Graham Potter, Carlos Corberan or Steve Cooper: Who is the best fit for Leicester City?

When promotion-winning manager Enzo Maresca left for Chelsea, it was a big blow for Leicester City.

They took a risk in appointing a talented manager with limited management experience to stabilize the club and plan an immediate return to the Premier League after relegation. The bet paid off.

However, it was Maresca’s philosophy and style of play that Leicester owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha was as invested in as the man.

Inevitably, the search for his successor meant that Leicester looked for similar candidates rather than going in a new direction.

They wanted to find another young, hungry manager who could build on the work Maresca had started to turn Leicester into a modern, possession-based team. After all, many of the team were recruited with Maresca’s mold in mind, such as Harry Winks and Mads Hermansen. The decision to hand Jannik Vestergaard a new three-year contract at Maresca’s request was further evidence of their commitment to his style of play.

Inevitably then, the search for his successor saw candidates with a similar approach of playing from the back and trying to dominate the ball to control the game.

Leicester have spoken to dozens of candidates to gauge their availability, hunger for the job and plans for what they would do with the squad Leicester take to the Premier League. Despite a limited transfer budget and an expected points deduction for an alleged breach of profit and sustainability regulations, it remains an attractive job for many.

Three candidates have emerged as Leicester enter the final stages of the process. Three candidates who come from different backgrounds but have shown in previous work that they could share the same vision as Leicester.

Here we assess the main contenders, Graham Potter, Carlos Corberan and Steve Cooper.

Graham Potter

Leicester have been admirers of the Englishman for a very long time. They always had a succession plan for previous managers and Potter always featured prominently, but the timing was never right.

Whether the timing is right on this occasion remains to be seen, but Potter is a manager who is of great interest to Leicester.

He certainly plays a style that suits Leicester, forged over 16 years, starting in the Northern Counties East League with Leeds Carnegie, then in Sweden with Ostersund before taking the hot seat at Swansea City, Brighton & Hove Albion and Chelsea.

Looking at his playing style wheel, which outlines how a side plays by condensing multiple values ​​into an aesthetically pleasing graphic, from Brighton’s 2021-22 season, his preferred way of playing is obvious.

Play style wheels divide Opta’s stats into four categories: defense, attack, possession and progression. They give each side a percentile rank compared to other teams in Europe’s top seven leagues. The higher the number, the more often—or successfully—a team performs that action.

Potter’s style was very possession-based, focusing on play from the back, with a ‘deep consolidation’ score of 68.

The Circulate metric score of 93 out of a possible 99 is particularly telling as it means that Brighton under Potter would often look to move the ball and retain possession rather than play direct long balls into the final third.

This is also reflected when entering the final third, as the patient’s attack metric, which measures the volume of shots taken per 100 attacking touches in the final third, is a high score of 94.

However, as their chance creation and shot quality were low, meaning that despite their dominance of possession and patient progression, they were a little unsteady in the final third.

The 2021-22 season, when they finished ninth, one point behind Leicester, was the highlight of Potter’s three-year tenure.

This chart, detailing Brighton’s progress under Potter over his 40 months in charge before he joined Chelsea at the start of the 2022-23 season, shows how his side have fared over those seasons , especially in the movement and tilt of the land, which records their territorial dominance. .

Potter’s style is clearly in line with Leicester’s vision.

Carlos Corberan

There are some obvious similarities between Maresca and Corberan. Both have been described as obsessed with football, an unwavering devotion to their philosophy of how it should be played, early success as a coach at under-23 level, an ability to improve players and a link with Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola.

Corberan coached at Villareal in Spain when Pep Guardiola was turning Barcelona into a dominant force and studied the methods of Juanma Lillo, who also inspired Guardiola.

Like Maresca, who was also Guardiola’s assistant at the Etihad Stadium, Corberan emerged from the shadow of a towering managerial figure, Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds United, whom he assisted while also coaching the under-23s at Elland Road .

“I like to light up the game,” Corberan said The Athletic when he was manager of Huddersfield Town in 2022. “Try to control the ball games, try to keep the ball all the time, try to dominate.

“Of course your ideas change over time, but when I look at player behavior I look for those who can light up the game.”

Looking at West Brom’s style of play rankings last season, they weren’t an aggressive, pressing team, ranking 23rd out of 24 teams for passes per defensive move, allowing 16.5 passes before attempting to challenges, but they were the fifth best team for stopping the opposition. hits.

Note that the table below shows the league standings rather than the percentile standings above. Here, a lower rank number denotes a higher volume stock.

They ranked low for attacking speed, direct attacks and long passing, but were 11th for possession and 10th for pitch tilt, which measures territorial dominance. The table shows that they were a possession-based team, but not particularly aggressive or quick going forward.

It is a slow and patient style of play which he has occasionally altered by dropping a central midfielder in the back four against better sides.

One thing that stood out and is backed up by the data is how defensively secure Albion were last season under him. He usually presents us in a 4-2-3-1 with a holding midfielder and a more capable passer alongside him and prefers to tuck the full-backs in and maintain control against poorer teams, but they have were also effective in transition.

Corberan plays a style that seems most similar to Maresca, should Leicester want a similar replacement. And with more technically gifted players, it could be more adventurous.

Steve Cooper

If both Potter and Corberan have a clear philosophy and playing style like Maresca, Cooper’s is not so clearly defined.

The Welshman forged his reputation in England’s youth ranks before getting his first chance as a manager at Swansea City, where he succeeded Potter.

His style was seen as more pragmatic and adaptable than the clear identity that Potter’s Swansea possessed, and although he took them to back-to-back play-offs in the 2020-21 season, when they were beaten in the final by Brentford, his side had third best defensive record, conceded just 39 goals in 46 games but scored just 56.

The following season, however, as he led Nottingham Forest to the play-off final, eventually emerging victorious, his side scored 73, their third-highest total, while maintaining defensive stability, conceding just 40 .

Against the odds, he kept Forest in the Premier League in 2022-23. But as their style of play wheel from that campaign shows, they did so with very little possession, playing more of a counter-attacking style. With so many changes in their playing personnel, Forest played survival football to suit the players they had at their disposal.

After promotion, he quickly realized that if Forest tried to play the way he wanted, they would be relegated.

He wanted to be on the mind and on the front foot as they had been on their way to promotion. But after a few games and some tough losses, he realized they needed to be more disciplined and organized with the players they had.

He changed his defensive approach to a low block and made Forest hard to beat. It wasn’t always pretty, but it got the job done. HWe always talked about how he felt conflicted because it was against the way he wanted football to be played. He wanted his teams to play but felt he didn’t have the Premier League experience in his squad to do so. With more experienced players, it could be more adventurous.

Cooper likes his teams to play with good organization and structure, but that system can change depending on the circumstances and the players he has available.

One thing he has in common with Potter and Corberan is where his passion for coaching comes from, with a Spanish and Barcelona influence. As a youth coach at Liverpool, he worked with Jose “Pep” Segura and Rodolfo Borrell, who went on to assist Guardiola at Manchester City. Segura in particular was a big influence on Cooper.

From them, he learned to pay attention to detail, checking on his players after practice to make sure they were all right and insisting on learning the names of everyone around the club to foster club unity.

Cooper, who disliked being an authority figure and disliked being called boss or gaffer, simply Coops or Steve, may not have displayed a clear philosophy of football, but he appears to be a more pragmatic coach who would evaluate the Leicester team. and design a suitable game plan.

The merits of each candidate’s playing styles will be just one factor for Leicester to consider. The question now is which manager fits not only the long-term vision but also the unique challenges they will face in the Premier League.

It’s a decision Leicester have to get right.

Additional reporting: Mark Carey, Elias Burke and Paul Taylor

(Top photos: Getty Images)