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The Manager

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If its true that Rodgers had a choice between Eto'o or Balotelli. Its as much the committees fault as it is Rodgers.
In hindsight Eto'o for free would have been a better signing.

But I'm still not sure how this set up works. This is from Tony Barrett;

"Before Liverpool shell out another penny, their entire transfer strategy and its implementation by committee needs to be assessed because the risks of allowing the current situation are far too great"

http://www.reddit.com/r/LiverpoolFC/comments/2mz953/why_liverpool_must_avoid_the_lure_of_january/

For more than twenty years, the scenario has been the same. As soon as Liverpool encounter problems, they look to the transfer market for a solution only to end up creating new ones. If the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, an army of psychiatrists should head to Anfield in January for football’s bi-annual outbreak of lunacy.
Having spent £120 million on players in the summer but turned the second best team in the country into the kind of uninspiring mid-table fodder that they were sweeping aside with contemptuous ease last season, Liverpool have conspired to put themselves in a position in which new signings are seen as the panacea to all their ills. Demands for further spending are inevitable given what is at stake but they also fly in the face of prevailing logic. The last thing Liverpool should do in six weeks time is get involved in the January sales.
At some point, someone at the club has to call a halt to one of the most ill-advised sprees since pools winner Viv Nicholson famously vowed to “Spend, spend, spend” and order an audit of all of the signings that Liverpool have made since Brendan Rodgers. The review should begin with an appraisal of every recruit and their impact on the team but it should not stop there. Before Liverpool shell out another penny, their entire transfer strategy and its implementation by committee needs to be assessed because the risks of allowing the current situation are far too great.
The best that can be said of the nine signings that Liverpool made last summer is that it is still to early to judge them,, even if the early signs are not positive. Equally, it is damning that only Alberto Moreno could be regarded as a qualified success. The argument that the others will improve in time is all well and good but Liverpool cannot claim that they were not expecting an encouraging impact from at least some of them. Nor can they hide behind transition given that other clubs, Southampton being the most obvious example, are flourishing despite profound change.
By common consensus, out of the 23 signings that Liverpool have made over the last two and a half years, only two – Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho – have been a resounding success. Given Sturridge is now a long- term absentee as a result of the injuries that have blighted him throughout his career and Coutinho is, like most at Liverpool, becoming an increasingly fitful and less effective presence without Luis Suárez, even their success stories are not without drawbacks. It is an appalling record.
Clearly, something is not working. Depending on personal choice, responsibility for Liverpool’s failings in the transfer market lies at the feet of either Rodgers, the club’s scouts or the committee. But if there are any fingers to be pointed, they should first be aimed in the direction of the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group (FSG) who not only determined Liverpool’s transfer strategy, they also put in place the young, up-and-coming manager, committee and scouting system that they wanted. If FSG are given credit for signing the cheques, as they should be, then they should also be questioned if the structure they implemented fails to provide value for money.
The complex, almost clandestine, nature of how Liverpool go about their transfer business makes it almost impossible to assign each signing to either the manager or the committee, even if the setup that isn’t as great a departure from the traditional model as some would have us believe.
The reality is that, as Rodgers himself freely admits, with the possible exception of Oussama Assiadi, not a single player has been signed against his wishes. He might have had to have his arm twisted on a few, Sturridge, Mario Balotelli and Mamadou Sakho being the most obvious examples, but, one way or another, they have all arrived with his blessing.
Many questions remain unanswered . What exactly does Rodgers have the final say on? How much choice does Liverpool’s strict wages policy afford him and his scouting team who are competing for talent with some of the highest payers in world football? If, as Rodgers has claimed, the “calculated gamble” on Balotelli was forced by a lack of options, what does that say about Liverpool’s strategy? Why, when Suárez signed a contract that guaranteed his departure if a club met his release clause, did their list of attacking options have a Plan A in Alexis Sanchez with the only Plan B being Loïc Remy, a player with historic and well documented medical issues, and little else? You could go on and on.
All of these issues would not be such a mounting concern if so many of the first-choice signings that Liverpool have made have not been so counterintuitive. After Rodgers said whereas other teams play with ten men and a goalkeeper his philosophy was “to play with eleven,” Liverpool went and signed Simon Mignolet who has shown no signs of being a sweeper keeper since his arrival. After he said last summer that he “would rather have one or two world class players than seven or eight who might not be able to help us,” Liverpool did the opposite. After paying £17 million for Sakho – described by Ian Ayre at the time as a “marquee signing” – Liverpool spent £20 million on another left sided centre back, Dejan Lovren, just 12 months later. Neither the departure of Suárez nor longstanding concerns about Sturridge’s durability prompted moves for players of their ilk, instead two of the most mobile forwards around have been replaced by two of the most immobile with Balotelli and Rickie Lambert being asked to fill a considerable void.
None of this adds up. In the fullness of time, we might come back to look at Liverpool’s current transfer strategy as an object lesson in proving people wrong, as a case study in spotting, nurturing and fulfilling talent for the long term betterment of a team which critics had claimed was destined to fail. Alternatively, the status quo could continue and the failings which by now appear all too obvious will continue to undermine their chances of success.
While the latter remains a genuine concern, Liverpool should examine what is going wrong and endeavour to put it right before even considering throwing good money after bad.
 
I think the problem's obvious: they've been reluctant to give Rodgers much power over transfers but given in to him over not having a sporting director, and ended up with this ridiculous compromise, where no-one in particular has either power or responsibility. They need to start actually directing the club properly, and not just expecting things to somehow come right.
 
I think the problem's obvious: they've been reluctant to give Rodgers much power over transfers but given in to him over not having a sporting director, and ended up with this ridiculous compromise, where no-one in particular has either power or responsibility. They need to start actually directing the club properly, and not just expecting things to somehow come right.
I'm not particularly convinced by the committee either to be fair. They do very well to sign young players with potential to grow, but they typically seem to target them a window or two later than a proper scouting department should.

It feels like we buy young players after every club decides they're worth the fee, rather than inquiring an year before at a third of the cost and loaning them back out. There's stories of us scouting these players for several years before pulling the trigger, so I'm not sure if we just have scouts watching most every match so they can claim that, or if it's an issue of somebody not being decisive enough.
 
I think the problem's obvious: they've been reluctant to give Rodgers much power over transfers but given in to him over not having a sporting director, and ended up with this ridiculous compromise, where no-one in particular has either power or responsibility. They need to start actually directing the club properly, and not just expecting things to somehow come right.

Yes, they've done a lot right, but they seem to have lost some backbone over this issue, the power structure needs to be clear and concise, at the moment we have some strange form of shared responsibility between Ian Ayre, Brendan and those on this committee and it seems like it's resulted in petty point scoring and a counter product power struggle between all parties.
 
I'm not particularly convinced by the committee either to be fair. They do very well to sign young players with potential to grow, but they typically seem to target them a window or two later than a proper scouting department should.

It feels like we buy young players after every club decides they're worth the fee, rather than inquiring an year before at a third of the cost and loaning them back out. There's stories of us scouting these players for several years before pulling the trigger, so I'm not sure if we just have scouts watching most every match so they can claim that, or if it's an issue of somebody not being decisive enough.


I guess it is also because it is significantly more difficult to identify young players a year before their so called "breakout year". Essentially you are targeting players who have just made their first team debut or on the cusp of making first team debut. Assessing how such players will perform at a higher level is significantly more risky. We did take a punt on one such talent - Alberto last year. Look how that panned out.
 
I guess it is also because it is significantly more difficult to identify young players a year before their so called "breakout year". Essentially you are targeting players who have just made their first team debut or on the cusp of making first team debut. Assessing how such players will perform at a higher level is significantly more risky. We did take a punt on one such talent - Alberto last year. Look how that panned out.

I didn't think Alberto was a bad buy though, he looked pretty good in limited spells. But we did pay a fair deal for him as well.

It just happened last year that we had multiple players in his mould already playing well so he didn't get the minutes. I know fitness was also a concern at one stage.
 
We are a famous football club. We live from extreme club values and good results. If we wanted mid table and stand by our values we would have Kenny. Rodgers is in to do a job about bringing us into CL and push for the title. His excuse for not doing this is that we play so many games that he can't work on the training ground. Hence he prefer not to be in CL? I am not sure what he is up to these days. I am not sure he knows it himself. But he is not doing a good job at the moment, and there is nothing to suggest he is to turn things around anytime soon. The clubs respons to the fans should be to push for the title. If that means sacrifying Rodgers, so be it.

Were you not around last season? Because I'm pretty sure the man we have in charge is the same man that brought us as close as anyone to winning the League for the first time in 24 years.

Rodgers deserves criticism because the results have been poor and performances even worse, just as he deserved all the praise he received when we were flying high last season. Works both ways.
What I hate is so-called making it personal and calling him every name under the sun on forums, twitter etc whilst completely what the man has done before.

Seriously, there'll be Liverpool fans licking their lips ready to stick the knife in further should we lose tonight.
 
Alberto was a dreadful buy, both in theory and practice.

I agree we need to buy players before their peak but that doesn't mean we need to buy them before they've played first team football.

Form outside of top divisions is difficult to judge and shouldn't be relied upon - the fact his club didn't think him worthy of first team football was a bigger thing to be concerned with. As was his lack of mobility, fitness and ability.
 
I think it's a little bit too easy to go and say we wasted 120M or whatever is.

I tend to agree with Peter in that I can see the sense in buying some of the young players we've signed and hopeful they will prove to be decent in the end. Perhaps not world beaters but decent at least.

The problem seems to be that there is a real disconnect between the transfer committee and Rodgers. Based on all the reports that have come out recently I find myself siding far more with the other members of the transfer committee because it seems like everyone is saying he just wanted us to sign a load of decidedly average Prem players. Whatever the situation is behind the scenes, we can't tolerate a situation where the club pays millions for players who the manager then makes a point of not playing. It's stupid and wasteful.
 
I'm not particularly convinced by the committee either to be fair. They do very well to sign young players with potential to grow, but they typically seem to target them a window or two later than a proper scouting department should.

It feels like we buy young players after every club decides they're worth the fee, rather than inquiring an year before at a third of the cost and loaning them back out. There's stories of us scouting these players for several years before pulling the trigger, so I'm not sure if we just have scouts watching most every match so they can claim that, or if it's an issue of somebody not being decisive enough.


Not sure if that's particularly demonstrated by the facts. Most of them around the £10m mark, only Markovic at anything like a premium price.

If we were leaving it too late we wouldn't be getting them for those kind of prices. Much earlier and we'd probably be upping the risk enough to defeat the object.
 
3 years I've been bleating on about this manager's inability to organise a defence, and that it's not the defenders, it's the coaching.



Rodgers is not a good enough coach in my view.
 
His moans are beginning to take on the bitter tones of Allardyce:



Rodgers: back to basics

Liverpool boss is fired up after criticism of players and himself, and expects to see a return to form against Arsenal

Jonathan Northcroft Published: 21 December 2014


THE symbol of Liverpool FC is, of course, a Liver bird but you wonder if it should be a circle instead. Everything at the club seems to come around again. On Friday, Brendan Rodgers, normally garrulous and generous, was scowling and short at his weekly briefing.

It was a deliberate message to the media who, he believes, are taking liberties with Liverpool. Fair enough — but we have been here before. Kenny Dalglish was master of the “F*** you” press conference. Rafa Benitez and Gerard Houllier knew how to ham up huffs for the cameras.

For seasoned reporters on Liverpool, Friday felt like a familiar point in the life cycle of one of the club’s managers. A staging post en route to the bitter end? There is still scope for Rodgers to be different. And maybe this is like the historian’s view of revolutions — that they actually don’t occur when people are on their knees (then, only survival matters), but rather as recovery begins. When Rodgers unclenched a little and talked off the record about his grievances, something encouraging was clear: the fire in his belly is back.

Rodgers has seen signs of his team beginning to “recapture our model of play”: in the fury of their futile rally, with 10 men, against Basel; in the quality of their possession despite defeat by Manchester United; in Wednesday’s win at Bournemouth that came with a bold formation and a 51-pass Raheem Sterling goal.

He thinks about the visitors to Anfield today, Arsenal, and the attacks on Arsène Wenger. Anger about how managers are treated rises within. “If you look at Arsène, he has been an iconic figure for football, he has been amazing. Some of the personal stuff he takes is disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful,” Rodgers said.

“He is a guy who fell over in a train station and they were videoing it and taking pictures of him and then people print it [images of Wenger slipping at Liverpool’s Lime Street station after his team lost 5-1 at Anfield in February went viral]. The other week he was at West Brom [when a banner calling for his sacking was unfurled] and that was disgraceful. As a leading figure in football, a real statesman of the game, it was really poor.

“But that is the modern world, unfortunately. Six or seven months ago I was the manager of the year and I was going to be this and that, tactically this and tactically that. Now, because we lost two world-class players, one out of the club and one injured, I am useless.”

He thinks of stories about Liverpool’s players and feels further aggrieved. Recent reports centring on Steven Gerrard and Mario Balotelli irritate, but his biggest issue is the treatment of Sterling: some days pilloried on the back pages, other days linked with Real Madrid.

“The criticism has been unbelievable, it has been ongoing. Sterling has been getting absolutely slaughtered, but the boy has been brilliant,” Rodgers said.

“He is another kid who is going to get destroyed [if the press has its way]. He has just turned 20. He was the extra log on the fire for us last year, he was outstanding and this year he has been very good. On his own really.”

Whether journalists can be blamed for comments by the England manager, about Sterling being “tired”, or for a publicised impasse over a contract extension is another matter. But Rodgers continued: “Raheem doesn’t discuss his future, he is not getting too big for his boots, it is not him. You should know that by now.

“People ask if he’s unhappy. You couldn’t see a happier guy. He is not into discussing deals and money and yet I read about ‘greedy Sterling’.”

A thread running through the United and Bournemouth games, and the late revival against Basel, was Rodgers shifting Sterling to the role of withdrawn No 9 and playing without a conventional striker. Even when Balotelli came on at Old Trafford it was to operate wide in a front three.

Sterling has taken to his new job, putting his poor finishing at Old Trafford behind him to score twice in midweek. “He can play with his back to goal but the key thing is that pace. That real penetration and suffocation [when pressing opponents],” Rodgers enthused, noting Lionel Messi plays in a similar way for Barcelona.

It has been a bold piece of improvisation by Rodgers and maybe, to be true to himself as a coach, that’s what he needs: to be bold. At Bournemouth he also went with midfielders rather than full-backs in the wide positions and Kolo Toure, whose value has re-emerged, leading the defence.

“A British coach playing 3-4-3? He must have fallen upon that system, a bit of luck . . .” said Rodgers, sarcastically. “Not that I might have been awake studying into the early hours thinking, how can we do it? A foreign coach would be a tactical genius. Playing [Lazar] Markovic wide and Sterling as a free No 9, moving with penetration. Playing with a box midfield and a back three. I must have just dreamt that and thrown them out there.”

Circles. Arsenal’s last visit to Anfield produced the performance that transformed Liverpool and their manager into serious contenders. Now Arsenal arrive just when they are being written off. Rodgers believes that he is nearer to the magic of the 5-1 than many think.

“If you look at the speed in our game the other night, the tempo and intensity of our pressing and work, it was much closer to that. It is a fair point that people are seeing that we haven’t been as dynamic as the last couple of years, but there are simple reasons for that.”

Those are the bedding in of new signings — “we see players starting to improve slowly like Markovic, we know we’re going to develop over the coming games” — selling Luis Suarez and losing Daniel Sturridge to injury. Sturridge is in Boston, working on his rehabilitation, and should return next month. In the meantime, Rodgers will use Balotelli, Fabio Borini and Rickie Lambert as cover while giving Sterling a targeted rest.

“He [Sturridge] is going to be a big player. You look at [Jürgen] Klopp’s example at Dortmund. There are certain players that will move on each year but the minute he takes [Robert] Lewandowski out, he is a world-class player and sometimes it doesn’t matter about the other players.

“You see where Dortmund have been, how they’re struggling. A team that came through unexpectedly like we did last year, improving and developing. You take [Suarez and Sturridge] out and it is a massive, massive loss to any group. It has taken us that bit of time to try and recover our way of working, to find the balance to produce those types of performances and results — all without much coaching time,” Rodgers said.

He was talkative again, by then more like his old self, but still fired up. Their old selves but fired up: that’s what Liverpool need.
 
You are the captain of a ship. You are heading towards an iseberg. It's off in the distance, but you are heading for it. You tell the guy steering to change direction. He does nothing and you keep heading for it. Do you replace him at the helm, or do you leave him and wait to see if he changes course before it's too late?
That's a poor analogy. We haven't been heading in a straight line, so much as careering all over the place.
 
I'd like to jump onto Brendan's bandwagon and say some of our fans have been absolutely disgraceful, in the way they've criticised Brodge.

Are you lot supporting the club, the manager or the success ?

How different are you than say, being a glory-hunter ?

When someone has stumbled, for whatever reason, what do you do ? Step on him and hurl self-righteous abuse ? Or stfu and put your words into action and help them back up ?

Brendan's not perfect. Nobody is. He's made some atrociously bad decisions but who hasn't ? And he's right in saying the circumstances that he's had to work with under this season, has rendered his job a huge challenge. He didn't become a bad manager overnight. Stand by him, the club and give him at least the end of the season before dishing your verdict out. Until then, please wear the badge and stand up and be counted, you muppets !
 
I'd like to jump onto Brendan's bandwagon and say some of our fans have been absolutely disgraceful, in the way they've criticised Brodge.

Are you lot supporting the club, the manager or the success ?

How different are you than say, being a glory-hunter ?

When someone has stumbled, for whatever reason, what do you do ? Step on him and hurl self-righteous abuse ? Or stfu and put your words into action and help them back up ?

Brendan's not perfect. Nobody is. He's made some atrociously bad decisions but who hasn't ? And he's right in saying the circumstances that he's had to work with under this season, has rendered his job a huge challenge. He didn't become a bad manager overnight. Stand by him, the club and give him at least the end of the season before dishing your verdict out. Until then, please wear the badge and stand up and be counted, you muppets !



Almost as irritating are these incredibly brave and self-admiring blasts at an unnamed mass of muppets. Do you mean people on this site? Who are the ones who are little more than glory hunters and disgraceful abusers of the manager? Or are they elsewhere, in which case, what the feck is the point of excoriating them on here? As far as I can see, most on here praise Rodgers when he gets something right and criticise him when he gets something wrong.
 
The signings are bad but it's being compounded by Rodgers' inability to fix problems with the defence. It can't always be personnel as a Rodgers likes to make out and our vulnerability at set pieces is incessant.

Given the amount of analysis about it, it's dumbfounding that he isn't addressing it effectively.

Rodgers needs to work harder on us without the ball rather than the 'death by football' mantra as we've been found out by every other manager in Europe.
 
Of course, nobody is above criticism when things go pear-shaped. But gone are the days when loyalty, patience and faithfulness extends to more than judging someone based on a set of targets and KPIs.

There's already a fair few who are calling for his head. How is that showing support to the manager and/or the club when the chips are down ?

I emphatise with Brendan in that interview.
 
He may have lost a world class striker in Suarez and a very good one in Sturridge but the defence is still shite and has been throughout his tenure. He avoided talking about the criticism of the defence though as he hasn't got an excuse for it. And again with the lack of coaching time! It's not like these are semi pros that he only gets to coach after they've finished work. He says that he expects criticism when things don't go well and deserves it when results are not good then whinges about the very thing he says he expected and deserved. He is right though about Sterling's treatment by the press but it's no surprise that the press descend on teams and players when things don't go well.
 
You support the club, not the manager. Because you want the club to do well you want the manager to do well, that's obvious. He's defensive in that interview - rashly so, IMHO - because he has nothing to cite to shut up the hacks. No trophies, no great achievements. That's the problem when you do hire a relatively untested manager to head a world famous club. All you have is the here and now. But the response, I'd suggest, is to keep the head down and fight. You won't win that kind of media battle. You need to shut up and get results. I don't mean that in a sneering way. It's just how it is. If you think the hacks don't appreciate your coaching ability, point at the pitch, don't talk about it. Houllier used to moan about all the ex-players who failed to say how great his dire 0-0 draws were. Well look at last season - were any ex-players moaning about the manager? Of course not, on the contrary, they queued up to praise him. They always will. There's nothing irrational about these things. It's just that Liverpool is of a stature that the blame, like the praise, gets magnified. If you enjoy the latter, then take the former, too.
 
Of course, nobody is above criticism when things go pear-shaped. But gone are the days when loyalty, patience and faithfulness extends to more than judging someone based on a set of targets and KPIs.

There's already a fair few who are calling for his head. How is that showing support to the manager and/or the club when the chips are down ?

I emphatise with Brendan in that interview.


If I look through your post history, will I find evidence of this tolerance and patience you're preaching?
 
3 years I've been bleating on about this manager's inability to organise a defence, and that it's not the defenders, it's the coaching.



Rodgers is not a good enough coach in my view.


Honestly, what they point out in that clip you learn in junior football. To push over must be one of the few things we can still do as old boys players.

Neville says it, we don't defend as a team. There's zero correspondence between the back 4 and the engine room. So they mark bodies instead of closing space as a team.

In my opinion it's about getting a decent DM/HM and choose two CB's to build around. Nothing good will happen until that is established.

This is and never was about the back 4. It's bigger than that.
 
My faith in Rodgers was deeply shaken when I saw his teamsheet for the home game against Basel. Everybody present could see that it was very poor team selection for that particular match.
 
If I look through your post history, will I find evidence of this tolerance and patience you're preaching?

I've always stood by Brendan and still am. Hence, my signature.

Yes, I've also hurled abuse at him, like most fans did, especially during the heat of the moment...but that's mostly in playful jest.

I wouldn't have 'preached' if I did not stand by Brendan. And the word 'preached' was unnecessary.
 
You support the club, not the manager. Because you want the club to do well you want the manager to do well, that's obvious. He's defensive in that interview - rashly so, IMHO - because he has nothing to cite to shut up the hacks. No trophies, no great achievements. That's the problem when you do hire a relatively untested manager to head a world famous club. All you have is the here and now. But the response, I'd suggest, is to keep the head down and fight. You won't win that kind of media battle. You need to shut up and get results. I don't mean that in a sneering way. It's just how it is. If you think the hacks don't appreciate your coaching ability, point at the pitch, don't talk about it. Houllier used to moan about all the ex-players who failed to say how great his dire 0-0 draws were. Well look at last season - were any ex-players moaning about the manager? Of course not, on the contrary, they queued up to praise him. They always will. There's nothing irrational about these things. It's just that Liverpool is of a stature that the blame, like the praise, gets magnified. If you enjoy the latter, then take the former, too.

Ever tried to manage a team while constantly being undermined internally and externally ? It doesn't necessarily have to be football. It's all the same.

It's very tough and a shit environment to work in. Even the 'great' Ferguson struggled with his many critics throughout his career, in one way or another. At some point, you have to adopt a siege mentality. You have to show leadership by being that shield that takes pressure off the team. E.g. what he did with Raheem.

Give Brendan until the end of the season, is all I'm saying.

I understand that there's serious concerns raised about him. Even I have done the same in the past. But there's a difference between constructive criticism and calling for his head every week. At some point, it gets tiresome. And I don't mean yourself. I'm referring to the doom-merchants like Redninja, etc.
 
I've always stood by Brendan and still am. Hence, my signature.

Yes, I've also hurled abuse at him, like most fans did, especially during the heat of the moment...but that's mostly in playful jest.

I wouldn't have 'preached' if I did not stand by Brendan. And the word 'preached' was unnecessary.


Surely the same principle applies to players as well though.
 
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