EXCLUSIVE: Pep Lijnders sacked amid CHAOS in dressing room as ‘MONSTERS’ claim emerges

Pep Lijnders' time has ended up being very brief in Salzburg.

The former Liverpool assistant manager arrived with a lot of excitement as he looked to resume his manager career.

READ MORE: Bajcetic's ICE COLD post after Pep Lijnders Red Bull Salzburg sacking

However, within just a few months, his time at the club has turned into chaos with Salzburg suffering heavy defeats not just in the Champions League but in the Austrian Bundesliga as well.

That in turn, has let to Lijnders being sacked by the club and suffering a massive setback in his ambitions to follow in Jurgen Klopp's footsteps.

But what went wrong for him at the club? And how did he end up here?

Anfield Watch has spoken exclusively to Tom Middler from @OtherBundesliga to find out.

Initially there was a lot of excitement about Lijnders arriving at Salzburg or it seemed that way, would you say that’s true? How was his appointment perceived?

Tom Middler: There was a lot of excitement. Salzburg and Liverpool had met in the UCL with some very memorable moments a few years back. Klopp's Liverpool were extremely well-known and highly regarded over here, and to have an important figure from that side take over in Salzburg was seen as a big appointment. A new head coach with the right profile to take Salzburg back to the top.

He brought in a few of his former players and also former coaches from Liverpool, how have they fared and how were these signings perceived?

Tom Middler: It's fair to say that the coaches and players didn't really work out as planned, although it's tough to apportion blame on any one individual for that. This is a Salzburg team without the stability of the past decade. The managerial transfers were always very smoothly handled before, and the next coach was ready to step in and knew what they were inheriting. Since Matthias Jaissle left, and Christoph Freund soon after, the club has not been a steady ship.

Before there were always senior players in the XI and around the periphery of the squad, players who had won a lot and experienced so much, and they were known to be a stabilising influence on a squad with so many youngsters, even down to how the players learned to focus and relax in their private lives. Role model pros who are just not there any more.

Coaches like Marsch for example were very good at nurturing the young players and allowing them to express themselves on the pitch without pressure. I'm sure Lijnders has some very different expertise coming from the Premier League, but an 18 year-old here is in a different position to an 18-year-old at a big Premier League side, perhaps the same methods are not so useful in this kind of development.

Both Clark and Bajcetic have only played 85 mins+ on a small number of occasions, and in 24 games between them, there has been just 1 goal and no assists; not always a useful marker of course, but still it's an indicator that they haven't exactly torn up this smaller league. It started with a month long break for Clark as Brexit has made paperwork for UK players more complicated, and then he was straight into the UCL starting line-up which seemed to annoy some other players, and in recent months it's mostly been just a smaller amount of minutes for both of them, so Lijnders has perhaps not managed them too well, to get them settled in quickly at Salzburg. In fairness to the players, without the defensive midfield lynchpin of former RBS teams, it was surely tougher to settle in to this squad than any other Salzburg squad from the last 10 years.

After Salzburg failed to win the league title, it was always going to be a challenge for Lijnders. What’s going on at the club? In recent years, it feels like Salzburg aren’t doing as well as before.

Tom Middler: This comes back to the unsettled nature of the team that I mentioned. Salzburg always made it look easy to bring through new players and fit them in each year, while playing attractive football too. It was never easy, and now we're seeing that. Recruitment has not been quite so good, the attack doesn't work without some key elements from before. Every Salzburg team used to have a defensive midfield workhorse, at least one really powerful full back, and central defenders as good as any in the league. That's no longer the case, so when the attack doesn't click straight away, they get punished more. Add to that, Sturm Graz learned from Salzburg in some ways, they bought and sold he right players at the right times for a few seasons, and they have heaped pressure onto the Red Bulls which wasn't really there before.

In your opinion what went wrong for Lijnders at Salzburg?

Tom Middler: There have been a number of issues. Poor chance conversion, defensive frailties, dropping too many points against weaker teams, big signings not dominating the division as they have done before, Sturm making them look bad in comparison, fear creeping in that last season is going to repeat itself. Probably worst of all though is the big-game mentality. You could always count on Salzburg to produce excitement in the UCL even when they lost, and in the big games domestically against Sturm and Rapid they used to be monsters. Now that has completely changed, and when they lost 5-0 to Sturm and suffered a number of lifeless UCL performances, his days as the boss were numbered.

What’s next for Salzburg now? And more importantly, what will happen to the coaches that Lijnders brought with him from Liverpool and the players (Bajcetic and Clark)?

Tom Middler: It will be awkward for those who he brought with him. Clark might feel isolated especially as he was very much Lijnders' signing, but if the next manager can start well, Salzburg can close things up in the table and compete again early in 2025. There will be more good players coming through, and if they can solve their issues, they still have the resources to dominate in Austria. Sturm have lost their manager, sporting director and key players now too, so they have to face some of the issues which helped knock Salzburg off their perch. It'll be interesting to watch for the rest of the season!

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