Roberto De Zerbi: Brighton boss is playing beautiful and brilliant football - do Liverpool dare to go there?

The style with which Roberto De Zerbi has established Brighton in the top half of the Premier League table, this season and last, demands that the 44-year-old coach be considered for the biggest jobs. This weekend, live on Super Sunday, he takes the stage for what could be his Anfield audition.

Pep Guardiola has called De Zerbi "one of the most influential managers in the last 20 years" because of his brand of football. The three-time Champions League-winning coach said: "There is no team playing the way they play. It is unique."

With De Zerbi, there is an unusual trajectory in his career path though. Big clubs haven't come knocking. Yet.

When Sam Allardyce and Sean Dyche took unfashionable teams into the upper reaches of the Premier League, the concern was that their approach would not be ambitious enough for the very best.

In De Zerbi's case, could it be too ambitious for cautious owners?

The good news for Brighton is that those are the whispers following reports that he is under consideration for the soon-to-be vacant role at Liverpool when Jurgen Klopp departs. Xabi Alonso has less coaching experience but it is De Zerbi whose fascinating football is seen as a risk.

In full flow, his teams find angles that others do not, triangles all over the pitch, controlling the rhythm in possession and pressing man-to-man out of it. At its very best, watching his Brighton side can feel like watching the future of the sport, evolution in action. Brighton put down the feather dusters used under Graham Potter and replaced them with battering rams under De Zerbi.

When Brighton are hot, they are hot.

From January 2023 to the end of last season, Brighton led the way for expected goals (51.3) in the Premier League, bettering Manchester City's