Next Liverpool manager: Boss with 39% win-rate is 'interesting' to Reds
Liverpool are on the hunt for their next manager and an outside contender has just a 39% win-rate in the job. He’s an ‘interesting’ target to them, however.
Journalist Dean Jones tells Give Me Sport, that Liverpool find Thiago Motta an 'interesting' candidate to be their next manager. The Bologna boss has made serious waves in Serie A this season.
“An alternative option for Liverpool could be Thiago Motta,” said Jones. “Outside of the two main candidates, he has a very interesting football philosophy that is intriguing to many at Liverpool.
"Bologna play with a fluidity that is very rare. One thing that is important to Liverpool is that they have a football philosophy to follow but also that they play in a way that suits the squad and means they keep evolving.
“It’s important to stress that Motta is an outsider at this moment in time but that he is interesting to them."
Motta currently has Bologna sitting 4th in Serie A - potentially their highest finish since 1968. He took over halfway through last season and guided them to 9th, which was their joint-highest finish since 2002.
Thiago Motta - good enough for Liverpool?
Working against Motta is that he hasn't actually had much success in his career. He's never won a trophy, though does have three Serie A Manager of the Month awards.
Two of those have come in the last two months, if you want a sign of where the hype is at right now.
But in terms of winning trophies, there's nothing to shout about. Now, Motta has also never coached a team that had any realistic chance of winning trophies.
His overall win-rate is just 39% in his career - a figure that's nowhere near what Liverpool are after. Ruben Amorim, for context, has a 70% win-rate.
It's not an entirely fair comparison because Motta has never coached a competitive team before. At the same time, it makes him an unknown quantity and even if what he's doing now is brilliant, there's still so much no one knows.
Hiring Motta would be an almighty gamble and it's very difficult to see Liverpool going down that road. Still, he's on the shortlist and Jones is far from the first to mention that.
There's an outside chance that Liverpool really do take that gamble.