The Never Rated Rodgers Thread

[ZonkoVille77]

You really began to doubt the manager when we lost a game but remained in 2nd with a slight chance of still winning the title ?? and the goal at the start of the season was top four ??

Well, Not exactly. The doubts about the defensive setup have been there since the start. But we were able to get results by attacking so it balanced out fairly well.

But my real doubts set in after that game. How hard would it have been to shut up shop and play for a draw? I don't think it was that difficult.

Chelsea knew exactly how we'd play. The man on the street knew exactly how Chelsea would play. It was quite naive to go gung-ho when caution was the order of the day.

I think he got caught up with the pace and excitement of the situation, as we all did, and let it get to his head. But that's my opinion.

[xerxes]

A good DM instead of shoehorning Gerrard in would turn us round. He wont do it tho anymore than Evans would fix the defence or Houllier ditch his counter attack ethos.

It's the tooth.

[The Golden Eel]

I've only started to have misgivings about him this season but they're persistent ones.  Perhaps it is a bit kneejerk but I can't shake this feeling that he's completely lost it this season and won't be getting it back. 

[dennis tooth]

The Reina episode just showed how foolish the man is, waste, waste, waste.

 

Hes the new David O'leary. Irish snake oil salesmen. He got leeds to a cl semi final an top 4 give him the job then, or at least send nueve to wank him off put the feelers out see if a deal might be possible.

[BCM]

The Reina episode just showed how foolish the man is, waste, waste, waste.

 

Hes the new David O'leary. Irish snake oil salesmen. He got leeds to a cl semi final an top 4 give him the job then, or at least send nueve to wank him off put the feelers out see if a deal might be possible.

 

Funnily enough i was only making that comparision to a mate the other day. I think its the "Only Wee Kids" line that does it.

[Dr. J]

He created a system that got as much as possible out of some pretty special players. Gerrard as DM is absurd, but it worked. And this system, you have to remember, is not something he'd implemented elsewhere, that he could just pull out of his back pocket, he doesn't have the breadth of experience for that, he was inventing, tweaking, stumbling all the way along. But he got there.

 

He had to abandon quite a few of his core principles and fundamental beliefs. But he did finally realize that death by football wasn't for us and managed to get us to a pretty special place. Slowly, for sure, because he's a rookie but get there we did.

 

And so that brings us to now. Teams have spent the off-season analyzing the ProZone season summary DVDs and they've got us pegged as a counter-attacking team. What worked great against teams that were prepared to open up, doesn't work so well now. Take Suarez and Sturridge out of the mix and hey presto.

 

So where are we now? We are back to where we were a month or so into trying to do death by football. Waiting for the penny to drop that tweaking and stumbling is not what's called for here. He needs to screw up the plans and start again. Alas, he's a rookie, and so it will take longer for the penny to drop and longer to craft a alternative.

 

The upside of course is that he does have a proven ability to fuck up in ways that would seem pretty easy to avoid and then fix them. Come the end of the season, we'll know if it's a talent or not.

 

Ok, but what about this? Last season we scored 36 goals from set pieces - 10 more than City that was second and twice as many as some other rivals. So far this season we've scored 2.

What's happened there? A lot of it has to do with Suarez winning a free kicks, surely, and pressing to win corners. Whatever the reason, that's a huge disparity between now and then.

[ritchie]

I think there's a very good coach within Rodgers and potentially a very good manager but he shouldn't be managing Liverpool. He's too inexperienced too wet behind the ears,too stubborn, too arrogant with nothing to show for it. So it's a bit of a contradiction in terms of rating him but not rating him. I said from day one he needs a strong coaching staff to back him up - a load of nobodies and yes men were appointed. I said he need a strong Sporting Director/DOF to help with transfers/for guidance - he wouldn't work with one. He's fucked himself up from the start.

 

This season he's been an embarrassment from the start. the same way Hodgson was The football we're playing is an embarrassment, as it was under Hodgson. The results are embarrassing, as it was under Hodgson. But he showed enough last season to show there's talent there within him and he can get us playing. Yeah most of it was Suarez but games like the 5-0 away at Spurs that was the death by football that he sold to us when he took over. But the man's a shitbag. If he's too weak to sub Gerrard or leave him on the bench, rather than play him in a position that he can't play, then he shouldn't be managing Liverpool. He's a coach not a manager at this point in his career. He's hopeless in the transfer market he can't spot a player and he can't cope with more than one game a week. So Why's he our manager? The fault lies with the owners.

[Rotpeter]

Ok, but what about this? Last season we scored 36 goals from set pieces - 10 more than City that was second and twice as many as some other rivals. So far this season we've scored 2.

What's happened there? A lot of it has to do with Suarez winning a free kicks, surely, and pressing to win corners. Whatever the reason, that's a huge disparity between now and then.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply I had a clue, I was just trying to put it in perspective.

[Section_31]

You can't take anything away from Rodgers last season, it wasn't some kind of fluke, he just sussed out what I always hoped Rafa would but never did, and what Ferguson and - to a degree - Keegan sussed out. The Premiership isn't very good and its managers aren't master tacticians, so if you (a) have better players and (b ) go for the throat, nine times out of ten you'll twat the opposition.

 

For all the claims of Ferguson's tactical genius this is how he dominated the league for so long, he had better players and unleashed them. It's also why he often struggled in Europe where it was a different kettle of fish. Where Ferguson's genius lay was being able to constantly reinvent the wheel and build team after team. Rodgers seemingly can't (lest we forget his talisman Suarez was not his signing), at least yet. I also always suspected he'd come a cropped when faced with tactically minded coaches in Europe, as they'll just eat that gung ho stuff up all day long then knife you between the shoulder blades in the 73rd minute.

 

What Rodgers has done is allow the side to fall apart by replacing players with worse players, who are also still settling in. Even before that though, the squad was precarious and the options we had were paper thin.

 

He's also missing some major fundamentals like Keegan was, i.e defensive coaching ability and realising that you can't play high tempo, entertaining football in every game and that if you can't, you need other options and ways of winning.

[Tony Moanero]

Gerrard could play the position last season.

[ritchie]

Gerrard could play the position last season.

 

Not defensively. We were conceding an insane amount of goals for a title challenging side which caught up with us in the end. 

 

Gerrard's job was to get the ball forward to Suarez, Sturridge and Sterling as quickly as possible with his passing range and they'd do the rest. Now we haven't got that attack and Gerrard has nothing to offer on the ball and he's even worse defensively because we haven't got the attack to fall back on. Henderson was also putting in an insane amount of work defensively to help out and when he was suspended and now this season it's caught up with him as well and we're suffering a lot in midfield.

 

Rodgers is making a fool out of Gerrard but thinks he's doing him a favour. He's as adept in a defensive midfield role as Claude Makelele would be up front. He can't even do the basics like positioning and tracking runners, look at the first two goals yesterday. Not just down to him by any means but it's just basic stuff for any DM .

[ratcatcher]

Well he clearly didnt go out with the intention of signing worse players than he had at the club. Can, moreno and markovic were clearly bought with an eye on the future.

 

I rate Can but yesterday, he gave the ball away a lot. Moreno looks a good fullback but even he has cost two goals that resulted directly in defeats. Markovic is in danger of sinking without trace. I dont know what possessed the club to pay £20m for him. Manquillo looks capable too.

 

Ive read today that some fans are now saying lovren was gash at soton. That's not what I remember but clearly, he isnt producing the form expected of him.

[Rotpeter]

He's also missing some major fundamentals like Keegan was, i.e defensive coaching ability and realising that you can't play high tempo, entertaining football in every game and that if you can't, you need other options and ways of winning.

That was the point Xabi was making earlier in the week. You need to be able to play at least three ways. That's why ferguson brought in Queroiz; to add another option. But I don't think Rodgers, the rookie that he is, fully realized that. Hopefully, he does know. I mean if the game against chelsea was his idea of rafa/mourinho-esque bus parking then he has a way to go.

 

But these mistakes and lessons are what you expect from an inexperienced manager. Like it or not, it's what we signed up for. We try not to beat up on kids when they are inconsistent and erratic and the same should apply here.

 

Yeah, he tries to pretend he's the finished article and even if he believes it, we know he's not, so that's how we need to judge him. At the same time, we need to present not a single crack in our support that the press can drive a wedge into because that is a big part of the momentum in any downward spiral.

 

And if we're still shit at the end of the season. Sack his ass and get someone good.

[BCM]

Gerrard could play the position last season.

 

If by position you mean spray passes around, but fail to adequately protect your defence then your right.

 

Because by conceding 50 goals one year and then being on course to concede 57 goals the season after there is a fundamental flaw in the balance of this side

[ritchie]

You can't take anything away from Rodgers last season, it wasn't some kind of fluke, he just sussed out what I always hoped Rafa would but never did, and what Ferguson and - to a degree - Keegan sussed out. The Premiership isn't very good and its managers aren't master tacticians, so if you (a) have better players and (b ) go for the throat, nine times out of ten you'll twat the opposition.

 

 

I agree with this to an extent but we had the advantage of two top class forwards at the top of their game (and even the world's best player most of last season). We had this in 08/09 with Gerrard and Torres but couldn't keep them fit. Them two have a relatively injury free season and we win that title but one or the other was usually injured. 

 

No team has won the Premier League without being able to defend. Did Ferguson often go hell for leather? Yeah he did, but his teams also knew how to defend. From Bruce, Pallister, Irwin, to Stam and Neville, to Ferdinand and Vidic he had some top defences. 

 

Mourinho's title winning teams were great defensively. Wenger's title winning teams were and it's also why they haven't won one since the last of the great defence he inherited left. Blackburn defended well when they won it.

 

A lot of teams have provided great entertainment but fell short. Last season we were basically a very extreme version of Keegan's Newcastle side. We couldn't defend. We didn't try to defend. We didn't try to control games. We played hell for leather, end-to-end football and eventually got found out by a smarter coach and fell short. We weren't capable of playing for a draw when we needed one. Newcastle were the same and lost key games doing it.

[Rotpeter]

Ive read today that some fans are now saying lovren was gash at soton. That's not what I remember but clearly, he isnt producing the form expected of him.

Lovren is another example of the Allen syndrome. (Al)Right player wrong system. You cannot space your defence and midfield as we do and have someone play such an aggressive, high risk role. But for some reason, that defies any known logic, we continue to setup as an 80% possession football side, even though we abandoned that a couple of years ago.

[Rotpeter]

If by position you mean spray passes around, but fail to adequately protect your defence then your right.

 

Because by conceding 50 goals one year and then being on course to concede 57 goals the season after there is a fundamental flaw in the balance of this side

Gerrard was never a DM. He was a quarterback. On balance it worked. Playing with a DM instead of a quarterback may have got us a win against chelsea, but we would have been fighting for 4th not 1st.

 

It does look the time for a quarterback has passed though.

[ritchie]

Gerrard was never a DM. He was a quarterback. On balance it worked. Playing with a DM instead of a quarterback may have got us a win against chelsea, but we would have been fighting for 4th not 1st.

 

It does look the time for a quarterback has passed though.

 

Regardless you won't win anything if you can't defend and neglect defence. We could have played out the most turgid 0-0 draw with Chelsea and won the title doing it. Instead we think we have to go out and play all out attack against a Mourinho team who had Rodgers' number the same way Paul lambert does every year. Now every dickhead from Harry Redknapp to Neil fucking Warnock knows how to make a cunt out of Rodgers without Suarez to have to worry about. At least Carlo Ancelotti was merciful enough to take pity on us at 3-0 up for playing wide open at Anfield against the most blistering counter attacking side around but without us having any goal threat.

 

It was Rodgers who said after that Chelsea game it's easy to just defend. Well if it was that easy we'd be champions because we wouldn't have conceded a goal to a team who had no ambition to attack. 

[Faustus]

I'm sorry, but I've got to take issue with something Zonkoville said on the previous page about that Chelsea game and shutting up shop.

 

At some point in that game, Chelsea would have had to come at us. A draw was of no use to them. The way were playing that first half, while not exactly as free flowing as the weeks before, we were doing okay and creating a few half chances here and there. I remember looking at the clock on 40 mins and thinking 0-0 going into half time wouldn't be top bad because they'd eventually have to come at us and I fancied us to pick them off. Lo and behold, that bastard slip happened and what I feared- going 1-0 down and having Mourinho reverse the double deckers in front of the goal- happened.

 

Imagine, though, if after weeks of poetry in motion, Rodgers went full shitbag and they came at us after an hour because they needed a win and got it that way. Rodgers would have been absolutely pilloried for it- 'why did he change the approach after we were blowing teams away? Blah blah blah.'

 

For me, that game is beyond analysis. The Palace game, as much as it was a kick in the balls, was threatening to happen at one stage because we were regularly conceding twos and threes to some God awful teams. The Chelsea game hinged on a fucking slip from one of our greatest ever players against a shower who revel in giving him stick. You can say we should have done this or that, but that bastard incident was the fucking game changer. It doesn't happen and we go in at the break 0-0 with the game going in our favour.

 

I took that game far harder than Palace because it just shows how cruel the game can be.

[Dr. J]

The slip wouldn't have been fatal if our cbs were not nearly level with Gerrard at midfield - 2 or 3 paces further back and one of them could have clattered Ba.

[ritchie]

I'm sorry, but I've got to take issue with something Zonkoville said on the previous page about that Chelsea game and shutting up shop.

 

At some point in that game, Chelsea would have had to come at us. A draw was of no use to them. The way were playing that first half, while not exactly as free flowing as the weeks before, we were doing okay and creating a few half chances here and there. I remember looking at the clock on 40 mins and thinking 0-0 going into half time wouldn't be top bad because they'd eventually have to come at us and I fancied us to pick them off. Lo and behold, that bastard slip happened and what I feared- going 1-0 down and having Mourinho reverse the double deckers in front of the goal- happened.

 

Imagine, though, if after weeks of poetry in motion, Rodgers went full shitbag and they came at us after an hour because they needed a win and got it that way. Rodgers would have been absolutely pilloried for it- 'why did he change the approach after we were blowing teams away? Blah blah blah.'

 

 

It didn't have to be all out attack or park the bus though. Players, manager, fans were getting really agitated at Chelsea for wasting time in the first half and I think part of it was we knew we didn't have a clean sheet in us so we had to get the first goal and were anxious to get it because we didn't know any other way. Gerrard fucked up but we didn't have to play so open, especially right on half time. If you look at the Rafa/Mourinho Liverpool-Chelsea games they'd often be 0-0 with barely anything in the game. But we didn't have it in us to be able to keep it tight and panicked to have to be bombing forward all the time. Mourinho turned up for 0-0 at Old Trafford and Emirates and got it. He'd have took 0-0 at Anfield because he'd already given up on the league. Yeah he'd have pushed on a bit towards the end but he'd have took a clean sheet.

 

The second half wasn't a Chelsea masterclass in defending either. It was a team completely losing their heads and forcing everything. Our heads had gone against an awful Norwich team a week earlier who we'd been 2-0 up against early on. We were 2-0 up against City and fucked that up. It was a great run we had but we just weren't good enough in the end and bottled it.

[ZonkoVille77]

The slip wouldn't have been fatal if our cbs were not nearly level with Gerrard at midfield - 2 or 3 paces further back and one of them could have clattered Ba.

True. And it was because we were pushing hard when we didn't need to.

[Rotpeter]

Regardless you won't win anything if you can't defend and neglect defence. We could have played out the most turgid 0-0 draw with Chelsea and won the title doing it. Instead we think we have to go out and play all out attack against a Mourinho team who had Rodgers' number the same way Paul lambert does every year. Now every dickhead from Harry Redknapp to Neil fucking Warnock knows how to make a cunt out of Rodgers without Suarez to have to worry about. At least Carlo Ancelotti was merciful enough to take pity on us at 3-0 up for playing wide open at Anfield against the most blistering counter attacking side around.

 

It was Rodgers who said after that game it's easy to just defend. Well if it was that easy we'd be champions because we wouldn't have conceded a goal to a team who had no ambition to attack.

With what he had I don't think winning the title was every a realistic proposition. Our performances last season were probably the best next step that we could have taken. Yeah, it ultimately undid us, but we wouldn't have been at the table otherwise. If we'd still had Xabi and ElJefecito then maybe we could have taken a different approach and been as successful.

 

Coaching defence is easy. But you don't coach teams to defend. You coach them to win. Which means balancing attack, defense, transition, set pieces, player form, player aspirations, player combinations, ...

 

And so you have to compromise. It was a good compromise last season. Not so much this.

 

BTW I agree with most of what you say. For me, he comes across as a rookie slow on the uptake. But seems to get it once he's worked it out. The way he was rotating the fuck out of the defence was mind boggling and completely self-defeating, but at least he's cut that out. Now he seems to be dithering between zonal and man to man at set pieces. Strange.

[ritchie]

With what he had I don't think winning the title was every a realistic proposition. Our performances last season were probably the best next step that we could have taken. Yeah, it ultimately undid us, but we wouldn't have been at the table otherwise. If we'd still had Xabi and ElJefecito then maybe we could have taken a different approach and been as successful.

 

Coaching defence is easy. But you don't coach teams to defend. You coach them to win. Which means balancing attack, defense, transition, set pieces, player form, player aspirations, player combinations, ...

 

And so you have to compromise. It was a good compromise last season. Not so much this.

 

BTW I agree with most of what you say. For me, he comes across as a rookie slow on the uptake. But seems to get it once he's worked it out. The way he was rotating the fuck out of the defence was mind boggling and completely self-defeating, but at least he's cut that out. Now he seems to be dithering between zonal and man to man at set pieces. Strange.

 

That's why he's a promising manager but he's not ready to be Liverpool manager. You don't race an F1 car before you've passed your test. Why are we letting him learn his mistakes here? We can't afford it. We've got a season in the CL out of him but have wasted a shitload of money on transfers through fuzzy thinking and the absolute clusterfuck of this season has basically set us back to where we were under Hodgson, so we've got nothing to show for being in the CL. Last season was great but painful as fuck to bottle it the way we did the last few games and there's no trophy to show for it. 08/09 was great but we had nothing to show for that either and 09/10 was a calamity but this season has been far worse so far than even that was. I'd probably take 63 points and a Europa League semi at the minute.

[Boss]

That was the point Xabi was making earlier in the week. You need to be able to play at least three ways. That's why ferguson brought in Queroiz; to add another option. But I don't think Rodgers, the rookie that he is, fully realized that. Hopefully, he does know. I mean if the game against chelsea was his idea of rafa/mourinho-esque bus parking then he has a way to go.

 

But these mistakes and lessons are what you expect from an inexperienced manager. Like it or not, it's what we signed up for. We try not to beat up on kids when they are inconsistent and erratic and the same should apply here.

 

Yeah, he tries to pretend he's the finished article and even if he believes it, we know he's not, so that's how we need to judge him. At the same time, we need to present not a single crack in our support that the press can drive a wedge into because that is a big part of the momentum in any downward spiral.

 

And if we're still shit at the end of the season. Sack his ass and get someone good.

 

He does know how to play multiple ways, he just made a mistake in terms of what he expected from the opposition this season. He believed everyone would turn up to Anfield like Chelsea last season and park the bus, hence Lambert as a plan B. What he didn't realise is without Suarez, the opposition don't need too.