Liverpool Need A Proven Winner (Like Klopp) By Paul Tomkins

http://tomkinstimes.com/2015/10/liverpool-need-a-proven-winner-like-klopp/

By Paul Tomkins.

My main worry with the appointment of Brendan Rodgers three years ago, and an argument I made until about halfway through the 2013/14 season – when I started to “believe” – was that Liverpool needed a proven winner. It’s a job that comes with a lot of pressure, and while proof of past success is no guarantee it can be replicated, it’s usually a pretty good sign that someone knows what they’re doing.

My understanding in 2012 was that Liverpool were looking for a world-class name to become Director of Football (or a title along those lines), under whom a younger man would work. Whether that was then abandoned as a concept, or fudged when Brendan Rodgers stated in his first press conference that he would not be working under a DoF, the result was that Liverpool had no discernible gravitas. The whole football side of things was more-or-less in the hands of one man, and while he spoke a good game, his CV was thin.

He did a great job of getting a small club to over-perform with Swansea, but as I wrote well before then (in 2010), this type of achievement is something that people like Sam Allardyce, Roy Hodgson and countless others had racked up, and they found life much harder when expectations were higher; their ideas didn’t upscale.

And in fairness to Rodgers, he did a better job than either of those two, and countless other “overpromoted Peters” from within the Premier League (including David Moyes, another I warned would suffer the same fate; a talented manager, but not suited to the highest level of pressure). Indeed, it looked like Rodgers’ ideas could upscale. At least he valued technique, pace and pressing. He had big ideas.

But by the end, it was no longer clear what Rodgers was trying to do, and whether he himself knew – such can be the engulfing fog of pressure when things start going wrong in a high-profile job. His teams no longer seemed to press in unison. They often lacked pace in key areas. And although he had spells where clean sheets were racked up, there was no consistent sense of defensive organisation.

In some ways he may have been lucky to last the summer, but it seemed fair enough that he got a chance to show if last season was a mere blip. It just meant that he had to be doing better than 10th after eight games, in addition to three unremarkable cup games; games that were not necessarily that important in themselves, but which still failed to show any sign of progress.

Rodgers arrived with the aura – the swagger – of a winner, but he hadn’t won anything. My fears were somewhat allayed by the way he spoke – not the cliches and riddles, but the forcefulness of his personality, and the way he carried himself, which projected confidence. I genuinely warmed to him.

But then came Being:Liverpool, and he was exposed as something that people took to be a fraud; Brenton Rodgers, etc., with the management-speak that people found cringeworthy. Here was a young manager in his first major position, getting to know the club and its players, whilst his every move was filmed for a worldwide audience. It did him no favours, just as it would probably have done very few managers any favours. In some ways the programme was a good idea, to help spread interest in the club at a time when global income was vital to stop falling further behind richer rivals, but it left a band of critics with a lingering sense of distrust of the manager.

His early transfer work was fairly disastrous, and on top of not wanting Daniel Sturridge that first summer he tried to swap Jordan Henderson for Clint Dempsey. (I noted yesterday, in my initial reaction piece to his sacking, that his transfer business could have been the main reason he lost his job.)

One flaw I noticed in his appointment from a mid-ranking club (albeit one he lifted to that stature), which I mentioned at the time but didn’t cover yesterday, was the usual zeal to go back and raid his old employers. This is common for managers, and indeed, is socommon that it should be part of the thinking when it comes to appointments.

Rafa Benítez had worked with Luis Garcia at Tenerife. Louis van Gaal brought Danny Blind and Memphis Depay from his Holland squad. Arsene Wenger arrived and instantly brought in players he’d worked with in France. But Rodgers wanted Joe Allen (which was fair enough – he’s a talented player), Fabio Borini, Ryan Bertrand and Ashley Williams, two of whom he’d worked with at Chelsea’s youth team before they were offloaded as failures to make the grade. Any one of these players on his own would perhaps be fine; to go after all four rang alarm bells. Whatever he saw in Fabio Borini wasn’t replicated in a red shirt.

And as Rodgers’ coaching was limited to England, he couldn’t bring with him the underpriced gems from another league, in the way that Benítez did with Alonso, Reina and Torres, Wenger did with Vieira and Anelka from France, or Mourinho did with various players from Portugal and Spain.

This is one of my major bugbears with British coaches: they want to be respected and taken seriously, yet so few of them even dare to try life beyond these shores. (Our players are no better; and going to America at 35 doesn’t count.) Simply being foreign doesn’t automatically make a manager better, but it often means a broader range of experiences.

To his credit, Rodgers is fairly well-travelled and speaks Spanish, but his inexperience was always likely to be exposed without the weight of a senior figure working above him. Yet he did not want that help. Perhaps had that arrangement been in place, his tenure would have been over even sooner – who knows? Also, he didn’t appoint a major coaching name, with vast experience to draw from, to sit alongside him on the bench. He chose Colin Pascoe.

The richer the Premier League gets, the less sense it makes to shop here – struggling clubs don’t need the money like they used to. And Liverpool have spent too much of the past five years buying from these shores. Some English players are a necessity, to give the club some kind of identity, but I see no advantage in prior Premier League experience when assessing which buys over the past 10-20 years have proved successful.

I don’t agree with Jamie Carragher’s assertion that Liverpool have become like Spurs, buying young players to sell for a profit – not least because the club’s best buys in the past 10-20 years have almost all been young players, aged 20-23 (it was the same under Bob Paisley), and anyone sold has been because they wanted to go. Liverpool held strong over Luis Suarez in 2013, and did the same with Raheem Sterling, until the price was too good to refuse. Indeed, had some of the more experienced players and older purchases been better, then it might have been easier to hold onto the bigger names.

I don’t know why 20-23 year olds make for the best buys, but my guess is that they are old enough to be ready, but not as yet worn down by injuries or jaded by success. Perhaps they are less nervous – the fearlessness of youth – and more adaptable, too. Perhaps crucially, the transfer fees they have to justify are usually lower, because they are yet to have “done it all” (and this is where they differ from managers, who aren’t relying on athletic skills).

Torres, Alonso, Henderson, Suarez, Coutinho, Sturridge, Reina, Agger, Lucas, Mascherano, Skrtel, Sakho, Moreno, Ings, Can – all are in that age bracket (whilst Sterling was just 15, and the successful youth graduates like Gerrard and Carragher were eased into the team in their teens). Just three from that list are English; just three had prior Premier League experience. And of those, Daniel Sturridge was about as non-English as you can get in terms of technique.

None arrived for an outlandish fee. (Indeed, the most expensive younger players the Reds have bought in the Premier League era, once TPI inflation is applied – Carroll, Heskey and Cissé, all at fees ranging from £40m-£50m in 2015 money – were perhaps weighed down by an unhelpfully large price tag, although none was quite good enough to consistently overcome that pressure.)

Sakho, Moreno, Ings and Can are all still improving, and aren’t at the level of the others, but they definitely look amongst Liverpool’s better players right now – whereas overpriced players like Lovren and Lallana – “finished article” purchases past their mid-20s – have been pushed to the fringes.

Getting players young, and having them grow into your club, seems vital. The trouble is hanging onto them, of course – and that’s got harder since 2010, when Manchester City effectively reduced the available Champions League spaces for other clubs from four to three, at a time when Liverpool fell away under the gross mismanagement of Gillett and Hicks; just as it got harder when Chelsea’s spending guaranteed them a place from 2003 onwards (although maybe it’s now their turn to have a wobble).

That’s why Lucas became emblematic to me. You have to have some players who know the club, and who have grown up in these surroundings; and why I was so surprised that he was out of Rodgers’ plans up to the point Henderson got injured, and almost out the door. As he so frequently did, Rodgers did a u-turn, and it was the right decision; but the vice-captain’s armband was given straight to James Milner, who had just joined the club. Milner should have been left with his own form to focus on, as he settled into the club.

The other trouble, as I’ve stressed many times, is that if you have too many young players you will be lacking in experience; and most of the best sides average an age somewhere between 25 and 30; with the average age of Premier League champions 26.5. So it’s a difficult balance to strike, when most of the new arrivals are young. And it’s been made harder by the phasing out of Carragher and Gerrard, and the sale of Suarez, now at his peak.

Rodgers arrived at Liverpool when the club was already in its Champions League exile, and while this was not his fault – indeed, it made life harder – this presented another problem: he didn’t have the gravitas to attract the best players, even when the Reds dideventually qualify.

Of course, not that he was the sole problem: Liverpool, as a location, is not glamorous to cosmopolitan players, and the club didn’t have a recent history of being regulars in the competition. But had Rodgers himself had more pulling power, it might have helped with the 2014 recruitment, at a time when the club could offer Europe’s elite competition.

The big names who played for Rodgers seemed to respond to him, but most were already at the club (Suarez, Gerrard, Sterling, Henderson) or foist upon him by the committee (Sturridge, Coutinho). Once Carragher retired, Suarez left, and Gerrard emigrated, there was an even greater lack of gravitas associated with the club. It says a lot that Rodgers was having to get Gerrard to text big-name players in attempts to tap them up, presumably because they wouldn’t have heard of him, or been sufficiently impressed; yet we all know the story of Rafa Benítez calling Fernando Torres, and Torres’ desire to play for his compatriot. It’s a fact of life that players want to play for the best managers, albeit perhaps further down the list of must-haves than getting £300k-a-week.

Liverpool still has its legendary name, built on an incredible history, but no one joins a club for what it did before they were born – at least not if they have better alternatives that offer a higher standard of football and bigger wages. No one wants to play for Nottingham Forest because of what happened between 1978 and 1980, or Newcastle because of the Fairs Cup in 1969.

That history keeps Anfield as one of the most meaningful stadiums in the world, but it’s no longer one of the biggest, nor the best; and its atmosphere – such a help when things are going well, as was the case just 18 months ago – becomes a hindrance during struggles. Things might improve with the new Main Stand, but will that just mean another 10,000 quiet or grumbling souls? You can’t keep changing the manager to pep up the Kop, but once the boos start ringing out then it’s no longer a helpful atmosphere.

Right now, its historic reputation is what gives the club a chance, because it has been financially outmuscled, and as the focus in England shifts south, nudged into an unfashionable area when it comes to football, when, like the north-east, it used to be a genuine hotbed. Liverpool has its name, but little else. The club has what I feel to be a good young squad, but no major players, and until yesterday had a manager who wasn’t well-known beyond these shores (I believe a survey last season in France showed that people there thought Kenny Dalglish was still the Reds’ manager).

Rodgers chose to do things his way, and in a way I respect that. However, without a Director of Football he was always going to be the person with whom the buck stopped; there was no one more experienced to help out, or even to take the fall if it came to that. He arrived with no major experience on his coaching staff, and when he had the chance to replace them this summer, he went with good solid coaches, but again, little gravitas, and zero proof of top-level success in their coaching or managerial CVs. The initial impression was that they added nothing.

Everything seemed surprisingly insular; Rodgers’ desire to further the causes of British players and British coaches is admirable, but not something the Reds’ rivals were too bothered about while pulling further ahead. In some ways it made Liverpool different to those other clubs, but it didn’t prove a helpful distinction.

Rodgers needed to win something to become a winner; to become a global phenomenon. In 2014 healmost achieved that. Everything came together brilliantly – and I will not have history rewritten to downplay his role in it, for it was a quite brilliant team to watch – but instead of being the man that gave us the one thing we all crave, and gave us it in style, he fell agonisingly short. He made us deliriously happy, for a while, and football was fun again. But it didn’t last.

Proven winners have to start winning somewhere. But Liverpool is perhaps not the club for such experiments; not at this juncture, anyway. It doesn’t matter to me how old the next boss is is, but I would say that it needs to be someone who has coached and won things at an elite level, and who can bring a point of difference to the club within the Premier League. It needs to be someone who can help attract the best possible players from around the world, even if the very elite talent will remain beyond reach. Jurgen Klopp fits that bill, as does Carlo Ancelotti.

It’s time to bring in someone who knows how to handle life at a big club, and who can project an aura of success – something that Rodgers could only do for so long before people stopped believing him.

The new boss can be a good man-manager, but let’s not obsess over it, as many good man-managers end up pissing off their players anyway (Gerrard, Sterling, Agger, Downing and others took some harsh parting-shots at Rodgers), and they can also be taken advantage of. You don’t want to lurch towards a disciplinarian headcase who’ll be pinning everyone up against the wall and head-butting the goalkeeper, but I really don’t care if the manager is the players’ friend, or whether or not they can still text each other after they’ve parted ways. I can’t think of anything I care about less.

Perhaps most importantly of all, he needs to be someone who can bring a sense of belief, for however long that ultimately lasts, in a cynical, want-it-now age. Whether or not he achieves success, it’s important to believe that he might.

This Feels Like the End: Rodgers and LFC by Paul Tomkins

Posted on September 25th, 2015 Posted by by Paul Tomkins

By Paul Tomkins.

When relationships start to sour there is often a period of denial. Things are going wrong, but you’re not quite sure why. You may come close to breaking up, and then make amends, but something is missing.

At the end of last season I argued for Brendan Rodgers to be given a chance to turn things around (although the Stoke defeat, which led to dropping from 5th to 6th in the final table, felt like an infidelity). Having not initially been too excited by his appointment I was won over by the second half of his first season, and then fully converted in his second season. Even his first five games in charge, which yielded only two points, were full of promise, before things limped along until that first January transfer window.

Last season sowed the seeds of some doubt, but a lot of weird stuff was happening: players had left, others wanted out, a legend was ‘melting’, and there was the harmony-breaker Balotelli; and I’ve always argued that good managers can have bad seasons. But this now feels more like stagnation.

This season has already been incredibly grim; a continuation of the awful end to last season, despite the chance to draw a line under it. It’s yet another slow start under Rodgers, and while that’s okay if you excel in the second half of the season to meet your targets, that has only happened once in his three seasons to date. If getting into the top four was the target, then that’s further away than it was in August.

It’s now 66 games since 2013/14 ended. Aside from a 13-game run in the middle of last season (not all of which was top-notch, but which I found very encouraging), and the thrilling 3-0 thumping of Spurs a year ago, it’s been approximately 50 largely poor or unremarkable performances since the start of 2014/15, with perhaps the odd good display here and there. There have been some extenuating circumstances – injuries, departures, ‘bad eggs’ – but Rodgers is losing the belief of the fans who still backed him, and, you have to conclude from performances, possibly from the players themselves.

And with just 16 points from the last 15 league games, and the shipping of so many goals, and now the terrible result over 120 minutes against Carlisle (all the worse because it was a strong Liverpool XI), it’s hard to say that this is just a temporary dip. It feels like the final days of the tenures of Roy Hodgson, Kenny Dalglish, Rafa Benítez and Gérard Houllier. It feels like David Moyes at Man United, although instead of 81 pointless crosses in a match it’s 29 pointless shots from distance.

Indeed, it feels like pretty much all failing relationships: you’re holding onto the memories of the good times, and then you realise that they’re all in the distant past. You get to keep those memories – their yours, to take home with you – but no longer are you creating any new ones worth retaining.

The eight games of this season is a small sample size, but with new coaching staff and new players, the least you’d expect is some early season optimism, and a bit of energy and aggression. Total cohesion is hard to forge right away, but it’s difficult to discern anything of value in Liverpool’s performances. If the manager is asking for something from the players, he’s not necessarily getting it. Or maybe he’s asking for the wrong things.

Some managers are capable of turning around a side’s fortunes when all looks lost, and Alex Ferguson was at a similar stage in his 4th season (he also had one 2nd-placed finish, but scraped through in the FA Cup when it was more coveted). Ferguson is the obvious touchstone, but there are far more managers who have failed after being given time – once things look this bleak – than have gone on to be outstanding successes. You cannot stick with managers indefinitely in the hope that they might be the next Ferguson, especially when Ferguson himself had provento be a European winner and duopoly-ender at Aberdeen beforehand.

My guess is that most managers are actually powerless to turn things around. It gets beyond them. The players lose confidence. Everyone knows the manager is under pressure. The crowd turns quiet, and maybe worse, antsy – possibly even angry. The players get more nervous. The crowd gets hostile. The manager looks uncertain. And so on.

Reversals in fortune are not impossible, but it’s hard to play well when everyone is under this much negative pressure. (Positive pressure is different: it can still be hard, but the rewards are enticing – go out and win, and you’ll be heroes; that’s still a kind of pressure, but there’s a big reward. At the moment, even winning feels like losing, as it did on Wednesday night. Anything less than a scintillating victory and everyone remains zeroes.)

A big part of Rodgers’ appeal in 2012 was his charisma, his salesmanship. He had ideas that seemed bright, but crucially, he could sell them to players as exceptional as Luis Suarez and Steven Gerrard, having already sold them to the owners.

But he needed success to turn those promises – and promises are what salesmanship essentially relies on – into reality. And in 2013/14 he was damned close. But ultimately, despite some good seasons in management in the past five years, he still has no medals to show the players in any demand to be trusted. He was unlucky in 2013/14, if anything, but nearly-men are rarely inspirational.

After last season Rodgers needed a strong start. He brought in a well-respected coach in Sean O’Driscoll, a likeable ex-player in Gary McAllister, and promoted the highly rated Pepin Lijnders, but again, in terms of management and coaching there is no record of top-level success. In and of itself that’s not necessarily a bad thing – if the ideas are good enough – but when combined it adds up to promise, rather than proven delivery. Meanwhile, the owners’ success is in baseball, and Ian Ayre’s success is in commercial dealings.

And on top of this, with Jamie Carragher, Luis Suarez and Steven Gerrard gone, there are no iconic players left. Losing these may not have been Rodgers’ fault – Carragher retired at about the right time, Suarez was never going to say no to Barcelona, and the Gerrard situation was complex: he was a fading force who wanted regular game time, and there were clearly communication issues. And one potentially iconic player, Raheem Sterling, also left.

However, no iconic players have been added during Rodgers’ involvement with transfers, with Sturridge and Coutinho the two closest to that level – Coutinho could still become iconic – and they are two signed by the committee, before Rodgers apparently gained extra influence. It’s too early to say too much about this summer’s signings, but aside from a couple of promising displays apiece from Danny Ings and Joe Gomez, little impact has been made. (Nathaniel Clyne has done nothing wrong, mind, and looks a good buy, but the defence has become shaky again.)

It’s not easy to add iconic players, of course. But Liverpool’s only experienced league winners are Kolo Toure and James Milner, with the latter currently performing like a man who hasn’t played at central midfield in five years. There is an encouraging core of 23-and-unders who could become great players – Can, Moreno, Ibe, Gomez, Origi, Ings, Firmino, Markovic (albeit loaned out) and the almost-there Coutinho, as well as some bright teens emerging – but there is not a strong sense of identity about the team right now, and the manager has lost a lot of his hard-won cachet.

If the team could transcend its lack of big names, that’d be one thing. But that’s not happening. Meanwhile, managers have walked into other clubs, added a lot of players, and got instant results. At the very least, they have engineered spirited displays with pace and verve.

The Rodgers who arrived – clean slate, bold promises, firm ideas, time on his side – might actually be better for this Liverpool squad than the one who now looks understandably flustered, and undermined by his own recent failures. It’s hard for him to deliver genuine positivity right now. Maybe it needs someone with more stature, more gravitas.

The further into the past Rodgers’ ‘success’ recedes, the less authority he projects. (I use inverted commas on success because I think that 2013/14 was a big success, but others will still view it as failure.)

Indeed, Rodgers is almost certainly a better manager now than when he arrived. He has accumulated various experiences, worked with better players, and as long as his confidence isn’t dented beyond repair, he can take it into his next job. But at Liverpool his effectiveness is undermined by failed experiments, whether they were good ideas or not.

So it feels like the end, with just the agony prolonged. A convincing victory over Aston Villa might kickstart some kind of revival – and perhaps FSG see things differently to what now seems like a majority of fans – but if feels like time has all but run out. As with the failure of any relationship, the next suitor may prove the beneficiary. Both parties get a clean slate in terms of trust and belief. The problems you had in your failing relationship need not apply in the next one.

Sometimes it just passes a point of no return. The trouble with starting over is that as soon as things get difficult the old gripes come to the fore. Liverpool started over with Brendan Rodgers this summer but now it feels like there’s too much baggage. The past is everywhere, and not in a good way.

Is It Time For Rodgers To Go? By Paul Tomkins

http://tomkinstimes.com/2015/09/is-it-time-for-rodgers-to-go/

It was incredibly telling that a lot of the people who’ve backed Brendan Rodgers snapped after the 3-1 defeat in Manchester. This came from the select band of usually calm heads I follow on Twitter, at a time when the paying fans had already filed out of Old Trafford early.

Perhaps it’s not the best fixture on which to make judgements (especially at the final whistle, with no time to calm down); and when two of Liverpool’s five league games so far have been away at Arsenal and Man United – tough opposition the Reds have faced with several key players missing. And in the last of my minor caveats before I get onto the big impending ‘but…’, Liverpool created no less at Old Trafford than the much more expensively assembled home team, who though labelled “crap” by so many people, now sit second in the table – which is where Liverpool could have been with a win.

But … Brendan Rodgers’ team has not played even remotely well enough in the five games so far. While five games is a small sample size, it’s been four poor or average performances (the display was just about acceptable at Stoke on the opening day), with only one really positive half of football from the 10 played (the first 45 at Arsenal).

The summer was a chance to move on from last season, and regroup, but the poor form in the final months – which I was prepared to draw a line under – becomes relevant again because the same problems are apparent. New players were brought in, new coaching staff appointed, and after five games the mood is right back down where it was after the shocking defeats at the end of last season. The team looks flat and nervous, and is defending as poorly as it did when shipping nine goals in the final two matches to mid-table opposition.

In fairness to Rodgers I felt that he spoke well immediately after the United game, and didn’t hide from the problems – the sloppy passing, the failure to create chances. Managers have to finesse things, although he was correct here not to sugarcoat things. But it’s his job to fix those problems; indeed, to try and ensure they don’t occur in the first place. I hope that he can, but if he doesn’t he will obviously be in danger of losing his job.

Once the tide turns against a manager, it really can be ‘any time soon’. It feels like that’s the case here. There’s no sense of belief anywhere around the club right now, with Anfield no longer bouncing in the way that it did two seasons ago. If Rodgers gets the next two games, both of which are at home, then you sense that anything short of six points against Aston Villa and Norwich would send the last remaining fence-sitters over the edge.

Lost?

I don’t get the sense that Rodgers has “lost the dressing room”, in that I don’t think they dislike him or think he’s the fraud that so many fans seem to believe. I don’t get the sense that they’re eager to see the back of him, and are ready mount some kind of player-power coup d’état – although perhaps in part due to the fact that there don’t seem to be enough strong/senior personalities in the squad to even try it, even if they were sufficiently disillusioned (who can you imagine leading a coup?). Or maybe the personalities are there, but they just haven’t been at the club long enough to feel it’s their right to kick up a fuss. (Not that I’m suggesting player power is a good thing, or necessary right now – just that certain Liverpool players of the recent past, along with those at Chelsea and Manchester United, would not be slow to intervene.)

So even though I don’t think the dressing room is lost, I do wonder – based on the performances of the past six months, either side of the summer break – if they just aren’t inspired by him. Something is missing, and from the outside – we don’t witness training or hear the team-talks and tactical instructions – we have to draw conclusions based on impressions, body language, performances, and trying to locate the kind of basic fight you’d expect. And whatever Rodgers is trying to do, it’s not working.

Weirdly, I thought that if Liverpool had something like two points from the first five games Rodgers would be gone. But even with seven points it seems that he’s on very shaky ground. If his side had drawn at Stoke, beat both Bournemouth and West Ham at home, and lost valiantly at Old Trafford and the Emirates, then it would still equal seven points, but paint a very different picture.

Although it’s still early in the season, the problems that turned the run-in into a nightmare are still evident – or, at least, the same number of problems. Weaknesses have been addressed – such as adding physicality up front and a true defender with pace at right-back – but the net result is the same lack of cohesion. The defence is back to gifting three goals in games, and there’s no winger on the books beyond the raw Jordon Ibe, and no specialist crossers to play wide on either side (with neither full-back a gifted crosser, either – certainly not Gomez on his wrong foot).

This is all part of football management – the short blanket, and how you pull it one way and it leaves your toes cold; pull it the other way and exposes your shoulders to the chill. By the time you’ve solved one problem, another has arisen. The best managers stretch things that bit further, but almost all of them lose the fight in the end.

Shelf life

In the history of football there haven’t been too many managers who didn’t reach the end of their shelf life – indeed, most do so within a few seasons – and maybe it’s at that stage with Rodgers. Three years is often stated as a natural end for managers (it seems that way for Jose Mourinho), because all the players have heard everything you have to say by then, and it’s hard to be motivated by what you’ve heard a hundred times before (three years can easily mean 160 games).

But with Rodgers, you can’t say that’s the case with this squad, as most of the players arrived within the last 13 months. He should be lifting them, and right now he’s not. The new players have been sucked into the malaise of last season.

My sense is that someone like Jurgen Klopp would lift everyone immediately. I feel he’d inspire them, and the Kop too. But the question becomes whether he’d be a better fit long-term; whether Rodgers is still the potentially great manager so many once felt him to be, and if, as happened in 2013/14, he can produce a near-miracle out of nothing. (Yes, he had Suarez, but poor managers don’t finish 2nd with the 5th-best squad in the Premier League. He also had Aspas, Moses, Cissokho and various others, lest we forget.)

The problem with Rodgers is that the team just hasn’t looked anywhere close to that vintage since things fell apart at home to Chelsea in April 2014. The distractions of last season – Balotelli, Sterling and Gerrard – have all gone. But it’s got no better.

It’s also undeniable that Dortmund totally fell apart at the end under Klopp – his shelf-life reached – with the team facing a relegation battle for much of last season (albeit then recovering well, but only to finish 7th). Now, under Thomas Tuchel, they’re top after four games, with maximum points.

Rather than suggest Klopp is not the great manager who won loads of trophies, it shows how a manager’s time can come to a natural end. Dortmund are now responding better under Tuchel.

Slack

I cut Rodgers a lot of slack last season as there were extenuating circumstances (sales, injuries and unsettled players), and he was coming off the back of a thrilling season that no one saw coming – least of all me, as someone who was on the critical side of the fence up to that point. But those 101 goals, 26 wins and 84 points seem a long time ago now, and that’s the brutal reality of management. You don’t get the time you probably think you need, and deserve.
And things do change so quickly in this sport, as can be seen at Stamford Bridge. Far be it from me to dig out a Rafa Benítez quote to come to the aid of his Iberian nemesis, but the Spaniard’s line that “football is a lie” seems to ring true now more than ever, when trying to make sense of how the ‘preening one’ seems to have lost his ‘special’ powers.

Mourinho usually guarantees clean sheets, at the very least. He’ll get you 1-0 and 2-0 wins. Not a lot has changed from his title-winning side in terms of personnel, and yet now they are shipping over two goals per game, and are toothless in attack. The players who hit the ground running last season – Fabregas and Costa (their ‘here and now’ stars who were the kind of signings ‘everyone else should have made’) – have faded away miserably. The confidence of winning the title has been eroded by the anxiety that seems to come to teams defending it these days.

Manchester City, the club usurped by Chelsea – but who are looking a sure bet to re-usurp – have never been renowned for their defensive stability, yet they are the first side since Mourinho’s 2006 Chelsea to start with five clean sheets. City have not added many of their new players to their starting XI (yet), but the remaining ten regulars are so changed from the team that limply defended their title in the first half of last season.

Pellegrini’s City are not what Pellegrini’s City were last season, and Mourinho’s Chelsea are not what Mourinho’s Chelsea were last season. This is why it’s sometimes so hard to work out why bad results, and poor runs of form, happen. If you can’t make sense of a Mourinho side, and if you have to look all the way down to 17th to find them in the table (and possibly in the relegation zone by the time Newcastle finish their game tomorrow), then football is clearly far more complicated than almost anyone admits, with a whole host of things we struggle to make sense of.

All we can say about Liverpool is that it’s not working right now, and hasn’t been for a long time.

On balance

Over the past five seasons Rodgers has: overachieved (Swansea promotion); overachieved, in finishing 11th, nine places above the £XI rank of 20th, with the Welsh side; underachieved, in his first season at Liverpool (but which got better as the campaign went on); overachieved, in his second season at Liverpool; underachieved last season (with me having made the par argument about Liverpool being 5th, as expected, before they fell to 6th at the final fence); and currently his side are underachieving, albeit after just five games, with two of them comprising half of the trickiest fixtures of any season (along with City and Chelsea away).

If you did the same for Jose Mourinho it would read no better in terms of meeting or exceeding the expectations of the clubs he managed. Crucially he won the league title last season, but with a mega-squad; both before and after that his Chelsea side have been unimpressive. His stint at Real Madrid was, on balance, neutral at best – one title in three seasons isn’t amazing at such a club (ditto with Chelsea this time around) – and he left, as per usual, when all hell was breaking loose. Even so, no one doubts he’s one of the best around – yet he’s on course for two really good seasons out of six.

Rodgers’ time at Swansea is appropriate, but not defining, when it comes to assessing his body of work. Managing Liverpool is harder than Swansea due to the insane pressures and expectations, most of which outweigh reality. Most other major clubs were able to parlay their decades-long superiority into great wealth, but Liverpool managed to screw this up in the ‘90s, and by the 2000s that boat had sailed. The club’s history is overpowering, its fans noisier on social media than they are on the Kop these days. You need someone who can carry that weight – the manager’s tracksuit is as heavy as the players’ shirts. Carlo Ancelotti would no be fazed, while Jurgen Klopp has the stature to impress and intimidate.

But I certainly wouldn’t sack Rodgers for the mere sake of it; it’s not as bad as it was under Hodgson, when his job became untenable, and when 10,000 stayed away on Boxing Day. However, if better managers are available and willing to come, then a club like Liverpool has to be alive to that possibility, just as any manager has to think about replacing good players with better ones.

Problems

Rodgers has talent, but he’s not done enough in his career to warrant an extended period of underperformance. He talks a good game, which I don’t have a problem with (but which irks a lot of fans). But is he transmitting the same confidence and belief as before? It seems not.

I think he can be inspirational – certainly up to a point – but the longer any manager goes without getting the necessary results the more hollow his words start to seem, to players and fans alike. Unlike some managers, Rodgers doesn’t have that aura of being a winner that ultimately comes from … winning things. All managers start out having won nothing, but winning things backs up their words. If a friend wants to convince you to climb Everest with him, you’d be more likely to believe in him if he’s already climbed Everest.

It doesn’t matter to the fans making so much noise (check Twitter, if you dare) that Rodgers was a couple of games away from what I feel would have probably been the toughest title Liverpool would ever have won, playing some outstanding attacking football. They put all that down to Suarez anyway. To them, Rodgers is not a winner, and that’s a tsunami of opinion that is amplifying all the time. Right now, Rodgers needs to win every game, and do so in style, to quieten the dissenting voices. That’s a tough ask, and why I think things may be getting away from him.

And the personality that his teams have showed in the past – mainly from months 6-24 of his tenure – has looked sorely absent for the best part of 13 months now. I thought it would return this season, but so far it hasn’t. At what point do you say that he’s the problem? Or if he’s not the problem, that he’s incapable of solving it/them?

The longer he stays, the less exciting the team seems to become. That may not be all his fault, but then part of that comes back to the controversial subject of the transfer committee, and who is shaping the squad and the team. Are the players not good enough, or just not good enough under this manager, in this system, with this run of form? Has he been responsible for signing too many of the duds, or has he been supplied the wrong players? Is he treating all the signings equally fairly, or showing favouritism? (and let’s note here that any manager will pick the players he himself rates, especially if his job depends on results – if he doesn’t he’s a fool. And in fairness to Rodgers, he has bombed out his own signings, such as Fabio Borini.)

Someone pointed out earlier in the season that this is essentially already Rodgers’ fourth Liverpool team. This is not like Shankly or Ferguson rebuilding entire XIs after many years, but down to the faster transition of players in the modern game, allied to Rodgers losing key ‘identifying’ components of his sides: Suarez, Gerrard (in gradual stages of meltwater), Sterling, and, due to injury, Sturridge.

On top of this, Rodgers has switched formations and approaches numerous times, to the point where you wonder if he’s very clever and adaptable (which is at least partly true in how he deployed the talent he was blessed with in 2013/14), or flighty and faddy, and unsure of what he truly believes in – which is getting harder to dismiss. I hate the notion we have in this country of people being ‘too clever’ (usually fired by people who aren’t very smart), but perhaps managers can overcomplicate things. Managers are allowed to change their mind, but it can start to look muddled.

Having been vehemently all about possession, Rodgers became all about counter-attacking and bossing the space. Having not wanted a target-man in Andy Carroll, he ended up with one in Benteke (who, as I’ve argued all summer long, is actually a much more rounded player than the big Geordie, so this is only a half-valid comparison at best). Even so, Liverpool are neither crossing the ball to Benteke, nor getting up to support and play off him. Sometimes these things take time, but after last season Rodgers doesn’t have that luxury. And right now, it’s just not clear what type of team the Reds are.

Having been all about exciting football, and style, it’s got to the stage where the manager has sold or sidelined the best ball-playing centre-backs he’s had, in Agger and Sakho (even then, Agger was no longer physically up to the task – although Sakho’s treatment has been more baffling). The centre of midfield is utterly honest but workmanlike, and outside of Coutinho it’s hard to see where the spark of genius is going to come from. It’s a pretty good squad, and better than quite a few I’ve seen at the club in the Premier League era, but it does lack a little of the X-factor, and in the absence of killer game-winners, it’s not compensating with outstanding teamwork and brilliant passing and interplay.

Even many of Rodgers’ most ardent supporters have no idea of what the identity to the current team is. Is this confusion a mixed message filtered through the transfer committee, or is it down to him, in terms of not finding the best blend for the talent at his disposal? And could it be that it’s not just the X-factor that’s missing, now that Suarez has gone and Gerrard, a faded force, moved on – but also a handful of leaders?

Or have players like Henderson, Sturridge and Coutinho become too important to lose at once? With so many key departures in a 24-month period, are these now the equivalent of Gerrard, Carragher and Torres as the types that you wouldn’t want to be without at the same time?

The players bought this summer would be okay – perhaps much better than okay – if they transferred their best form to Liverpool, but as Rodgers said early on, it’s a heavy shirt. James Milner was a very sensible addition to the squad, but he appeared to have been promised a central role, something that he hadn’t excelled in since the 2009/10 season when playing in a team with lower expectations. That struck me as a little odd.

I like Milner, and he’s the kind of player you want in your ranks, but not the type to take things to the next level – and he’s not played well enough across all five games from someone who is supposed to be the kind of English bedrock that stops sloppy, lightweight performances. In theory he’s a shrewd acquisition, as he adds a lot of experience in what is mostly a very young squad, but he didn’t show that against West Ham or Man United. If Liverpool are going to pay big fees and/or big wages to English players in their mid-to-late 20s like Milner and Lallana, then there needs to be fairly instant dividends. These are not 20-year-old prospects with time on their side.

Although the Reds have no undeniably world-class talents right now, they do have some top-class players – up there with the best in the Premier League in their positions – but the three best were missing against United: Daniel Sturridge, Philippe Coutinho and Jordan Henderson.

But still, it’s not like there has half a dozen reserves in the line-up. Nathaniel Clyne is clearly one of the best right-backs in the league, and Christian Benteke is definitely in the Didier Drogba mould of a target man with pace who can score amazing goals, and who, to date, has only been troubled by a lack of service, rather than the heavy price tag (albeit a tag dwarfed by Anthony Martial’s). And Roberto Firmino has the pedigree to be a big success at the club, although he arrived late due to summer action with Brazil, and has come into a team that are playing like strangers.

Assuming that Firmino adapts to the Premier League and/or Liverpool’s game (at this point it’s worth noting that apart from Arsenal away you’d perhaps wonder if James Milner had played in England before, had you not known his past), then those six players are all more than good enough. And in theory, Milner should be, too – if perhaps not as the central midfielder he wants to be.

Beyond that it’s a series of hugely promising teenagers making the kind of mistakes, or experiencing the dips in form that you’d expect (Gomez and Ibe), and a series of players who are not totally convincing. Perhaps the most crucial of these is the goalkeeper, Simon Mignolet, who has come on leaps and bounds in the past six months, but who doesn’t inspire total confidence in the way that elite keepers do. Still, he’s no longer the obvious weak link he was in the first half of last season.

In between are players in their early 20s with a lot of potential – Can, Origi, Moreno, Ings (and Markovic, now loaned out) – who perhaps need to be carried a bit better by those currently around them, particularly with the absentees. Indeed, one of these absentees, Jordan Henderson, was himself such a player three or four years ago, needing to be carried along by the senior pros. (They didn’t do that successfully enough – in the league, at least – and Kenny Dalglish lost his job.)

Dejan Lovren – one of Rodgers’ leaders – has made too many mistakes for anyone to feel comfortable with him, and Martin Skrtel seems to be either really good or really bad, with little in between. If Sakho were to now get a run, it would be hard for the manager to turn around and say he had faith in him all along. I’ve never had a majorproblem with Skrtel, who has his qualities, but along with Lovren and Mignolet it doesn’t make for a cool and commanding defensive triangle.

In fairness to Lovren he was probably the only Liverpool player aware of the free-kick Man United were going to pull, but his pointing came too late. And the defence as a whole are just not awake to these situations, as seen when being repeatedly picked apart by passes to an unmarked Aaron Cresswell from corners just a fortnight ago. Again, is Rodgers not being supplied with the leaders he wants? Or are the leaders he is persisting with also part of the problem?

It’s bad, but…

I genuinely don’t think Liverpool are as bad as many are making out. But without half of their six best players, they’re certainly giving people like Harry Redknapp room to snipe. Rodgers may argue that he was also without his perceived favourites, Joe Allen and Adam Lallana, but neither has been consistent enough (or consistently fit enough) for me to make a strong argument on that front.

When the Reds have all of their attacking players fit and in form then I believe that a combination of Coutinho, Sturridge, Benteke and Firmino, with Henderson pushing on from midfield, could be truly exciting (especially if Ibe becomes the player I believe he can grow into, and gets added to that list).

But will Sturridge stay fit? Will Firmino transfer his pedigree? Will Sturridge and Benteke work as a pair? And how do you get a balanced team with that lot whilst protecting the back four and looking for sufficient width, especially if Coutinho is in the side?

As with everything about Liverpool lately, there are more questions than answers. And the clock is running down.

在大马成功的八 - 原载《南洋商报》

在大马成功的八招

(玛丽娜马哈迪) 当这个国家的每个人都是指导他人的专家的时刻，虽然完全没有人要求，我也想参加一份，慷慨提供我的意见，给所有那些期望加入任何种类的纸箱或者厨柜的人。如果跟我们周围任何熟悉的东西有任何相似之处，自然纯属巧合。

首先，请别再想由于你有任何专长，因此有人要你或者需要你。谁理你是否拥有“如何使任何东西变好”和“如何使任何东西变得更好”的双学位呢？你所需要的是“如何使你的上司感觉良好”的哲学博士学位，副修“如何使你的上司显得真正良好”。如果你擅长“如何清理一团糟”，尤其是如果涉及摆脱“难缠的人”，也会有帮助。

其次，你必须去面试这个职位。永远别期望像灰姑娘那样脱颖而出。别忘了她并未真正受邀参加舞会，她的继母的两个丑陋女儿却受邀。她们为此非常努力，确保她们引人注目。

所以，设法受人注意，如果这意味着当众出丑也无所谓。谁理你的音容是不是像个蠢人，只要那个可能是你上司的人喜欢？通往职位与不义之财的道路布满吹嘘与排场！誓表忠心，即使并没有人要求你这样做！此举能加分。

美国人可以我们也可以

第三，总是表现谦虚，说你从未想过这一切，不过一定是“上苍之佑”。哪个神志正常的人会质疑“上苍”要什么？“他”一定已通过他的代理人发言———即将是你的上司。乔治‧沃克‧布什（小布什）说上帝使他当总统，在地球上执行祂的旨意。当然，如果一个美国人可以这样宣称，我们也可以！

第四，别人给你什么，别挑剔。就只是感谢！这究竟有什么关系？都是好处来的，像一所华丽的房屋（一定要有装修预算），有司机的漂亮汽车，你和夫人的“一等”旅游，以及所有各种各样东西———以前你听过别人讲，不过现在可以亲自体验。即使工作非常沉闷，那又怎样？别的人可以替你阅读所有的报告，给你一篇摘要。噢，如果你遗漏报告里的一些东西，可以归咎很多人，甚至是派送文件的书记。为什么要担心，你时来运到了！

第五，现在你得到了职务，你的工作就是微笑，点头。卖力的点头。一直这样。此外，尽可能跟你的上司一起拍照，最好是非常仰慕地看着他。如果你可以举起一面适当的、崇拜的标语牌，就更好了。虽然一些人发觉这并不保证工作安定。也许练习吻手，以资替代。

没有一位大人物没随员

第六，我们别忘了你是一个配套的交易，其中包含你的配偶。好好训练她，因为她的工作跟你的一样重要。跟你颇为相反的是，她的工作不是跟她的上司竞争。所以，如果你要购买很贵的东西给她（现在你能够了！），确保别让她在上司面前配戴。尤其是如果她配戴起来显得相当魅力四射。支持本地牌子，让你的妻子穿戴。把国际入口货让给她的上司，教导她叨念适当的仰慕之词。

第七，看过电视连续剧《明星伙伴》（Entourage）吗？一支随行团队是你所需要的。

让形形式式的人包围着你，让他们做低薪琐碎的工作，不过给予适当的衣服，穿起来像是重要人物。没有一个“大人物”是没有随员的，拿手袋，拿购买的东西，在机场为你办登机手续，这类事情。你再也不必自己做一件事。

第八，自己成为随员的一分子。你一直处于上司目光所及之处，是非常重要的，因为你不要他忘记你是存在的。或者他下一次清理櫥柜时，忽略了你。所以，到处都跟着他；毕竟这是你的主要工作。你的妻子要当她上司随员中的女侍，这也是她的工作，所以，如果她受召服务，你要祝贺她。这将是有回报的。

就是这些了，在我们亲爱的国家，如何在生活中成功的八个窍门。对于那些必须每天真正工作来生存的人，祝你们好运。有时会掉下一些碎屑。

原载《南洋商报》在大马成功的八招

He did it again...who? Jose Mourinho

Seriously? But at least he admitted Chelsea did the same when he is on board 11 years ago..but have Chelsea stop "buying" title? No, they buy but just don't need to buy heavy, when you are at the top, with the financial muscle, you just need to buy one or two players each year to replace the old legs or amend the mistake made previous years.

Plus, mind game from him, if he lost this new season, he can say, see i told you others buying the title....

Clever, very clever...Little Horse again? Come on....



http://www.espnfcasia.com/barclays-premier-league/story/2536879/chelsea-jose-mourinho-premier-league-rivals-buying-the-title

Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho: Premier League rivals 'are buying the title' By ESPN Staff
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho says that the contenders for the Premier League title are trying to buy silverware.

The current Premier League champions brought in Asmir Begovic and Falcao this summer for minimal fees and have not spent more than £30 million on one player since signing Fernando Torres from Liverpool back in 2011.

The Blues have still spent significant cash on the likes of Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas, Eden Hazard and Nemanja Matic in recent years, but Mourinho claims that others are now trying to mirror the kind of spending that he enjoyed when he first took over the club in 2004 and lavished over £150m on players like Didier Drogba, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Arjen Robben and Petr Cech.

"In the beginning of Mr Abramovich coming to Chelsea, Chelsea was buying the title," Mourinho said after the friendly win over PSG on Saturday. "Now, they are buying the title. All of them, they are buying the title.

"It is up to us to be strong and to fight them and, obviously, to try and win it again, even without the big investments."

Manchester City spent £49m alone on bringing in Raheem Sterling this summer, while Manchester United and Liverpool have also spent large amounts of money on improving their squads ahead of the new season.

ABCDEFG & HIJK by Others

有个女孩问男友：为什么英文的排列是ABCDEFG？ 
男友回答：因为 A boy can do everything for girls. 
女孩听完非常感动，决定这一辈子非这个男孩不嫁。 
但是….她忘记了英文接下来的排列是HIJK. He is just kidding… 

Rodgers, and Extenuating Circumstances by Paul Tomkins

http://tomkinstimes.com/2015/05/rodgers-and-extenuating-circumstances/

By Paul Tomkins.

Having spent the past few days undergoing psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and even the brain-wiping treatment used in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (complete with Kirsten Dunst dancing on my bed), I can still recall a vague sense of something really bad happening on a football pitch on Sunday. The numbers ‘6’ and ‘1’ keep popping into my mind. It’s a mental stain that just can’t be erased, even by the computers of Mark Ruffalo and Tom Wilkinson.

Despite this, I see quite a few (if not all) of the struggles this season as being beyond Brendan Rodgers’ control – or, at the very least, he faced difficult situations where a judgement call could easily go wrong. You can all then decide for yourselves what, in addition to these extenuating circumstances, the manager messed up on, and whether more could have been done (just do so without resorting to hindsight). You are also free to reach your own conclusion about whether Rodgers should stay on as manager or not.

But remember, you can always make criticisms of any manager – not even the best ones are perfect. When things are going well for a manager his qualities will be extolled, and when things are going badly those same qualities, which won’t have changed, will be labelled as flaws.

It’s fair to say that I can’t make a watertight case for Rodgers staying, after the final two performances punctured holes in some of my arguments, but I do think a sense of perspective is called for, now that dust has settled on what I described as a clusterfuck of a campaign. (I’ve calmed down a bit since then, but it’s still been a car crash of a season.)

In many ways it reminded me (as I’m sure it has others) of Rafa Benítez’s final season: sale of pivotal player; a bad start in the league following the high of being runners-up; group stage exit of the Champions League; money spent on an absent high-profile Italian international; and a manager trying to remain positive and bullish, and winding up his detractors in the process (when, if he was negative and defeatist, as Hodgson was, everyone would probably go even more crazy). Plus there was Rodgers’ team finishing 6th with 62 points and Benítez’s team finishing 7th with 63 points.

You sensed things becoming untenable, but mainly as the fan-base sliced itself right down the middle. Rafa had a better record of success behind him (the trophies were earlier in his tenure, but his best team was five years in – and it won nothing), but was at war with cowboy owners and Cuban-heeled execs.

Rodgers has better custodians, but they aren’t rich by some rivals’ standards, and in trying to do the right thing (Director of Football, then a transfer committee) they’ve ended up with what seems like a fudged vision, as they also attempt to stay within the FFP guidelines and find ways to get the best value for money. They’ve been sensible in their approach to the transfer market, rather than reckless, but too many players have failed to settle quickly enough (or at all). I believe that there’s some sound long-term investment in players going on, but the ones old enough to be in their peak now have also struggled, and that’s been problematic. (But even older players can take time to adapt.)

Defending a manager after a mediocre or relatively poor season is not ‘defending mediocrity’ – because obviously those who stick by a manager in such circumstances believe that things will get better. It might not, of course. But then nothing in football comes with any guarantees. And no one said 2013/14 was mediocre, so it’s not like the manager only has mediocre seasons to his name.

Anyway, here are a few things that I think almost any manager would have struggled with:

– The transfer situation – all managers have poor periods of buying, and indeed, Rodgers was not entirely responsible for the transfer activity. When people lump all the blame at his door it seems unfair. He takes some of the blame for the failures (especially if any were driven by him), but unlike most managers, he cannot take all of the blame (or indeed all of the credit for the ones that work out) because he is merely one member of a committee. It’s his job to make these players look good on the pitch, but better managers have failed to do that with better players. (Mourinho and Shevchenko spring to mind.)

– Last season was unsustainably good. There was always likely to be a drop, because everything seemed to go right. This season an unusual amount seemed to go wrong.

– Managers’ fortunes rise and fall pretty rapidly. Too rapidly, in fact. Below is a graphic for the Premier League’s longest-serving managers (Ferguson, Wenger, Moyes, Benítez, Houllier, O’Neill, Keegan, Pulis, Allardyce et al) where at least four seasons were spent in the Premier League at the same club – and shows their season by season performance at that club against expectations (where they should finish based on the resources they had, with those resources obviously changing over time). It’s not meant to be individually analysed: it doesn’t matter if you know who is who – the idea is to get an idea of the dramatic flux in fortunes. (And Ferguson’s massively fluctuating first six seasons are not included.)

(As an aside, earlier in the season Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid won 22 games in a row.Twenty two! A bad run in the new year, and a couple of key defeats at the wrong time, and he ended up trophy-less and out of a job. Similarly, it seemed that Rafa Benítez was going to get sacked by Napoli after a bad run in the new year, until he took his team to two semi-finals, at which point a new deal was mooted by the owner. They then narrowly lost both of those semi-finals, and suddenly he was under pressure. In Germany, Jurgen Klopp’s Dortmund recovered from being bottom of the table in the winter to finish 7th, but still 33 points off top spot. Three great managers, three hugely inconsistent seasons. Add Louis van Gaal, with the biggest spend in the summer and the costliest squad in the league, and yet failed to inspire anyone, and that makes four.)

– The increase in cup games Liverpool ending up facing was always likely to result in negative impact on league, if not quite to the level we saw. My research shows that: on average, playing a lot of cup games harms league form, and, as you’d expect, it harms small and medium-sized squads more than large ones. It also shows that 20 cup games – which Liverpool played – is only suited to a bigger squad; and that a sudden increase in cup games (in this case, a quadrupling) usually results in a bigger loss of league points and a drop in league position. (Research findings to be expanded and made public this summer.)

– Suarez was hard to replace – harder than I anticipated. It was never going to be easy, but you can build a better team by selling your best asset if you get a good price. Liverpool did it with Keegan and Rush, as just two examples. However, a bus-load of mediocre players (if that’s what you end up with – and I’m not saying that’s what Liverpool got) won’t help the first team as much as one genuine world-class star. But it’s never just about the short-term, as we saw with Henderson and various others before him, when looking mediocre for a season. Liverpool’s new signings, Can aside, had mediocre campaigns, but that doesn’t make them mediocre players. The issue is, are Can, Markovic, Moreno and Lallana (plus Origi when he arrives) going to be important players over the course of their Liverpool careers? I believe they can be, but as with any signing, you can never say anything for certain.

– Statistically, Daniel Sturridge is as good as Sergio Aguero in pretty much everything bar minutes played. And losing Sturridge for so long was a bodyblow. See the comparison below, or click on the link to look at the performance of 50 Premier League strikers over the past three seasons (data collated by Dan Kennett from published Opta sources, and converted to Tableau by Robert Radburn. Note: title to interactive graphic should be 50 Premier League strikers).

Aguero

Sturridge

– Sturridge was always likely to miss a third of the season with injuries, but he barelyplayed a third of the season. Andrew Beasley posted this on TTT yesterday: (We took over 2 points per game from the 12 games Sturridge featured in … Those 25 points were in mostly tough games too – only one game against a team who finished below 12th in the table, and an average opponent placing of 7th. A third of his games were against the top four.) And let’s not forget, he was barely match-fit for any of those games.

- The decline and impending departure of a bona fide legend. I felt that Gerrard’s heart just wasn’t quite in it anymore – and by it, I could just as easily be referring to his belief in himself – with the way everything crumbled for him between April and July last year. (Which is why, for me, it was so nice to see him looking happy in Dubai as Liverpool danced and sang in a tight defensive formation.) The decision to quit, which had been rumoured since the Real Madrid away game, became a distraction, certainly later on in the season as the end drew near. Along with Sturridge, he was still probably the best finisher at the club, but there wasn’t an ideal position for him to play as he approached 35, and Liverpool’s form with him in the side was woeful, compared to the good form when he was absent. “With and without” stats can be misleading, but the difference is so enormous that you have to wonder if it has some significance.

(A guy named Jonathan Alpert sent me the following comments via email: “Gerrard started 25 Premier League games. Of those we won just 8, drew 8 and lost 9 with an average points per game of just 1.32 and a win ratio of just 32%. We scored 32 goals and conceded 38 with a goal difference of -6. Of the 13 Premier League games where he did not start we won 9, drew 1 and lost 3. Our points per game average was 2.15 and our win ratio was 69%. We scored 20 goals, conceded 10, for a +10 goal difference. Extrapolated over a season, without Gerrard we could have achieved 82 points, enough for 2nd place. With him for all 38 games, we would have achieved 50 points, which would bring us in 10th.”)

- Sterling’s contract issues and his crash in form. There was something shocking about a 20-year-old ‘playing’ the media in a demand to leave Liverpool. While he’s allowed to be ambitious, you got a sense when Luis Suarez pulled the same trick two years ago that he had ‘paid his dues’, and was at an age – and what seemed a peak of performance (although, of course, he got better) – to at least try that stunt. Suarez wanting out was a big blow, but understandable; Sterling wanting out just felt a bit insulting. He was playing very well until he went on the BBC without the club’s permission. The whole saga became one more unnecessary sideshow.

– The refereeing. We always feel our team is harshly done by, but last season there seemed to be a fair few beneficial decisions – or, at least, fair ones – whereas this season I lost count of the number of appalling refereeing displays. Sterling, in particular, got very little from referees, and even at the weekend the referee waved away three blatant penalties, with it now apparently okay to trip Lallana in the box too.

– Coping with injuries and suspensions. People over-fixate on issues like playing people out of position in times of need. Everyone seemed fed up with Glen Johnson’s deterioration, and yet also went mad when Emre Can played at right-back. Well, who else was there? Jon Flanagan has been injured all season. That just left Javier Manquillo – who started the season brightly but faded (he looks a good defensive full-back, but very raw). It’s hardly like the manager was leaving out the equivalent of Paolo Maldini. For me, there is no such thing as a ‘correct’ position. They’re footballers. They have a ‘best’ position at given points of their career, but does Guardiola play Lahm at full-back? No. What about Mascherano at full-back under Rafa (the little man was outstanding) and at centre-back at Barca? (Unlikely, we’d have thought given his height, but brilliant.) Managers have to get the best group of players onto the pitch in the strongest mix they can find. Sometimes that might mean players in their best position, sometimes not. As long as you don’t play a midget in goal or a goalkeeper up front, you’re basically asking footballers to work within their overall abilities.

– The team was/is too young. I’ve covered the catch-22 of this before. Established world-class stars like Falcao and Di Maria were out of Liverpool’s price range and wage structure (which had to be kept within FFP limits), and the sensible idea is to find these types before they’ve hit peak value, not after they’ve past it. But then potentially great players may never become as good as Falcao and Di Maria … not that Falcao and Di Maria, at 28 and 26, turned out to be as good as Falcao and Di Maria, and were arguably little better than Balotelli and Markovic this season. However, Liverpool do lack experience overall, and very young teams rarely flourish. The key is to keep them together so that they develop together, but that’s never easy, either.

– People talk about buying “ready-made stars” but they flop far more often than people realise (which I’ve proved on several occasions – only six of the eleven costliest Premier League signings, after inflation, succeeded). FSG have the right basic strategy, but so far either the wrong individuals have been signed, or they haven’t yet had a second season, which is often when ‘duds’ become successful signings (or fall totally out of the picture). The problem this season hasn’t been youngsters like Can and Markovic but those new players aged 24-32.

- Having said that … Balotelli. Just, Balotelli.

Conclusion

Rodgers cannot be responsible for this season’s failings and yet also be lucky for last season’s incredible number of wins. Either you believe in the effect of a manager or you don’t. You can’t choose one of the seasons and ignore the other. However, Luis Suarezobviously played a key role last season – it wouldn’t have happened without him – and Rodgers made mistakes this season. Rodgers had some luck last season, and he lacked some luck this season.

That said, Suarez heavily credits Rodgers for helping him to improve, and it’s not like he’s saying it because the man is still his manager. There’s no pressure on him to say anything at all about Liverpool, now he’s at Barcelona. Suarez’s form improved season-upon-season under Rodgers, although he was a great natural talent; and obviously Rodgers has to shoulder some of the blame over the failure to replace him, but not all of it. If Rodgers helped Suarez to be more effective – and the player thinks he did – then the manager gets credit.

People talk about Rodgers’ tactics, and obviously there are concerns there. But equally the work done with Suarez last season, regarding how to time his runs, and the different positions to pick up, is all tactical. Liverpool broke a clean sheet record under Rodgers this season, but defending as a unit whilst being able to attack effectively is a hard balance to strike – and that would be an area for improvement overall.

In fairness to Rodgers, who wasn’t behind Suarez’s departure, he gave Balotelli a fairly decent run of games, but if the player wasn’t training well, or doing what was asked of him in games – as well as not scoring goals – then the manager has a right to leave him out (even if at times the Italian seemed a little harshly treated from the outside).

To me, neither last season nor this can be ignored. So you mix them together for anoverall performance level. And if you do that, it doesn’t make his job seem nailed-on (as it did 12 months ago), but it doesn’t have to result in a sacking. You can of course include his first season, for the full picture, but you also allow some leeway to a manager in his first campaign. (Just not to Roy Hodgson, given how terribly it was going throughout his entire brief tenure.)

You can argue that another manager may have done things better, and that’s true – although it’s easy to invent alternate realities where everything goes right. You will always get mistakes in the transfer market, and you will always drop ‘silly’ points, because that’s how things work. (That said, Liverpool should not be shipping nine goals in two games against Palace and Stoke.)

Rodgers could perhaps have left Gerrard out more often this season, given the far better results without him, but that could have created its own issues and tensions. Next season we’ll get to see what Liverpool are like without Gerrard’s decline being an issue. Liverpool will miss the Gerrard of 1998-2014, but I’m not sure they’ll miss the 2015 vintage.

On transfers, if Rodgers was the driving force behind the signings of Lambert, Lovren and Lallana – as some people suggest – then he has to take the blame for those not working out. While I’m not Lallana’s biggest fan, there’s definitely a good footballer in there – it’s just a case of whether his excellent footwork amounts to as much as it should for the fee and his age (as he’s not a kid). I expect him to be better next season. Lovren is also a better defender than we’ve seen this season, but his utterly astonishing inability to play 90 minutes without making at least one horrendous error undid any good periods he’d have in matches, when it looked like he could be a commanding centre-back. Lambert was a decent gamble at £4m (as 3rd or 4th choice and a potential Plan B) but his legs just weren’t there, and he looked too nervous in his early games to stake a claim for a regular spot.

On the corrosive Sterling issue it’s hard to see what more Rodgers could have done.

On the issue of playing too many cup games, people will always moan if managers don’t take competitions ‘seriously’ enough. Obviously the Champions League is the elite level, where you want to succeed at all costs, but as in Rodgers’ first season, I’m not sure there was enough rotation, especially in the League Cup. But I also appreciate the pressure a manager can be under to win trophies and, in difficult times, simply to win any game they face. And I don’t know have the scientific data on squad fitness issues, and have no way of knowing whether or not training is suited to the requirements.

On referees, Rodgers could have been more like other managers and drawn attention to their incompetence. A few years ago Howard Webb spoke of being generally intimidated by Alex Ferguson, and Jose Mourinho is always looking to put pressure on officials. Ideally the Premier League would fully crack down such behaviour, but while they don’t it seems that, as ever, Liverpool are too nice about these things, both on the pitch and off it. Until you get points (and not just a Europa League spot) for fair play it seems that the Reds are harming their chances in comparison with others.

Overall, I certainly wouldn’t be making a case for Rodgers to stay based on this one season, and the Stoke game remains the stuff of nightmares. But his body of work at Liverpool is still good, with an excellent second half to his first season, and the amazing thrills of his second (lest the revisionists forget), and a period in his third where the team had a strong identity.

His overall record obviously isn’t brilliant, and that leads to understandable fan daydreams about people like Ancelotti and Klopp. Even if you subjectively level out Rodgers’ overall record to be what you describe ‘average’, it contains highs and lows, and not just a constant humdrum predictability. The lack of consistency is a concern, but each season has produced periods when things at least briefly looked exciting, and 2013/14 was way better than anyone was expecting.

Only time will tell if this was just the kind of season-long dip that pretty much all managers experience, or if Rodgers has passed his sell-by date with for the job in hand. If he goes he goes, but let’s try and be fair in our assessments.