Does Rodgers deserve another season.

[Jairzinho]

Ok, I choose paying the £20m to get rid of Rodgers.

[Red Phoenix]

If I thought Rodgers was going to get 20mil for Lovren I'd be happy, but doubt he's going to sell him. I think he's one of those players he's stubborn with, and is just going to carry on playing him so that he can try to be proven right about buying him in the first place. In that respect I feel sorry for Lovren, because I think, like already said, it's Rodgers tactics and constant switching of defenders that's causing him some of his problems.

[therevivalist]

Well, a decision has been made. I expected him to go, especially as there was a delay before this meeting, when surely we sounded out one or two other possible candidates?

 

Now that the decision is made, it's time to get behind the team and yes, the manager too. He's part of the team, if you will accept a broad definition. A key member of the team in fact.

 

I expect fans to complain for a little while, but I hope it doesn't fester and get spiteful. At some point we have to get over it and start supporting again.

For Rodgers to regain fan trust and get us all back on board again, first, he should drop buying players like Benteke, if true, and and go for the type of quality that fit our style and class. I hear Lacazette for one is ruling himself out for lack of CL football but there are still scores out there if Rodgers and the Committe care to look.  Second, he better have a good start to the season and win quite a few games of our initail matches. Patience is thread thin already.

[Iceman]

So in one easy stroke we'll go from SaS to keBaB with Benteke and Balotelli our new esoteric strike force. I fucking love it. Er hold on, no I don't. 

[Shitty Arse]

You never know stranger things have happened at sea.

He might go out and sign a world class defensive central midfielder. Balotelli might start banging them in for fun. Sturridge might stay fit.

It's not looking good for us is it.......?

[Anubis]

Can't we use the £20m from the Lovren sale to pay off Rodgers?

 

And can we do this with other players? 

 

What can we get for Enrique? £3m? £4m? Will that be enough to try and land Ian Ayre on the moon?

Just a small part of that £3m would see us buy enough of those Maplin rockets to launch him from the quayside into the Mersey. Although concrete would be a better option in that scenario.

[marcus50bucks]

LIVERPOOL: RODGERS IT IS THEN

 

by David Segar // 2 June 2015 // 1 Comment

 

AFTER what has felt like months of speculation (it’s been two-and-a-half weeks…), the manager situation has finally been put to bed. Brendan Rodgers will remain as Liverpool boss… for now.

 

There had apparently been leaks of information — something which seems to happen an inordinate amount at Liverpool these days — that Rodgers was safe, but something just didn’t feel right about it all.

 

Why did the owners make him sweat on it for half a month if they had no intention of sacking him? Why did Tom Werner feel the need to come to England to do his review when he couldn’t be arsed doing the same for Steven Gerrard’s last game? And, perhaps most curious of all, why wasn’t Rodgers sacked when Kenny Dalglish, who had just won a cup and been to an FA Cup final, was?

 

What has been especially odd about it all has been the timing. Not just that it’s taken this long and that it was leaked to journalists at roughly the same time as Sepp Blatter’s resignation (how convenient), but almost the entire timeline.

 

For those who wanted Rodgers out in the immediate aftermath of Stoke City 6 Liverpool 1, no news was bad news. For better or worse, there was to be no reactionary sacking to that humiliation. It was going to come down to the infamous end-of-season review.

 

However, early indications from sources said to be close to FSG were that Rodgers’ job wasn’t even going to be in question, let alone on the line at the review.

 

Just after the season had ended, there were cries for the manager’s head, but online polls seemed to have the fans split at roughly 60-40 against Rodgers, taking into account a few thousand desperately tragic opposition football fans who like to skew the results.

 

It was perhaps right that the owners were going to let a cooler head prevail. Potential replacements hadn’t even finished in their current roles, there was no need to rush what was going to be a massive decision.

 

However, two weeks later and not only had the fans who wanted Rodgers out not relented from their stance, but they’d been joined by roughly an extra 20 per cent. New polls recently were showing it was now 80-20 in favour of change. Whatever your own opinion was, that’s toxic — particularly when you consider that a poll in Madrid suggested that 65 per cent of Real fans wanted Carlo Ancelotti to stay before he was dismissed.

 

As well as Rodgers’ failings last season, a major reason people wanted change was the potential to replace him with someone of the ilk of Ancelotti or hipsters’ favourite Jurgen Klopp. This is where the story started to get very curious.

 

In the media, Rodgers’ position went from ‘not in question’, to ‘vulnerable’. Odds shifted significantly, too. A few days ago there was a story leaked that Rodgers was definitely safe, but then the German media went with a story that Klopp would be interested in the Anfield hot seat should he be offered it, in spite of stories that he wanted to take a sabbatical. Exactly the same regarding Ancelotti came from the Spanish media, or in particular, the Madrid media.

 

Unsurprisingly, stories the next day were that Rodgers’ position was now under serious threat. Tongues were wagging up and down the land and across the world, with Liverpool fans in the main salivating at the prospect of either the German or the Italian being in the Reds’ dugout come August.

 

Speculation reached fever pitch when the very reliable Jonathan Northcroft of the Sunday Times reported that the Liverpool hierarchy were indeed considering other options, including Klopp, if after the review they decided a change was necessary.

 

On Monday, Klopp confirmed that he was to take a break from football. A day later, and Rodgers’ safety is confirmed, and mere minutes after, Ancelotti tweeted saying that he’d turned down a return to Milan to take some time off.

 

Could it be that FSG have given Rodgers his last warning, knowing that should they need to pull the trigger halfway through the season, they may have a well rested Klopp and/or Ancelotti to choose from? Or are they merely backing the man they hired or, more to the point, their own decision to hire him in the first place?

 

There will be a thousand different stories on what really went on, but the timing of it all was a little too coincidental. Maybe they didn’t fancy Klopp, who has just come off a very trying season himself, or Ancelotti, who would surely have kicked up a bit of a fuss about the transfer setup. Or maybe both indicated they weren’t interested. Or maybe neither were ever contacted or even under consideration in the first place.

 

Something that doesn’t sit right with me is this. The question of the manager’s position was apparently left to the review. This was a meeting between three men, Rodgers, Werner and Mike Gordon. Of that trio, Rodgers outdoes the other two in football knowledge by a significant distance. I just have this scene playing out in my head where they ask Rodgers if he’s the man for the job, he says yes, and they say, “Well you know the game better than we do, so we’ll take your word for it.”

 

Anyway, what’s done is done. Rodgers stays, but why?

 

Perhaps it’s his willingness to work with the transfer committee setup. Reports initially suggested that FSG were planning a major overhaul of the committee, and were going to ditch it altogether in favour of their initial plan to have a single Director of Football, which would be a condition that Rodgers would now have to accept after rejecting it when he took over three years ago.

 

However, recent reports indicate that FSG still have complete faith in the transfer committee set up, in spite of it’s many failings, and that appears to be the most likely scenario. If they had intended on changing the setup, why haven’t they done it already? Why is the club making bids for numerous players presumably selected by said transfer committee? If you make that change you do it in February, not June.

 

Rodgers had a tremendously big job on his hands when he came in three years ago. Now, if anything, he has even more to do and to prove. He has to convince the vast majority of the fanbase that he can turn things around, and he has to convince a dressing room that appeared to largely hang him out to dry at Stoke that he should be the one managing them.

 

He also has to get Liverpool playing like Liverpool again.

 

Talk to anyone about the situation and you’ll get different arguments, opinions and sometimes facts (“Lovren made more errors that led to goals last season than the whole of League One combined!”) but one thing that is constant is that everyone mentions the style and substance of the general play, or lack thereof.

 

Last season was awful from Spurs away onwards, with the slight turning of the corner between December and March. However, the football still wasn’t anything you could hang your hat on during that time, and the spectacular way in which it all unraveled showed just how flimsy and superficial it had been.

 

When Rodgers arrived he titillated us with phrases like ‘death by football’ and teams coming to Anfield to face ‘the longest 90 minutes of their lives’. There have been periods during his time in L4 where he’s achieved this, but they’ve been too infrequent and too skin deep. Rodgers needs to give his team an identity, a consistent method of playing that builds a trust in him from his players that it will be enough to beat anyone if they execute it well.

 

The main thing that will concern me, and should definitely concern Rodgers, is that more so than ever the knives will be out. Just look at the reaction to losing to Manchester United in March. After three months unbeaten, one defeat was enough to turn a large amount of the crowd (admittedly in a crucial game against bitter rivals) against him. The way things are right now, even if he starts the season with 15 straight wins, a defeat against a Newcastle or a Swansea will inevitably bring back the “I told you so! Rodgers out!” comments.

 

He wanted more coaching time last season. Well this is his chance. After a good rest and chance to clear his head, a pre-season with very little disruption from international tournaments and plenty of time to spend with his players before it all kicks off again in mid-August, Rodgers has no excuses. If he can’t make a team out of these lads in those circumstances, he can’t do it at all.

 

Transfers will be crucial, they always are, and the strong links so far to Milner, Ings, Clyne and Benteke are, to me at least, somewhat underwhelming and certainly uninspired. As Times journalist and TAW contributor Rory Smith said this week on The Game football podcast, if they really are Liverpool’s targets then FSG could save a lot of money by firing their scouts. A five-year old who has watched Match of the Day a handful of times could have identified those players.

 

I, like I’m sure many of you, had fallen in love with the idea of Klopp coming in. I had my ‘Kloppite’ scarves, mugs, t-shirts and superlambanas ready to go, but alas he will not be Liverpool manager… just yet.

 

The new season is just two and a half months away, and like it or not, Liverpool will head into 2015-16 with Brendan Rodgers as their manager… for now.

 

Over to you, Brendan.

 

http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2015/06/liverpool-rodgers/

[ZonkoVille77]

We're fucked

[skend04]

Maybe after Klopp saying he's taking some time out FSG have decided to wait for his return. It may be that I'm just clutching at straws. It may well be that FSG know fuck all about football and think a 6-1 scoreline isn't that bad, especially as Americans love these high scores in their 'sports'. Its a possibility that we are fucked.

[marcus50bucks]

Brendan Rodgers' job safe for now but Liverpool owners plan for improvement

Ian Herbert CHIEF SPORTS WRITER Tuesday 02 June 2015

 

The Liverpool manager, Brendan Rodgers, has been given the responsibility to restore the club’s fortunes next season after agreeing a substantial new plan which the owners are satisfied can re-establish Champions League status.

Rodgers went into his meeting with chairman Tom Werner and Fenway Sports Group president Michael Gordon secure in the knowledge that the volume of public discussion surrounding his future did not equate to his job being on the line. But there was an agreement in the two-hour meeting that the outcome of the 2014-15 campaign had not been good enough and Rodgers has signed up to plans which have been laid for an improvement. The discussions on the subject of first team football were said to have been “productive”.

Quite how radical those plans are remains unclear. It is also unclear whether the transfer committee which has sanctioned expensive signings will remain its current form. It is possible that the club’s head of recruitment, Dave Fallows, and Michael Edwards, the director of performance analysis, may carry the can for last season.

Their statistically driven approach to recruitment has been a key factor in a transfer market strategy which saw the club spend £110m last summer on players who have not materially improved the squad. Gordon, managing director Ian Ayre and Rodgers also make up the committee.

Possible changes to the way Liverpool go about the new season may also include the recruitment of an experienced individual to work alongside Rodgers. It could be argued that those in his own management team are acolytes and that he could be challenged more.

The pressure will certainly be on Rodgers like never before when the new campaign begins, as he finds himself required to take the club back into the top four.

The progress Liverpool have made in securing the services of James Milner have pointed to the security of the manager’s position. Milner, whose signing is likely to be announced after his Manchester City contact expires on 30 June, has been attracted on substantially lower wages than the £165,000 he was being offered at City. Though the central midfield role available after Steven Gerrard’s departure is attractive, he is likely to have wanted assurances about Rodgers’ continued presence at the club before entering into detailed contract discussions.

The signing of Burnley’s Danny Ings is now imminent. Liverpool will also try to sign Aston Villa’s Christian Benteke and Southampton’s Nathaniel Clyne.

As well as the post-season review, Werner is also examining redevelopment work at Anfield and at the academy.

 

http://www.independe...t-10293201.html

[Rustyjeffears]

Maybe after Klopp saying he's taking some time out FSG have decided to wait for his return. It may be that I'm just clutching at straws. It may well be that FSG know fuck all about football and think a 6-1 scoreline isn't that bad, especially as Americans love these high scores in their 'sports'. Its a possibility that we are fucked.

Klopp will never be our manager now. If Rodgers doesn't get sacked after this then I don't know what it will take to get rid of him unless he dazzles Linda with his white teeth and slips her one on the QT. Even then...

 

I wouldn't say we are fucked, but that we have basically said we are happy in the 7-5th place band.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

So in one easy stroke we'll go from SaS to keBaB with Benteke and Balotelli our new esoteric strike force. I fucking love it. Er hold on, no I don't.

 

If Balotelli stays he'll only be used in cup games, with Origi running off him. If we want to go for all out attack we'll use a front three of Benteke centrally, with Ings and Sturridge flanking him.

 

So, I guess I'm saying our choices are BO or IBS.

 

No one can complain if they stink the place out.

[thompsonsnose]

If I thought Rodgers was going to get 20mil for Lovren I'd be happy, but doubt he's going to sell him. I think he's one of those players he's stubborn with, and is just going to carry on playing him so that he can try to be proven right about buying him in the first place. In that respect I feel sorry for Lovren, because I think, like already said, it's Rodgers tactics and constant switching of defenders that's causing him some of his problems.

Worse than that, he will continue to play him (or any other CB) with zero protection from the midfield.

[G Richards]

G, no offence, but what does this actually mean in a practical sense on the internet?

First thing I'd say is that in the grand scheme of things it means very little! All the time we spend on here, (or elsewhere), is largely meaningless, in terms of being efficacious to most of the things discussed. There's a very real sense in which we are all having our say about things in which we have no real say. Apart from the Internet aspect that helped to rally people together and in a small way contributed to the ousting of H&G, I can't think of many examples where what was discussed on a website materially affected the club we all love.

 

For the most part we are fans talking about the club we love and the game we love. We're offering opinions about all aspects of that because it's interesting to us. But deep down, if pressed, it doesn't really mean anything, as such.

 

Arguably - and this is where I'm coming from - there could be a sense in which fan frustration with Rodgers grows to such an extent that it negatively influences the team. So my main point is really this: let the frustration out now, but when the action kicks off again, I hope the negativity hasn't festered. It will be time to hope again, and time to get behind the manager and his team.

[G Richards]

PS - of course it all depends on results, too. I'm suggesting that since he has been handed a reprieve by the owners, we reset the clock and resist the urge to go overboard when the first bad result occurs next season.

 

Obviously if it is a sequence, and we're nowhere at, say, Christmas, then change will become irresistible. But let's wait and see what happens first.

[Rustyjeffears]

PS - of course it all depends on results, too. I'm suggesting that since he has been handed a reprieve by the owners, we reset the clock and resist the urge to go overboard when the first bad result occurs next season.

Obviously if it is a sequence, and we're nowhere at, say, Christmas, then change will become irresistible. But let's wait and see what happens first.

That won't happen. At the first sign of things going bad then it will turn.

 

He'll need a season like the previous to keep the wolves at bay. If he has 3/4 defeats in the first 3 months and we are way off the pace then I dread to think what it will be like. If 80% of people want you gone then it's a slippery slope bar a miracle.

[cuppatea]

Klopp will never be our manager now. If Rodgers doesn't get sacked after this then I don't know what it will take to get rid of him unless he dazzles Linda with his white teeth and slips her one on the QT. Even then...

 

I wouldn't say we are fucked, but that we have basically said we are happy in the 7-5th place band.

 

Giving the man who oversaw our best league campaign in decades another season after a poor effort this year isn't an acceptance of mediocrity, nor would replacing him with someone who oversaw a much worse campaign (in less challenging circumstances) be any guarantee of success.

[KopOut]

The only thing that matters to the owners, with regards to Rodgers, is whether Anfield has a full house every home game.

 

Based on the season just passed, it appears the fans turned up in droves to watch utter dross. Rodgers has got it made.

[Nightcat]

"Let's wait and see what happens". <----That is the new Liverpool way along with "blind faith".

 

Stop complaining and moaning everyone, fans football forum is serious business.

[billypilgrimnz]

Giving the man who oversaw our best league campaign in decades another season after a poor effort this year isn't an acceptance of mediocrity, nor would replacing him with someone who oversaw a much worse campaign (in less challenging circumstances) be any guarantee of success.

Quick question: What are Rodgers' strengths as a manager? What does he actually do well?

[VladimirIlyich]

I wonder if there are any players(Sterling excluded) who are worried about Rodgers staying too? For example I am a bit worried about the likes of Can who was bought as CM yet has been ruthlessly exposed in the latter games of the season at RB/RCB. If another club,maybe a German club,promised him he would be played as a CM. I also worry that in his case last season was the one where he should have been bedding in as CM yet he has hardly played there. It would be no surprise to me if he struggles to adapt due to not having played there much at all.

[Section_31]

The only thing that matters to the owners, with regards to Rodgers, is whether Anfield has a full house every home game.

 

Based on the season just passed, it appears the fans turned up in droves to watch utter dross. Rodgers has got it made.

 

I think this is short sighted on their part. 

 

Even daytrippers from Hong Kong don't want to be associated with a shit and tainted brand. 

 

Put it this way, I geneuinely don't know who they're going to put on marketing material any more because we simply don't have any good players. 

 

I'm wondering though if, by the time that damage is done, FSG will be long gone. 

 

Keeping the current setup though is gross neglect, nothing short. 

[ben48]

The only thing that matters to the owners, with regards to Rodgers, is whether Anfield has a full house every home game.

 

Based on the season just passed, it appears the fans turned up in droves to watch utter dross. Rodgers has got it made.

Spot on mate, the only way this lot will look to push this club on,football wise, is if they start losing money

[RobbieOR]

I think this is short sighted on their part. 

 

Even daytrippers from Hong Kong don't want to be associated with a shit and tainted brand. 

 

Put it this way, I geneuinely don't know who they're going to put on marketing material any more because we simply don't have any good players. 

 

I'm wondering though if, by the time that damage is done, FSG will be long gone. 

 

Keeping the current setup though is gross neglect, nothing short. 

 

Not if there isn't anything better out there it isn't. I reckon they would have gotten rid of him had they got anything better. They couldn't so they stuck with him.

[Anubis]

I'm at a loss as to why you have to offer him support. People support the team on the pitch and yet don't want individual players. That isn't full support.

 

I'll support the team on the pitch. I'm still not going to think Lovren should be in it. Rodgers will only get my support if he earns it.