Roberto De Zerbi - Brighton manager
- Thread starter Bastian
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We are also in a mess. We need a better manager than one who will be totally out of his depth to put us right.
No, we need the people above the manager to be better first and foremost.
They’ve been punching above their weight for a long time now and then add in injuries. I guess this fall off isn’t unexpected.
Also fans judge managers far too soon. Impossible to really know how good De Zerbi is at the moment.
Also fans judge managers far too soon. Impossible to really know how good De Zerbi is at the moment.
If you had swapped them around and Brighton got Ten Hag after Potter and we hired De Zerbi I think we would have sacked De Zerbi by now. Also think ETH would have done fine at Brighton as they are set up for most decent managers to do well.
Didn't this Omar Beradda guy earmark De Zerbi to eventually replace Pep? If he's not that good, maybe we should be worried by his judgment
Why would we have sacked De Zerbi? 14 defeats in 30 games doesn't sack ETH.
He'd have them in the relegation zone playing Milner as the sole pivot and all those injuries at the back.
Well it sure isn't Ten Hag.
De Zerbi 4-0 vs Luton son or Ten Hag 7-0 vs Liverpool daughter
Aye, want him gone as well.
3 wins is 16 is dreadful though, no matter what way you slice it. If you want to revisit this in a month when they've slid down to 12th we can do but their position will only head downwards.
Could say the same thing about ETH and him winning league with Ajax. Now, people will say that it's a tiny league and its easy for Ajax to win that league but they have struggled since he left. I don't have ETH as high as Klopp but I do think he's better than De Zerbi. For a supposed best run club in the league you'd expect them to do better than losing 4-0 against a newly promoted team.
You can't buy that many players in the summer and winter window and pick up a manager some part through the season and expect them to thrive, he was picking his team week to week to see what players suited what positions and what system which should be done in pre season
That too. But if we wish to replace our manager, aim higher
It's not just results, we know he was placed in a difficult situation, no preseason, etc. it's the way he handled himself in the pressers, it was very Moyesy. Look at his thread from that time and the Chelsea fans in there. They had the patience of Buddha himself in the beginning until they just couldn't anymore at the end.
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Am I the only one who thinks he has had shit players to choose from? Injuries have done a job on them.
De Zerbi makes a lot of weird selection decisions and seemingly random rotation even when injuries aren't a factor. Dunk, Van Hecke and Gross are nailed on starters, but beyond that you'd struggle to guess who's playing any given week. That includes the keepers, who have played roughly half the games each.
At a bigger club with more scrutiny, he'd be getting pelters for not having a clue who his best eleven are.
Yes his starting 11 sometimes is a bit strange, that said Welbeck is a starting forward at the club.
It's a bit mad for them to get criticism given their squad is very mediocre and he's punched so far above their weight. People saying only a few wins in their recent league games, yet their only losses since September have been against city, Arsenal and Chelsea. They were always going to struggle with consistency in the league given they have European competitions added into it. Let's see how they do at the end of the season. But I've got nothing but praise for De Zerbi.
It might be one of those that if you rotate earlier in the season, you see the benefits of fresher players later. Ten hag didn't rotate when he had the chance last season, and come April we were dead on our feet. They're in the fa cup and in Europe... Rotation is needed.
Tonight was a shocker but I'd expect them to respond and beat Palace so that would be 35 points and probably only a point or two off 6th which would be another magnificent achievement for them.
Did people expect them to get top 4 or something? They're still in FA cup and last 16 of europa having won a tricky group.
Something, something, pretty much sums him up.
They’ll probably finish the week in 10th and their squad is better than that.
The question of him being a streaky manager will be there until he shows more consistency. I actually enjoy watching his Brighton team play, but I wouldn’t want to see it at United, because he just doesn’t seem capable of setting up a defence and that has been the downfall of so many managers at big clubs.
Funny enough I think Farioli from Nice is a better De Zerbi. He plays good football but his system has a strong core and isn’t easily penetrable.
It's not about where they'll be now but where they'll finish the season. They are top half of the league, in the fa cup and the Europa League. Their squad is not a squad on par with city, Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, United, Chelsea, I would say not even villa, Newcastle, or west Ham. They're doing a lot, with very little.
More than anything, the coaching impact is evident of implementing his system very well with them, where they dominate games pretty well. Their underlying stats are good, and were very good last year too.
I haven't watched Nice. But they've scored 20 goals in 19 games... Can't be that exciting football if they've scored 1 goal per game after half a season.
Last time there was talk of him for Utd job he dropped that 6-1 defeat at Villa. Seems to be a curse on his team when that happens
Ye that’s true. All the managers that have been going through phases and people wanted them here. Emery is another one but they’ve seemed to lost the way a little bit.
A lot can be said about a man who values his punctuation.
I’d go easy on him considering he’s already beaten football
Their squad with the injuries and players sold last summer is that of a 12th place team though. Lallana, Welbeck, Milner and Gilmour are regular starters they should be relegation fodder
It’s been a bad season for Brighton squad wise they don’t have the depth to compete in the PL and Europa. Bad patch of form but sitting 8th they should be delighted
We automatically assume he is a world class manager because of his name. If his name was Mark Tenner this thread wouldn't even exist.
It's not impossible at all?
He's massively, massively overrated on this forum. He just had that honeymoon period most managers - including our own - get before their style of play ossifies, people work them out, injuries hit and players minds start to wander elsewhere.
Are there still people in this thread who want him to be our next manager? The only reason anyone thinks he's better than Graham Potter - on whose work de Zerbi has danced on the grave of - is that his name is a lot more exotic.
Hardly anyone assumes that De Zerbi is a world class manager, to be fair. Same went for his predecessor, who had built up a fairly sound reputation in his own right without an exotic-sounding name. There are only three active world class managers in football: Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp, Carlo Ancelotti. Maybe Diego Simeone, who flirts with the highest tier and does more with less. Everyone else has something to prove, including European Cup winners or multiple league championship holders like Thomas Tuchel, José Mourinho, Luis Enrique, Hansi Flick, Massimiliano Allegri, Antonio Conte — as well as the developing cohort of Mikel Arteta, Julian Nagelsmann, Simone Inzaghi, Xabi Alonso, Rúben Amorim, Míchel (De Zerbi might qualify for the tail end of this category, depending on who you ask).
But there is a general agreement that he is someone with a clear framework in mind and innovative approaches to the game, and coached Sassuolo, Shakhtar Donetsk and Brighton & Hove to a good level, with them playing a mostly eyecatching brand of football to boot and his current team semi-frequently taking the game to “bigger” outfits in the Premier League over the last 18 months or so (this includes defeats of Arsenal at the Emirates (in the league and in the FA Cup), Liverpool at home (in the league and in the FA Cup), Tottenham at home, United at Old Trafford (twice, sadly)).
The likes of Zdeněk Zeman, Jorge Sampaoli, Quique Setién and Juanma Lillo, among others, were innovators as well, and folk often wondered how they would fare at the biggest of clubs (Setién even got the chance to manage Barcelona), but ultimately not part of the elite class of managers at European club level (which is the tried-and-tested barometer of greatness in contemporary football). Whether De Zerbi conclusively belongs to a similar-ish category or is capable of earnestly ascending to a much higher level remains to be seen given his age profile and career trajectory — that is the exciting and encouraging part for certain posters, I suppose (and perhaps they get carried away in their excited state?)
There's an element of truth in this and the logic can be applied to David Moyes and Ten Hag
He seems to have one thing in common with ETH in that when things don’t go well on a particular day, it can get very very ugly. 4-0 at Luton and 6-1 at Villa are both horrific results which you don’t want to see at any club.
There's zero logic to it. People were also overrating Potter when he was there. He's not exactly an exotic name. It's some weird anti-British rhetoric that some like to pretend exists.
De Zerbi looks a good coach but he's having an absolutely horrible run. How good is he? Who knows, but he's shown he can play a good brand of football and has generally done well with Brighton. Do some overrate him? Sure, because that's the nature of the forum. People tend to overrate a hell of a-lot on here.
As for Moyes and ETH: Most think ETH done relatively well last season and is doing absolutely terrible this time around. Moyes was awful during his time here but he's a good PL manager for a certain level. However, there's a reason why fans of any top club would riot if he were appointed as manager.
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He is a tad overrated. I'm still unconvinced his level is superior to Porter's.
Didn't even realize their league form was that bad. 3 wins in 16 is shocking, injuries or not. They started the season really well with 5 wins in 6 which is the only reason they're still top half. If they don't improve their form it won't be long till they're battling for 11th-14th.
Though it has to be said lots of teams struggle with the introduction of European football into the fixture calendar.
Though it has to be said lots of teams struggle with the introduction of European football into the fixture calendar.
I don't think there squad is very good though. When you see their starting XI most weeks, it's full of quite a number of average players.