Hurzeler 'open minded' on tactical approach this coming campaign

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Nick Szczepanik

2025-07-05T08:00+01:00

Fabian Hurzeler led Albion to an eighth place finish in the Premier League last season. 📷 by James Boardman.

Albion head coach Fabian Hurzeler says that he will keep an open mind about tactical options and personnel decisions as he approaches his second pre-season in the Amex hot seat.

New arrivals offer different possibilities in team formations, while he insists that the door is open for academy graduates and returning loan players to force their way into his plans.

This time last year Yasin Ayari had made only a handful of first-team appearances but an impressive pre-season transformed the Sweden midfielder into a Premier League regular.

And while Hurzeler has his ideas in advance of the new season, he remains open to changing his plans if better options become available.

Yasin Ayari made 34 Premier League appearances last season. 📷 by James Boardman.

“Of course you have a thought and then you have a plan how you want to do it,” the head coach said. “But sometimes football is unpredictable.

“So you have to keep an open mind and you need to stay open-minded to find the right solution, because in football there are always dynamics and you can't always see the dynamics there are.”

When he arrived from St Pauli a year ago, it was expected that he would employ a similar formation to the three-at-the-back system he had used successfully in Bundesliga 2.

That proved the exception rather than the rule last season, but it does not mean that he will prefer a 4-2-3-1 formation again this time round, especially with the arrival of two new central defenders in Olivier Boscagli from PSV Eindhoven and Diego Coppola from Hellas Verona.

Fabian Hurzeler talking to Olivier Boscagli at the training ground. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

“I think we changed it also last season, so we always want to have this flexibility,” he said. “And I think we have players in the squad that give us this flexibility.

“We bring now, for example, Boscagli, he’s a left-footed player. We didn't have this before, so this will be interesting to see how this team develops, how this team fits together, and we also need to use the pre-season to get the right formation, to get the right people on the pitch."