Reports suggesting that Jesse Marsch could replace Brendan Rodgers as manager of Leicester City do not exactly smack of ambition. More desperation than design.
This is, after all, a coach who was sacked by another struggling Premier League club just two months ago, Leeds United spending much of the American’s reign circling the plughole.
As talkSPORT host Simon Jordan pointed out, when Marsch was reportedly under consideration by Southampton, the Wisconsin-born 48-year-old is perhaps merely the ‘best of a bad bunch’; managers not exactly queuing up to take over a club staring down the barrel of relegation.
“I don’t like that appointment,” Jordan said at the time. “But I also feel there is a situation where these clubs are struggling to get a manager in the door. It becomes the best of a bad bunch.”
Leicester City considering Jesse Marsch
Southampton ended up promoting former assistant coach Ruben Selles to the top job until the rest of the season. Leeds, meanwhile, missed out on their leading targets before settling on Javi Gracia. Frank Lampard and Cristian Stellini are in interim charge at Chelsea and Tottenham until the summer. 75-year-old Roy Hodgson is also back in at Crystal Palace.
In truth, when you take the shortage of truly elite-level candidates into consideration, hiring a man like Marsch – who, lest we forget, saved a seemingly doomed-looking Leeds from the drop 12 months ago – suddenly doesn’t feel like such a bad idea. Desperate, maybe, but not necessarily disastrous.
Fabrizio Romano reports that Marsch is one of the leading candidates alongside Rafa Benitez, Ralph Hasenhuttl and Oscar Garcia.
And there is, at least, one member of the Leicester squad who may be delighted to see Marsch sign on the dotted line. Patson Daka was in an out of the Leicester XI under Brendan Rodgers. But he scored 61 goals in just two seasons under Marsch at Red Bull Salzburg.
And, OK, Salzburg may be the dominant force of Austrian football. Yes, the Austrian Bundesliga does not come close to the English Premier League when taking quality and competitiveness into account. But Rodgers never really seemed certain of how to make the most use out of a technically-limited but instinctive goal-poacher. Marsch, at least, clearly knows what makes Daka tick.
‘Like Kylian Mbappe’
“I rate him like Kylian Mbappe,” fellow Zambia international Larry Bwalya told the iNews back in 2021. “I see him like Mbappe at Monaco, the way he used to play.
“He could see he could play for the big clubs in Europe and do well for himself.
“What he’s doing, everyone is seeing he’s scoring for fun. His biggest strength is his pace. He uses it very well. We are seeing him develop into a good striker, with the strength, pace, and a great conversion rate.”
With 40 to their name, no team in the Premier League’s bottom half has scored more goals than 19th-place Leicester. But if Marsch could get Daka doing what he did at Salzburg, that would do the Foxes’ survival hopes no harm at all.
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