Brighton’s meteoric rise has recently hit a few speed bumps, with Roberto De Zerbi encountering a problem that Jürgen Klopp has had to deal with at Liverpool over the years.
Brighton returned to winning ways over the weekend, edging Nottingham Forest by three goals to two. But it was the end of a fantastic Premier League run that had gone somewhat unnoticed.
Roberto De Zerbi has been rightly lauded for his work since taking over from Graham Potter. He has primarily been mentioned as a potential successor to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, but he would undoubtedly be on the list of candidates to succeed Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool as well.
Despite this, Brighton had gone winless in its previous six Premier League games. Three consecutive 1-1 draws with Sheffield United, Everton, and Fulham were preceded by a 2-1 loss to Manchester City, a draw with Liverpool, and a 6-1 thrashing by Aston Villa.
What went wrong with De Zerbi? With eighth place in the table and an eight-point gap to the top still highly respectable, something has clearly taken the wind out of Brighton’s sails.
One theory is that the Italian has run into a problem that Klopp is all too familiar with at Liverpool. With each new victory, Brighton‘s reputation has grown, and opponents have approached the game differently as a result, calming a key weapon in the manager’s arsenal.
De Zerbi‘s ‘pressing traps’ have received a lot of attention. These are clever little sequences in which Brighton baits opponents into a challenge only to work it around them and open up space for an attack.
The obvious counter is to simply do not press. That’s doubly frustrating for managers like Klopp and De Zerbi because it’s antithetical to their way of thinking about the game, but it’s also annoyingly effective.
The statistics for Brighton support this. According to Hamzah Khalique-Loonat on X, its win rate under De Zerbi is now inversely proportional to its possession share.
The solution is simple in theory, but extremely difficult in practice. Teams dealing with this issue must find ways to win that do not rely on opponents pressing, becoming more controlled and methodical while maintaining the intense identity that made them so good in the first place.
Klopp has considered numerous solutions over the years. Thiago was supposed to be the big fix, but his injury history has kept that from happening.
As a result, the summer’s rebuild provided a significant opportunity. Liverpool brought in willing pressers, but they are all far more technical than those who came before them: Dominik Szoboszlai, Alexis Mac Allister, and Ryan Gravenberch have a far better chance of breaking down stubborn defenses than their more functional forefathers.
Meanwhile, Klopp has continued to make the most of fast-break opportunities when they present themselves. Opponents may not press aggressively, but they do commit players at corners and free kicks, and Liverpool has become known for its quick counters from these situations.
Even so, it isn’t perfect. Already this season, Liverpool has been frustrated by Luton Town and Toulouse. However, Klopp appears to be closer than ever to ‘cracking’ a puzzle that, in reality, can never be fully solved.
That is the next step for De Zerbi if he wants to build on his growing reputation. Brighton is growing in stature, and a truly elite manager, like Klopp at Liverpool, must figure out how to deal with the consequences.
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