After Xabi Alonso ruled himself out of the running yesterday, there’s a new favourite to be Liverpool’s next manager.
Alonso is set to stay at Bayer Leverkusen, after turning down the chance for talks with both Liverpool and Bayern Munich.
The Spaniard had been the overwhelming favourite to succeed Jurgen Klopp, with Reds supporters looking forward to having a former hero of the club at the helm. However, the focus must now shift.
Since the ‘surprising’ news about Alonso, Sporting manager Ruben Amorim looks to have become the front-runner. However, he’s far from being the only one in contention.
And speaking to ESPN FC today, Liverpool legend Steve Nicol claimed that he’d feel ‘more confident’ with a manager other than Amorim.
Steve Nicol names Liverpool manager preference
Since Alonso took himself out of the race, it hasn’t only been Amorim who’s been in the picture.
Viewers on ESPN wrote in to the channel to ask Nicol – who played 468 times across 13 years for Liverpool – who he would pick out of a list of candidates.
The names put forward to Nicol were Amorim, Roberto De Zerbi, Julian Nagelsmann and Thomas Frank.
“Of those names, I would feel more confident right now with De Zerbi for the main fact he knows what the Premier League’s about,” says the pundit.
“He knows what Liverpool is about, or he’s certainly been closer to it because of his time in the Premier League. So, I would suggest De Zerbi out of all of those names, I’d be more confident of getting success.”
READ MORE: Three candidates standing out in Liverpool’s new manager search
Would Roberto De Zerbi be a good fit for Liverpool
We can certainly understand where Nicol is coming from with this. However, we’re inclined to disagree.
De Zerbi might know the Premier League having been coaching in it for the past 18 months. But the truth is that the Italian hasn’t done as well as he might at Brighton.
Granted, he got the Seagulls into Europe last season, and that shouldn’t be looked down upon. Nevertheless, the foundation was built by Graham Potter, who put Brighton in a strong position before De Zerbi arrived.
Currently, the former Sassuolo manager has his team sitting in eighth place. Perhaps par for the course for the quality in his squad, but not enough to mark him out as a strong contender for Liverpool. Let’s see where the next twist takes us.