Southampton manager Ralph Hassenhuttl has been bizarrely accused of not being criticised – because he “looks like Jurgen Klopp.”
Hassenhuttl’s Saints side suffered a Premier League record-equalling 9-0 defeat to Southampton on Tuesday – the second successive season that his team have been on the receiving end of such a thrashing after Leicester City defeated them by the same scoreline last term.
However, one pundit has claimed that the South Coast gaffer’s coaching methods are spared closer scrutiny because of his supposed resemblance to Liverpool boss Klopp who has steered his team to the Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, FIFA Club World Cup and Premier League title over the past couple of years.
In a week that Burnley manager Sean Dyche went off-piste in colourful fashion during a pre-match press conference to discuss the merits of playing lookalike games after a reporter told him that he was the spitting image of Simply Red frontman Mick Hucknall, talkSPORT presenter Adrian Durham targeted Hassenhuttl in a peculiar rant.
Declaring that English managers such as Newcastle United’s Steve Bruce or West Bromwich Albion’s Sam Allardyce (who once claimed he’d have a better chance at landing the top jobs if he was called Allardici) would be branded “dinosaurs” if they’d have been on the receiving end of the kind of drubbing that Hassenhuttl suffered at Old Trafford, Hampshire Live quote Durham as saying: "If Sam Allardyce or Steve Bruce had lost 9-0 in successive seasons what would people be saying?
“People would be saying they are dinosaurs, people would be saying they should be sacked, that they shouldn't get any jobs anymore.
"But Ralph Hasenhuttl loses 9-0 two season running and he's the hipster's favourite and it is not really his fault, it is the recruitment's fault or it is VAR's fault or it is a COVID season so it is that.
"What? You can't criticise Ralph Hasenhuttl? What? Because he looks like Klopp? No, I am sorry, you can criticise Ralph Hasenhuttl."
