‘Great knowledge of the club’: Michel Der Zakarian’s 2022/23 Montpellier return – scout report

Following a poor run in which they picked up just one Ligue 1 win in six games, Montpellier have made the decision to part ways with Romain Piteau, who took charge of a total of 11 games for La Paillade, bringing back former boss Michel Der Zakarian as his replacement.

Der Zakarian had been in charge of Brest since leaving Montpellier, where he was previously in charge from May 2017 to May 2021, until his dismissal from the Brittany-based outfit back in October. At the time of writing, the 59-year-old is set to take charge of his first game back in the hot seat at Montpellier against his former club, Brest, this weekend.

Montpellier managed to win Ligue 1 back in 2011/12 under René Girard but after their title victory, they slumped back into being a mid-lower table side. They achieved their best league finish post-2012 (sixth) under Der Zakarian in 2018/19, with the former Montpellier and Armenia defender guiding La Paillade to two consecutive eighth-place finishes the two seasons after that and a 10th-place finish the season before.

In the campaign prior to Der Zakarian’s initial arrival in 2017, Montpellier ended up in 15th place, while they finished 13th last term under Olivier Dall’Oglio. The club never finished outside the top half under Der Zakarian during his time at Stade de la Mosson — something that can be said by no other coach to have finished at least one season as Montpellier boss since Henry Kasperczak who guided La Paillade to an eighth-place finish and a seventh-place finish in 1990/91 and 1991/92, respectively.

Now, Der Zakarian takes over a team in 15th place, just two points clear of the relegation zone, embarking on a critical relegation-battle six-pointer with Brest this weekend, with Montpellier and Brest currently level on 20 points.

This tactical analysis and team-focused scout report aims to highlight some of the main areas in which La Paillade have struggled this term, resulting in their participation in a relegation fight. We’ll look at some of the most pressing issues Der Zakarian is being presented with immediately on his return to the club he’s got “great knowledge of”, as explained by Montpellier’s website when announcing his return and look at some ways in which the 59-year-old may look to solve those problems.

Ligue 1’s highest xGA

Montpellier have conceded the fourth-most goals (45) of any Ligue 1 side this term. However, they’ve also conceded the highest amount of expected goals (46.19) in France’s top flight, indicating effectively that their defence has failed to prevent their opponents from creating good goalscoring chances with regularity.

Montpellier have conceded 12.31 shots per 90 this term — the fourth-most in the league — and they’ve conceded 0.157 xG per shot — the joint-highest average shot quality conceded in Ligue 1.

When Der Zakarian was at Montpellier the first time around, his team generally maintained quite a low xGA. In 2018/19, they conceded 43.52 xG — the third-lowest in the league — while their 0.103 xGA per shot was the second-lowest in the French top flight. Meanwhile, in 2019/20, Montpellier conceded 36.41 xG (10th-highest) while conceding 0.106 xG per shot (eighth-lowest).

Der Zakarian is a coach who stresses the prioritisation of defensive organisation and discipline first and foremost if you were to describe him in a nutshell. He’s a system-focused coach but not one with ideals of conventionally beautiful football, but rather one with a specific idea in mind of how to grind out results and make his team greater than the sum of its parts; through his system, he believes he can get the most out of his players and the resources available to him.

The 59-year-old’s Montpellier side got less and less aggressive in their pressing throughout his tenure at the club. In his final season, they had by far the highest PPDA in Ligue 1 at 19.13. One could argue that the pressing got too passive during this final season but in any event, we wouldn’t expect Der Zakarian to be endorsing a high-intensity pressing style with lots of turnovers inside the final third. We’ll typically find his teams defending a bit deeper and inviting the opposition forward a bit more before deciding to engage.

A Der Zakarian side will defend in the mid-block, engaging at around the halfway line. We see an example of this from 2020/21 in figure 1. The opposition, again ironically Brest, were allowed to play to the halfway line with little-to-no pressure on the backline. Montpellier’s defensive block shifted backwards, retaining compactness between the lines and discipline to continue protecting their designated zone, not jumping out and sacrificing the defensive system’s solidity.

Each aspect of the defensive block here was key to the system’s success. One player acting out of control and jumping prematurely could open up space for the opposition to exploit and attack through. Like the blocks of a Jenga tower, the players must take care when removing themselves from their collective structure as doing so too aggressively or carelessly can have disastrous consequences for the unit.