As names begin to be linked to Liverpool, Jürgen Klopp has already lavished praise on one potential heir to his throne, although there is one problem.
Liverpool looked more like a basketball franchise than a football team at times during the early part of Jürgen Klopp’s reign.
Across his first two full seasons at the helm (2016/17 and 2017/18), Liverpool scored an impressive 162 goals in the Premier League, but also conceded 80. It was a recipe for the spectacular, but not for a title challenge.
If there’s one team in the 2023/24 field that represents a ghost of season’s past for Liverpool, it’s arguably Brighton. And that’s particularly interesting in light of Klopp’s shock announcement that he will be leaving at the end of the season.
In the first seven match-weeks of the new season, the Seagulls scored more goals than anybody else (19) and attempted 116 shots, the third-highest mark in the league. They also amassed an expected goal tally of 14.2. Things have slowed down a little since that frenetic start to the campaign, but Brighton only recently lost a 32-match scoring streak.
Brighton boss Roberto De Zerbi has remarkably reached these heights with a squad worth just $205m (£167m/€193m), making it the sixth-cheapest in the division. For reference, the rosters of the league’s ‘big six’ teams — two of whom it is above in the table — cost between $697m/£569m/€657m (Tottenham) and $1.1bn/£867m/€1bn (Chelsea, one of the teams faring worse than Brighton).
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But the concern for the Italian, who is trying to lead his side into Europe for the second time in two years (and indeed the second time in its history) is the team’s defensive record. The goal rush he has overseen has been staggering, but a lot of those are being fired into the Brighton net — no team higher than 12th has conceded as many as De Zerbi’s 33.
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Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp.
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De Zerbi must show that he can bring this under control in the months ahead. Otherwise there will be question marks for the elite sides that have no doubt watched on in awe up to this point — and most pertinently for Liverpool, as it seeks to anoint a Klopp successor.
But the 44-year-old has arguably been the outstanding manager in the country since he arrived. There should be confidence that he’ll find a solution.
“[The] best-coached team in the league, I would say,” Liverpool boss Klopp declared as he previewed the match-up between the two teams earlier in the season (via LFC). “They made really big steps and super-consistent, different formations, different players, line-ups — wow, in the end you always see Brighton football and I couldn’t respect that more.”
