the forward wanted to leave amid a breakdown in their working relationship. He finished his Brighton portion of the season having scored seven goals and added three assists in sixteen Premier League appearances, numbers that reflected genuine quality even as his final weeks at the club grew increasingly uneasy. The stage was set for a January exit that would reshape the second half of his season entirely.

New Start at Arsenal

Arsenal moved decisively once a deal for Mykhailo Mudryk fell through to Chelsea, and on January 20, 2023, the club confirmed the signing of Leandro Trossard from Brighton for an initial £20 million, rising to £27 million with add-ons. He put pen to paper on a four-and-a-half-year contract and made his debut just two days later, coming on against Manchester United in a 1-0 defeat at the Emirates Stadium. The move was reported as Arsenal’s response to missing out on their primary transfer target, and Trossard was signed specifically to add depth for a genuine title challenge.

Trossard’s most memorable moment in an Arsenal shirt during the 2022-23 season arrived on March 12, when he set up all three goals in a 3-0 win away at Fulham, becoming the first player in Premier League history to record a hat-trick of assists in the first half of an away match. It was a performance that crystallized why Arsenal had prioritized his signing, offering Arteta a versatile forward capable of playing across the front line and unlocking matches with clever movement and delivery. Across all competitions for Arsenal that season, Trossard made twenty appearances, scoring once and providing ten assists, numbers that made him one of the most efficient creative outlets available to Arteta despite arriving only midway through the campaign.

Arsenal held an eight-point lead at the top of the table as late as early April, with Trossard a regular fixture in the squad during that surge. A stumble over the closing weeks allowed Manchester City to overhaul the advantage, and Arsenal ultimately finished second, four points adrift of the champions. It was a painful ending to a title bid that Trossard’s arrival had helped sustain through the winter and early spring.

Legacy of a Season Split Between Two Clubs

Taken as a whole, Trossard’s 2022-23 season stands as one of the most unusual in recent Premier League memory: a Brighton hat-trick against Liverpool, a World Cup spent largely on the bench, an acrimonious departure from the south coast, and a title-race cameo in Arsenal red and white. Few players experience such contrasting halves of one campaign, yet Trossard’s underlying quality, whether at the Amex or the Emirates, remained constant throughout. That consistency became the foundation for the larger role he would later play at Arsenal, but it was the 2022-23 season that first proved he belonged on the biggest stages in English football.