Former Aston Villa manager Steven Gerrard is a potential candidate to replace the sacked Jesse Marsch at Premier League strugglers Leeds United, according to Tuttomercatoweb.
Like it or not, Victor Orta will play a key role in choosing Leeds’ next head coach. It was he, the club’s oh-so divisive director of football, who pushed for the appointment of Marsch 12 months ago. Then again, Orta also helped lure Marcelo Bielsa to Elland Road; the most transformative moment in the club’s modern history.
His track record when choosing managers – like when choosing players – is about as much a mixed bag as John Travolta’s filmography. If Bielsa was Orta’s Pulp Fiction, Marsch was more akin to the Taking of Pelham 123. Not quite Battlefield Earth levels, but hardly a roaring success either.
Marsch said his goodbyes 24 hours after Sunday’s 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest; a game in which Leeds dominated but were undone for their lack of ruthlessness in both boxes. Not for the first time, either.
Carlos Corberan, Leeds’ former U23 coach, is currently the leading candidate (90Min). But West Brom, now firmly in the play-off picture, are not going to let Corberan leave without a fight, just a few months into his three-and-a-half year contract.
Who will replace Jesse Marsch as Leeds United manager?
Leeds, in contrast, would face far fewer obstacles in pursuit of Steven Gerrard. The former England international has been out of work since October. He also missed out on the chance to take over the Polish national team following the appointment of Fernando Santos.
Hiring Gerrard – sacked by a direct Premier League rival following just 13 wins in 40 games – would be subjected to plenty of scrutiny from an expectant Elland Road fanbase. But Leeds’ admiration for the ex-Liverpool captain goes back to his days in charge of Rangers, and Gerrard’s success north of the border should not be scrubbed out of the history books just because things did not go to plan at Villa Park.
Gerrard, after all, guided Rangers to their first Premiership title in a decade; presiding over a remarkable period of improvement, turning a club so used to being a distant second best into Scotland’s dominant force. For a year at least. Rangers did not lose a single league game in the 2020/21 season. Gerrard also presided over some truly exceptional results in Europe.
‘Very elite’
For Mick Beale, former assistant to Gerrard at Ibrox, his mind was made up about the 42-year-old following his response to a dramatic Europa League qualifying victory over FC Ufa shortly after taking over in 2018.
“In that game we went down to nine players,” Beale recalls (Daily Record). “And how he summarised that game at the end was fantastic. Walking into that changing room, everyone was on such a high as you can imagine.
“But he spoke to the players about something that had happened seven days before, around standards. I just thought at that moment; ‘wow’.
“He spoke about standards that he was unhappy about the week before. Those things weren’t going to be allowed if you were going to be in the special environment we were in.
“In that moment he showed a level of communication in the group that I though was very elite.”
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