Managing expectations: welcome to Brighton Daniel Niedzkowski

Recent criticism of Fabian Hürzeler has centred around the poor results, but also the slightly chaotic nature of games and the lack of an identifiable tactical approach.

With a Chris Hughton team, Graham Potter’s Albion, and Roberto De Zerbi’s, there was a clearly demarcated and understandable methodology. A way of playing, a way of winning (or not losing in the case of Chris Hughton and the majority of the Potter era, albeit with contrasting approaches to possessing the ball). But now?

We’ve heard Hürzeler reference the importance of gegenpressing - “counter-pressing is key” he stated in an interview with Sky Sports in September 2024 - yet we don’t always press aggressively. He’s not a control obsessive, or at least he’s not able to set the team up to control games from start to finish. The infamous high line has been marched backwards. We’ve also seen, at times, defenders holding onto the ball and inviting pressure: a move from Roberto’s tactical playbook. The team have featured back fours, back threes, wingers and wingbacks, false nines. Midfielders dropping between central defenders, but sometimes a conventional pairing in the middle of the park. It’s a lot.

But perhaps the variety and inconsistency is sort of the point? In our intro piece on Fabian (Dogma Issue 13) we said ‘Hürzeler’s approach at St. Pauli was a mix of things, including elements of the approaches favoured by Roberto De Zerbi, Jurgen Klopp and Atalanta’s Gian Piero Gasperini’. So far this season that ‘mix of things’ worked well, but then it didn’t; the current run of form is unquestionably terrible.

The general idea with Bloom’s ownership philosophy is incremental growth and improvement. From Withers to Wembley to, someday soon, the Westfalenstadion. A quiet yet radical revolution in British football that’s been audaciously enacted in plain sight over the last fifteen years.

For Fabian Hürzeler this would mean upgrading on Roberto De Zerbi’s work; a god of football who arrived with the smartest most beautiful Plan A in world football, but, unfortunately for all parties, a refusal to even consider something as distasteful as a Plan B.

To incrementally improve on Roberto De Zerbi’s achievements will require Fabian to finish higher than sixth, and/or win some silverware. Which will mean winning more games than Roberto was able to do, and lose less. Perhaps not this season but definitely next.

His solution to this challenge, to this inexpert eye anyway, is to attempt to evolve a team that had been structured around rigid tactical dogma - a thing of beauty when it worked, but proved to be of limited use when the opposition simply stopped taking the bait - into a team able to adopt multiple intersecting tactical approaches as and when needed. A team that can operate without strict adherence to a set formation or predefined sequences, but who can exploit what they see and sense.

“I'm not the biggest fan of formations because the game is so fluent… I want to have principles, moments in the game or situations in the game where my players know what to do. It's very important for me that we have the ability to change during a game. I don't want to be a coach who goes 'that's the positioning, you have to do this and that’, because the game is so situational, what I want from my players is that they understand the situation” said Hürzeler when talking to Sky Sports.

A perspective that runs totally contrary to what came before: Roberto’s positionism football.

The generally accepted next-stage of football coaching post-positionism is relationism - the football of Fernando Diniz and Henrik Rydström beloved by coaching wonks and football hipsters alike - but neither reflect what I believe Fabian is attempting. His approach is something that I am calling ‘situationism’.

Both positionism and relationism are dependant on the location of your teammates (one fixed, and one fluid), and less so the play or actions of your opponents. But Fabian’s reference points are often oppositional; are we trying to engineer specific situations in that way that De Zerbi attempted, or to create ‘staircases’ and clusters of players to then overwhelm in the way that Diniz aims to? Or are we tactically agnostic, and our main focus is on the situations that may present themselves throughout the game?

“In every game I see things that are the way I want my team to play” Fabian said in his recent interview with the Albion Roar, “but it’s very difficult to play the perfect game, and what is perfect, who describes what is the definition of perfect?”.

An insightful comment, i thought. The ‘perfect game’ can only be delivered if you have a pre-existing and fixed concept of perfection. But if the idea is to blend and assimilate multiple approaches and formations to be pragmatically deployed as the situation dictates, judgement can only ever really be based on the outcome of the match, and not the aesthetic qualities of the play.

Compare and contrast this approach with that of Graham Potter’s when it came to being judged, or not, on the results.

There’s a vulnerability and honesty to some of the things Fabian says (and watch out for an exclusive in-person interview with him in Dogma Issue 14, publishing late Jan ‘25), including how he wishes to be critiqued. Very laudable but also somewhat unfortunate because what is true right now… is that our recent results have been lousy.

Which is perhaps where Daniel Niedzkowski fits into the picture, particularly in the here and now of this current moment in the season?

Fabian’s relative inexperience would be an issue if the general plan was a continuation of what came before, let alone if attempting something different. But now he has some expert assistance to call upon.

Described by David Weir on the club website as someone with ‘a wealth of experience both as an assistant coach and a coaching educator’ Niedzkowski’s role appears to be more wide-ranging than simply the men’s first team. ‘In his role he will also support the wider development of coach education and formulate a programme which will ensure the highest possible level of coaching from the academy upwards, across both our men’s and women’s teams’ said David Weir.

His work for the German FA included coaching the coaches, but only the ones earmarked for greatness. Including Fabian, of course.

In a recent interview Daniel explained “that a team's performance is made up of the sum of the players' good actions. The given tactics enable a player to interpret the stimuli presented by the game more quickly. The point of decision-making is closely linked to game intelligence and the balancing of what is required by the coach and what is possible in the current game situation”.

Play the situation. The perceived formation and proximity of your teammates is of less importance than the position and movement of the opposition. A set of beliefs that would appear to dovetail extremely nicely with Fabian’s ‘situationism’.

To improve upon the work of his predecessor is a huge challenge for Hurzeler. I presume the idea and hope is that he can make us better than Roberto’s team of 23/24, not worse.

Incremental improvement: higher than sixth place, and/or some silverware. This is our way.

Hopefully for Fabian (and us) Daniel Niedzkowski is exactly the person that he needs - starting this weekend and then the next little run of fixtures - to help him bring about this success.