Jesse Marsch record at Leeds United sees shocked pundit make Andre Villas-Boas at Tottenham comparison amid Leicester news
Jesse Marsch “struggling” at Leeds United but getting within touching distance of the Southampton and Leicester jobs has left Tony Cascarino bewildered.
The American was sacked from his Elland Road job on 6 February after going three months without a Premier League win, albeit with the World Cup break in between, leaving the Whites in 17th after losing to Nottingham Forest a day before his departure.
Yet he was immediately chased by Southampton and this weekend almost got the Leicester job, with talks breaking down at the 11th hour in both instances, and Cascarino has compared him to former Chelsea and Tottenham boss Andre Villas-Boas for an apparently otherworldly ability to interview.
In his column for The Times he said: “Football management must be more about interviews and presentation than your actual CV these days. That’s the only way I can explain Jesse Marsch being linked to top jobs.
“After struggling at Leeds he has come close to taking over at Southampton and now is in line for the Leicester job.
“André Villas-Boas apparently interviewed so well at Tottenham that Daniel Levy said that he would have given him the job again even after he’d sacked him. Marsch must have a similar skill for impressive interviews.”
Charisma
Clearly Marsch has something about him that Premier League boards love, as he had Victor Orta convinced he was the man to succeed Marcelo Bielsa.
Credit where it is due, the ex-Red Bull Salzburg boss kept Leeds United in the top flight season, but he never kicked on from there and a confusing lack of playing style outside of tempo and chaos saw his reign never truly convince.
That he has come so close to two subsequent jobs in England is only surpassed in its strangeness by the fact that he has then not taken either.
Leicester and Southampton are currently the two worst sides in the league based on the standings, but it is odd that they felt Marsch was the man to rescue them when he didn’t look like being able to do that in West Yorkshire.
He is perhaps judged harshly because he was the man who followed Bielsa, but subsequent events have been hard to quantify.
AVB was seen as the wunderkind of his era when he arrived at Stamford Bridge as a 33-year-old in 2011 after they paid £13.2million to prize him from Porto [Sky Sports], only to last less than eight months in the job, before Spurs appointed him just five months after his sacking.
Some things never change at Chelsea who removed Graham Potter eight days ago after spending £21.5million to Brighton for him earlier this season [Argus, 2 April].
Whether Marsch will be back in the top flight this summer like Villas-Boas was remains to be seen, but it appears the 49-year-old has more admirers outside of Leeds these days than he does at the job he left just two months ago.
In other Leeds United news, speculation over a dressing room bust up at Elland Road has been addressed by a BBC man.