Brighton send Roberto De Zerbi message to Chelsea, Man Utd & Liverpool | Football

Brighton CEO Paul Barber says the club are ‘confident’ in their ability to keep hold of Roberto De Zerbi, but ‘understand’ that the manager may have ambitions to ‘take his skill base elsewhere’ down the line.

‘But I think Roberto loves Brighton, he loves the club, the people, the infrastructure that we have.

‘And there is this sense that the work he is doing is good for him as well as for us.

‘But that still means at some point in the future he may choose to take that skill base that he has elsewhere – we understand that.’

Barber says it’s the first time that he has ever had experienced a manager ‘push expectations publicly’ like De Zerbi has done across his tenure in the Brighton hot seat.

‘It is the most unusual experience I’ve had in my career,’ he added.

‘A lot of time the chairman or chief executive will be speaking publicly to give their coach some air cover, setting expectations at a reasonable level in the hope they are exceeded. Roberto is the opposite.

‘He comes to me and says, “Why are you talking about top ten, why don’t you talk about top six?”.

‘It’s the first time in my club career where I am almost encouraged by the head coach to push expectations publicly.

‘He believes that will drive the players, the staff, all of us to be even better.’

According to Barber, De Zerbi has taken Brighton to ‘another level’ since replacing Potter but the club have a plan in place for when a rival club successfully prise the Italian away from the south coast.

‘Roberto is doing a fantastic job,’ he went on.

‘The evolution from the work Graham [Potter] did, which was outstanding, on top of the work Chris [Hughton] did, which was outstanding, has taken us to another level.

‘With that comes more risk, on and off the field. The risk on the field is obvious. We have a very open, attacking style of play and occasionally that will be unpicked.

‘Off the field, because what he is doing is so attractive, so high profile, so talked about, it then creates risk for us in a different way in that Roberto becomes very desirable.

‘But we are aware of that and I have said for years now, the better we do, the higher profile our people become on and off the field, and ironically the more vulnerable we become to losing them.

‘But we know that and we are not stupid. We understand it, but we are confident in our ability to keep people. The contracts are good, the mechanisms to secure the contracts are good.

‘If people are poached they don’t go quickly, or cheaply in some cases, and we always look to a plan that we have in place for that eventuality.’