Why Bristol City are taking an almighty gamble appointing Gerhard Struber as their new manager

It’s been a fortnight since Liam Manning left Ashton Gate to take up the vacant managerial post at Norwich City, and reports suggest that Bristol City’s search for a successor is close to reaching its conclusion.

The Daily Telegraph’s Midlands football reporter, John Percy, claims that the Robins are set to announce that Austrian coach Gerhard Struber, who has previous second-tier experience with Barnsley, as their new manager this week.

Struber had been previously been reported to be one of the two top contenders for the job, alongside former Luton Town manager Rob Edwards. Edwards, for his part, is also believed to be among the front-runners for the vacancy at the Riverside Stadium, with Sky Sports reporting that he “leads a shortlist of four” to be succeed Michael Carrick - either way, it now seems as though a final decision has been made. Whether it’s the right one remains to be seen.

Why Gerhard Struber may be the wrong man for Bristol City

Best known to English fans for his spell with Barnsley, Struber took charge of the Tykes in the November of the 2019/20 season and spent the majority of the campaign lodged firmly in the relegation zone before surviving only due to a 12-point deduction which was handed to Wigan Athletic.

The 48-year-old, who enjoyed a modest playing career as a midfielder in his home country, was then poached by MLS side New York Red Bulls in October 2020, spending nearly three years in the United States before taking charge of New York’s sister side RB Salzburg.

Back in Austria, he lasted just over seven months before he was fired with his club top of the Bundesliga table – and in May, he was once again sacked despite a seemingly promising league position when his next employers, eventual German 2.Bundesliga champions 1.FC Köln, removed him with two matches left in the season despite the club being in the automatic promotion places.

At first glance, it may appear that Struber has been rather unfortunate to be dismissed twice in relatively quick succession despite leading sides in promising league positions, but the reality is that he has repeatedly frustrated his club’s fans with his tactics and struggled to produce high-quality performances consistently over the course of a full season.

In New York, his side persistently struggled to score goals and although they made the MLS play-offs in both of his first two seasons, they opened the 2023 season with just one win in their first 11 matches. As such, Struber was sacked amid mounting supporter discontent and concerns over his judgement after he failed to substitute Belgian player Dante Vanzenir during a match after the forward used a racial slur against an opponent. Struber would later claim that he was not aware of the full situation surrounding Vanzenir, who was suspended by the league as a result of the incident.

Despite declining results and attacking struggles in the United States, the Red Bull group then installed him as manager of their Salzburg side, who had dominated the Austrian Bundesliga for a decade. Although Struber was fired with the team at the top of the table, they were only ahead of Sturm Graz on goal difference, had won just one of their Champions League group stage games, and would go on to miss out on the league title for the first time in a decade and see their monopoly on Austrian football broken.

At Köln, a sturdy defence helped Struber to lead his team on a two-month undefeated run over the winter of the 2024/25 season, but performances and results tailed off sharply with the finish line in sight. Concerned that the club would likely miss out on promotion if they didn’t make a change, Struber was dismissed with the club in second place after a dismal 1-1 draw with already-relegated Jahn Regensburg. They would go on to win their final two matches, and the division, without Struber.

The pattern of performances under Struber has often been a relatively promising start, followed by rapid regression and dissatisfaction among fans with the quality of the football played, with his ability to marshal an attack under constant scrutiny throughout his managerial career. Success has often been fleeting at best, and at teams such as Barnsley he never managed to maintain a consistent level of results. He has offered little clear evidence that he can play attractive football or finish a job once started, and his track record does not encourage immediate belief that he would be able to maintain the momentum that Bristol City enjoyed under Manning.

The defensive qualities Gerhard Struber would bring to Ashton Gate

While few supporters of the teams that Struber has taken charge of would offer him a glowing reference, there is no doubt that he does know how to organise a defence. Typically operating out of a 3-4-3 or 4-3-3 formation, Struber’s teams seldom concede goals in large numbers and discontent has mostly centred on his style of attacking play - or lack of it - with even his biggest critics acknowledging that his teams tend to keep it tight at the back.

He believes firmly in a high coordinated press and encourages his teams to work hard to win the ball high up the park, a method which has often proved effective even if results have generally proven to be unsustainable in the long run. His teams defend from the front and are asked to do a considerable amount of running. That may take a toll, but it helps to keep the flow of clean sheets coming.

For a side like Bristol City, whose performance in the 2024/25 campaign will encourage ambitions of another play-off run despite the club’s relatively limited resources, there could be a reasonable hope that a tight defence combined with an emphasis on work rate could produce the kind of results that might elude a coach hoping to play a more free-flowing brand of football – but he has yet to demonstrate that his teams can maintain their intensity and discipline over the course of a long campaign.

Given that his apparent adversary for the position, Rob Edwards, has already shown that he can take a team with one of the league’s less extensive budgets and lift them up towards the Premier League, it would seem as though the former Watford and Luton head coach would have been a more natural choice, and while Edwards’ tenure at Kenilworth Road may have ended in disappointing fashion when he failed to arrest a slide which saw Luton plunge to successive relegations from the top flight to League One, but he has at least shown that he can take a squad which lacks star players and elevate them.

Given the way things panned out over the course of 2024/25, it’s fair to question whether Edwards would have been the ideal appointment, but he has a track record of success in the Championship which Struber cannot boast – and the circumstances under which the Austrian has left his three jobs since leaving Barnsley may well sound some alarms. Bristol City, who were unable to buy new players during January due to financial constraints, can’t simply sign attacking players good enough to score the goals that Struber’s system often struggle to produce by itself. Nor can the club click its collective fingers add depth over the winter if there are signs of weariness with in the squad after months of their incoming manager’s relentless style.

Clearly, there were people within the Red Bull hierarchy that believed in his abilities as a coach regardless of his struggles in Barnsley and then in New York, and he still set Köln on the path to promotion before things went south – but there were red flags waved on two continents along the way. Appointing Struber represents a significant risk, a gamble on his methods and apparent potential as a coach over the appointment of a manager whose CV makes it more evident that they would steer the ship in the right direction.