Once tipped as a potential successor to Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, Pep Lijnders has not enjoyed a brilliant start as head coach of Red Bull Salzburg.
Expectations are sky high at Red Bull Salzburg, who sacked Gerhard Struber as head coach in April – despite the club sitting top of the league at the time. The club ultimately finished as runners-up, the first time in 11 seasons they had failed to take the Austrian Bundesliga title.
Lijnders was appointed in the summer in hopes he may be able to get them back on top of the pile, but have had an indifferent start to the season under his command.
Former Liverpool coach Pep Lijnders was tipped as a Klopp replacement – but he’s struggling in Salzburg right now
Summer signing Bobby Clark has come in for some speculative criticism since joining Pep Lijnders at Salzburg (Image credit: Getty Images)
Salzburg started the season brilliantly, earning qualification for the Champions League league phase by seeing off Twente and Dynamo Kyiv and winning their first three Bundesliga fixtures.
But things took a turn with their 3-2 defeat away to fellow Austrian giants Rapid Vienna, which was followed up by a 3-0 loss to Sparta Prague in Europe and a goalless draw away to domestic minnows WSG Tirol, who avoided relegation by just a single point last season.
Salzburg have become mainstays in the Champions League in recent seasons (Image credit: JOE KLAMAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Salzburg bounced back with a 4-0 cup win against lower-league Wiener Viktoria and a 2-0 league victory over Austria Vienna.
But Lijnders’ side have since fallen to back-to-back hammerings at the hands of French side Brest, who ran out 4-0 winners in the Champions League last Tuesday, and then table-topping Sturm Graz, who smashed Salzburg 5-0 on Sunday.
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Lijnders said after the game on the club website: “It was definitely one of the worst matches I’ve seen from us. It’s a long season, and lots of things have worked well already. We are wondering why we are a shadow of our true selves at the moment.”
Two new arrivals who followed Lijnders from Liverpool – midfielders Bobby Clark and Stefan Bajcetic – have come in for particular criticism.
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Austrian outlet Krone wrote last week that ‘some players have recently been puzzled about starting eleven call-ups’, using inductive reasoning to suggest that they are talking about the the former Reds.
The newspaper are so far not pointing the finger at Lijnders, however, instead writing that Salzburg have ‘lost their aura’ after being unable to ‘adequately replace their departures’ as they had in previous years.
This is Lijnders’ second job in the big seat in the dugout, with his spell back in his native Netherlands with NEC proving short-lived after he failed to earn promotion from the second tier.
