Roberto De Zerbi next manager job odds: Will he leave Brighton for a European superpower?

• Published before Brighton lost 4-0 to Man City and 3-0 to Bournemouth

Roberto De Zerbi to be 'next manager of' odds (via Sky Bet)

• Bayern Munich - 6/1
• Chelsea - 6/1
• Manchester United - 11/1

Odds correct as 1630 GMT (28/04/24)

In tactical circles he is the new darling, at the vanguard of the next wave of great thinkers. After more than a decade of Pep Guardiola’s monopoly on how the sport should be played, De Zerbi is part of a new generation combining those automatized passing networks with fast transitions, baiting the opposition press in order to spin around it.

De Zerbi's stock falling?

De Zerbi isn’t by any means the only one, but he’s seen as the most exciting and the most promising. Or at least he used to be.

But as Brighton slide back towards mediocrity the allure is starting to fade. Fashion is an underappreciated variable in football – and it’s just as fickle as anywhere else.

Brighton are on a run of one win from seven in the Premier League, leaving them 10th in the table and only a couple of points above 13th-place Bournemouth, who incidentally are the only team in the bottom half Brighton have left to play. Manchester City, Aston Villa, Newcastle, Manchester United, and Chelsea is by a distance the toughest run-in in the division.

It is more likely than not they will finish 13th, which, with a big drop to Crystal Palace in 14th and the rest of the relegation candidates, in a sense is to finish bottom of the pile. De Zerbi’s reputation, for this summer at least, surely would not survive the fall.

Brighton off the boil

Unfortunately, avoiding that fate doesn’t mean fixing a seven-game bad spell. No, try six months.

The Premier League table since September 25 has Brighton in 14th, six points above the relegation zone with 29 points from 26 games. They have slowed down dramatically and yet few really seem to have noticed. Dropping out of the top ten ought to change that.

The issue is predominantly scoring goals. Over the last eight matches in all competitions they have accrued a total of 7.24 expected goals (xGF), scoring four times, while across the whole of 2024 so far they have scored a meagre 14 goals from 13 Premier League games – with nine of those coming against Crystal Palace (4-1) and Sheffield United (5-0).

The chances just aren’t coming anymore and the obvious explanation is that De Zerbi’s innovative tactics no longer have the element of surprise. Baiting the press worked when nobody quite understood Brighton’s intentions but over the last six months more and more opponents are refusing to budge out of their low block, showing Brighton a level respect they don’t expect to receive.

Possession problem

Ten times this season Brighton have held 70% or more possession in a match. They have won just two, drawn four, and scored 15 goals (with nine coming from a 5-0 win against Sheffield United and 4-1 win against Luton Town). At the other end of the spectrum, the ten matches with Brighton’s lowest possession share (between 45% and 53%) produced five wins and a draw.

De Zerbi doesn’t want stale possession. He wants messier games with vertical passing and sudden gear changes. But the spaces are disappearing as opponents refuse to do what he wants them to do.

This is relatively new territory for him, and overcoming the problem is a test that potential suitors may wait to see if he can pass.

But that is only one reading of the situation. The other is that De Zerbi’s tactics have hit a ceiling with the quality of player at his disposal; that using his system against deeper defences would be much smoother with elite players at his disposal.

Player quality key to De Zerbi system

He used to have those at Brighton, by the way. We are so used to seeing Brighton instantaneously regenerate that we have stopped noticing how extraordinary it is for the club to survive being picked apart by vultures every year. Nobody seems to mention how De Zerbi is trying to mimic last season’s sixth-place finish despite his entire midfield being ripped out without replacement last summer.

Alexis Mac Allister and Moises Caicedo were huge losses. Before that, Enock Mwepu (forced into retirement), Marc Cucurella, Yves Bissouma, and Leandro Trossard all left. It is frankly a miracle that Brighton aren’t fighting against the drop.

The sheer scale of their overachievement in 2023/24 comes into focus when you consider the forward line that is supposedly under-performing. Brighton’s main striker is 33-year-old Danny Welbeck, a man who hasn’t scored more than six goals in a Premier League season since 2013/14. Their other striker is a 19-year-old who really ought to be left alone to develop at his own pace.

Going back to the midfield, Mahmoud Dahoud never worked out and his departure on loan to Stuttgart in January left Brighton even lighter on numbers, while Carlos Baleba has taken longer to settle than De Zerbi would have hoped.

Add to this the lengthy injuries for Brighton’s two most creative players, Solly March and Kaoru Mitoma, and all of a sudden finishing 13th doesn’t seem so bad.

Football rarely makes allowances like that; rarely sees nuance. De Zerbi’s stock will fall this summer and something else will catch the eye of the super-clubs. For Brighton supporters so used to their players and managers being snatched away, finishing in the bottom half – and slipping out of sight – might be a welcome relief.

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