He will be top coach if he works under a competent DoF. Makes little sense to bring him in to United now. But I do rate him at least on the same level as ETH.
Roberto De Zerbi
- Thread starter Bastian
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
Lets see if he can win something with Brighton first.
Praise is given out too soon these days, loads of clubs have a good 6-12 months and have nothing to show for it at the end.
Brighton and Spurs are the current feel good teams, enjoy it while it lasts.
Praise is given out too soon these days, loads of clubs have a good 6-12 months and have nothing to show for it at the end.
Brighton and Spurs are the current feel good teams, enjoy it while it lasts.
It took Klopp almost 3 years at both clubs to sort out the inherited mess and get the team consistently playing to his vision.
Klopps first 3 seasons at Dortmund he finished 6th, 5th and 1st and 8th, 4th and 4th with Liverpool.
ETH has had 15 months and still relying on inherited dog shit players and a total mess behind the scenes.
He's Italian Graham Potter at the moment who has inherited a great set up.
It's funny that ten Hag also did very well in a great set up at Ajax and now that has been removed Ajax nor Hag are really doing too well.
Potter was getting similar plaudits but when he went to the mess that is Chelsea he crumbled.
I think Brighton are far better since they replaced Potter with him, so Italian Graham Potter is not really true IMO.
I agree that having a great setup above the manager is key, obviously.
EtH did great at Ajax, but winning the league with Ajax is as easy as with Celtic, Bayern or PSG. Not that hard to win it when you spend twice more than the second team. De Boer won 4 leagues in a row there, and he turned out to be a useless manager.
The eighth was taking the club in mid-season.
His first full season in charge they got fourth, but also reached Europa final. On his second full season they got 4th but also reached UCL final.
October is not mid season.
Its all about the setup. I rate De Zerbi but someone like Eddie Howe would do really well there too. Everything from their scouting, recruitment strategy and ownership is what drives their success.
De Zerbi isn't a miracle worker, but unlike our manager he's given the proper environment to succeed.
De Zerbi isn't a miracle worker, but unlike our manager he's given the proper environment to succeed.
No summer transfer window, no pre season. It’s in the middle of a season.
We've spent a lot of money too but barely been better than many other teams. It's not just about spending, you have to have a well-run club.
Why has de Zerbi not done much of note prior to Brighton? He didn't win the league with Shakhtar
I disagree to an extent. He’s got players who have played a large part of their career in the lower leagues like Jason Steele, Dunk, Webster, Van De Hecke, Gross and March playing brilliant progressive football. Potter was good, but De Zerbi has taken it to another level.
That side he played yesterday was basically their second string. And they dominated us.
He took them over shortly after the start of the season.
October is not mid season.
They had already played 8 premier league games when Klopp took over. The season was well underway. I definitely wouldn’t call that the start of the season. It’s in the middle of the season.
Also why was ten Hag just minutes away from a champions league final with Ajax against teams who have a far greater budget than them?
If he came to united, I reckon he has same issues as Eth.
He will want to play out the back. But then he looks at his CB options.
Then sorta see some of the choices in midfield and attack who are on high wages who he will probably be under instructions to play which will compromise what he wants.
He has someone who is fully backing him at a lower level properly
Because Russia invaded Ukraine and the season was not finished (Shaktar was on the first place when the season was cut short).
He is also just 44. Before joining Shakhtar he was 41 coaching low-table Italian teams. Not many managers do much at that age. For example, at 44, EtH was managing Bayern Munich II. And at 42 (same age De Zerbi was coaching Shaktart), ETH was coaching Go Ahead Eagles.
Inzaghi reached a final to be fair. Jardim with Monaco reached a semi eliminating City in the process. Nagelsmann with Red Bull reached a semi too. So yep, many managers reach semis with clubs who have no right being there. Usually, those being one offs.
For example, after reaching semis, in the next two seasons, Ajax wasn’t able to pass the group stage. And the season after that, got eliminated from the mighty Benfica in the first KO stage. Don’t get me wrong, that season was a great one from Ajax, but it looked more an one off rather than something consistent. While I agree that it is hard to do as well consistently unless you are at a top club, a one good season also does not mean that much.
What he is doing with Brighton now, is maybe comparable to what Ten Hag did with Utrecht in terms of relative competition and relative means. Back then, it was dtill a surpsise for many that Ten Hag got the Ajax gig, as everybody knows it’s a different kettle of fish working with a smaller team with fewer competitions and lower expectancies. Not worse, just different. Many very good coaches do things comparable to Ten Hag at Utrecht and De Zerbi at Sassuolo or Brighton. Just a few of them makes the next step like Ten Hag did with Ajax. Trying to breath life into a tormented giant is another step altogether. Ferguson took six years, remember.
Ten Hag was the best bet in a decade for someone able to do it, and young coaches like Eddie Howe, Graham Potter and DeZerbi have much to learn to be able to deal with the array of self destructive processes affecting Man Utd now (ownership, primadonnas at high salaries, culture issues, spoilt and split fan base, international media scrutiny, the ‘everybody-loves-to-revel-in-the-fall-of-giants’-effect met among football media, FA, referees, other fans etc.
Good, promising managers like Postecoglu or experienced guys like Pochettino would turn graybin a matter of months at this club.
Should that really be the test for a manager at a club like Brighton? You're not really a success if you can't win a trophy?
While you are right that one golden underdog season in the CL doesn not guarantee later success, the correct thing would maybe be to say that there is nothing you can do with an underdog in the CL that would guarantee that. There just arent examples of coaches punching high above weight in consecutive seasons in the CL. Main reason is that any such squad will become depletedimmediately, as happened to Ajax.
What is interesting, is to see how many different scenarios a coach actually has handled well, and how well he has handled a scenario similar to the actual challenge head of him. Unlike almost all other candidates for this job, Ten Hag has managed as different things as punching above weight in CL (also remember the six straight wins with heavy margins in his last CL campaign with Ajax, which says more than being marginally countered out in a two game face of with Benfica, tbh), punching above weight at different league levels with Go Ahead and Utrecht, waking a sleeping giant with Ajax, dominating a league consistently with superior players in Ajax and BM2, rebuilding a depleted team successfully at Ajax, dealing with scepticism and high (overblown) expectations at Ajax.
Those are the CV points that in their width and depth have made so many football experts (no not pundits and ex players) say he was the obvious qualified choice for the challenge at hand at United.
DeZerbi is a very interesting coach, but if you threw him to the wolves at Man Utd now, it would be a possible carreer wrecking move at this point.
Which is why we should be judging managers not just on their achievements, because some will have a natural lower ceiling due to the club they manage.
I do not disagree much with what you have said. He was brilliant at Ajax, probably their best manager since LVG. He looked more of a good manager than De Boer who actually won more. Unlike Ole, he got the job on merit.
On the other hand, he should be judged by how he has done here, not Ajax. Same as in any company, you get the job based on CV and interview, but after that you are judged on how you are doing in that company, and if you are not performing, you get fired. ETH was ok last season, this season he is really not performing.
I am far more impressed on what De Zerbi has done at Brighton than ETH at United. Sure he had a better football structure above him (but then if we had Rangnick that ETH wanted out, we would have probably had a good football structure and Rangnick would have saved ETH from himself), but his entire starting team yesterday cost around the same as Malacia. We have better players than Brighton in virtually every position, and sure, the Glazers, Arnold and Murtough are the biggest culprits, but ETH is coaching those players. And so far, it does not look that he is coaching them that well.
City, they’re already sounding him out in case Pep leaves.
Absolutely! many great managers have achieved silverware with the odds stacked against them.
Unless you want to only have jobs at small teams and enjoy a life without pressure or expectation.
Maybe he shouldn’t have bought players that aren’t good enough and will get him the sack?
Or maybe he should be given time to work his system with the new signings considering some of his new signings this season haven't even played together.
Brilliant post. The gulf in coaching between the two teams was so evident yesterday.
Sure, give him until Christmas, let them all play together and then when that excuse doesn’t work anymore we can just fire him then instead.
All Brighton fans say Potter was the one who made real huge difference in play, De Zerbi jus continued it. And look how he fared at Chelsea, another badly run club.
No. Potter made that brilliant transition from Houghton’s survival low block football to a progressive framework, but Potter’s Brighton teams could not finish, nor impose themselves on games consistently.
De Zerbi hasn’t just continued the good work, he has taken it up another two levels. They are statistically a top 4 team in every metric since he came in.
Ok let me be clear here I actually rate ETH however there are concerns over ;
1. Stubbiness he simply won’t make a change with his favoured players inspire if their mistakes
2. His inability to look outside the Dutch League for players and him wanting complete control over recruitment
3. In game substitutions, needs to be more clinical with the changes
4. His team in EPL just don’t score enough goals and he’s yet to score more than 4 and has only scored 4 once in 43 PL games
5. He clearly has favourites and at a club as big as united you can’t have any
Now I say all this, with huge hesitation because most of his problems are caused by the hierarchy of club structure and the Glazers diabolical management of the United.
Unfortunately he’s becoming a coach whose going to be remembered for being so stuck in his beliefs, they eventually got him sacked, if he’s not able to understand that you need to play a double pivot in front of your back four against most EPL teams, there’s only one way this is ending?
He wouldn't last a year here. The exact same problems would be happening as they have with every other manager. You can't just take somebody from an environment set up to actually help a coach and drop them into the United black hole. He'd be buying players from the leagues he knows because he still wouldn't have a real DoF and they wouldn't be good enough. And wouldn't get rid of the players you want him to.
United as a club are like Weekend at Bernie's. Long dead but being strung along for the gain of others.
United as a club are like Weekend at Bernie's. Long dead but being strung along for the gain of others.
Yes and then we can do the rinse and repeat till we want the next one sacked as well
Tell that to whoever replaced him.
He's only signed 3 players direct from the Dutch league. Onana played under him but left.
Been saying this for a long time but doesn’t this sound A LOT like LvG to you…!?
Probably 3 too many. As you said Onana played under him too. Amrabat also played under him. So there is 5.
Mount also played in Holland while ETH coached there. Same for Wout. There is definitely a pattern there.
For comparison, Pep signed Thiago from Barca to Bayern, no one else. And no one to City. Klopp signed no one from Dortmund to Liverpool. Ancelotti signed no one from his previous clubs to Madrid.
Exactly! but now he is a fraud apparently for not dominating every team home and away in the league with Martial and Weg up front
8 games into a 40+ game season is not the middle.
Certainly not the start either. No pre season which is vital to managers. No summer transfer window. It shouldn’t count as a full season at all.