cuppatea

They don't actually, it's not included. You can take the last 3 years that are solely Rodger's ranking points if you like and compare that to Dortmund, or just compare it to other clubs in general, it's fucking shite.

What's not included? The rankings are based on your performance in Europe over a 5 year period. Why do you think we were 11th in 2012? We were in no position to be a threat in Europe when Rodgers took over. A better comparison would be Klopp's early years at Dortmund when they were getting knocked out of the Europa League in the first qualifying round and finishing bottom of their Champions League group.

I gave the rankings when Rodgers took over. Rodgers is allowed to influence those rankings positively. We were in Europe when he took charge.

Which were based on our performance in Europe over the previous 5 years, including a Champions League final appearance in 2007, which had absolutely relevance to a team which had just finished 8th in the league.

When Rodgers took over we were ranked 11th best in Europe by UEFA coefficients, Dortmund were 66th. We're now 42nd and Dortmund are 12th.

Based on ranking points going back 5 years which had no relevance to either club's standing in 2012.

When Rodgers took over we were the 8th best team in England and Dortmund were the best team in Germany. Since then Dortmund haven't won a trophy, they haven't come within a million miles of challenging for the title and they're currently 9th in an 18 team league, 10 points above the relegation zone and almost 40 off first. I wish I could share McMahon's confidence that he'd come in and perform miracles here because I'd quite happily pack Rodgers' bags myself but sadly I think the likelihood is we'd be labelling him an inept cunt within a year or 2 also.

I think we all remember when Chelsea spent £30m on Willian and Mark Schwarzer, despite their average age of 32. The mad bastards.

Suarez was not a punt he'd played the same amount of games for Ajax as he did during his time here and scored even more goals. Torres was not a punt either, he was pure class and was one of the best strikers in La Liga around the time we signed him.

 

I suppose you could say Alonso was a punt but he'd had 5 full seasons of experience in La Liga before he arrived. Masch was an Argentinian international and was loaned for a year before we decided to buy, so it was try before you buy with him and obviously we liked what we saw.

 

Punts are Can, Moreno, Markovic, Origi, Coutinho, Sturridge, Alberto, Illori, Manquillo and Borini. Sometimes they work out sometimes they don't. There's nothing stopping us from signing the likes of Jovetic, Oscar, Shaqiri, Illarramendi, Salah, Coentrao, Montoya or any of the other players that don't make the grade at the mega rich and the clubs with the most prestige.

Are you suggesting there's some sort of fool proof method for signing world class players for minimal fees?

Is that last group of players supposed to be punts or not?

Fair comment.

 

But a team, that by its owners own declaration, needs to outsmart the opposition, has to employ a CEO and manager who can do that. Neither Ayre nor Brendan, who both have qualities, offer that.

If we haven't outsmarted the 2 Manchester clubs how have we closed the gap between us from 37 points to single figures in a 3 year period, whilst spending significantly less money than they have? How did we finish above Chelsea last season despite having a fraction of their resources?

It's hard to explain the recent shitness of English clubs in Europe when you consider the enormous advantages in resources we have over every other league. Outside the top 2 in Spain and the top 1 in France, Germany and Italy, every English team should be miles better than its foreign equivalent.

There has certainly been money wasted (as there is with every club, every season) but I don't think the transfers have been quite as poor as some are making out. For all the talk of £211m wasted, we were 37 points behind United and City when Rodgers took over, they've spent £520m between them since then and now we're competitive with both, whilst slashing the average age of the squad and spending a fraction of what they do on wages. Had Sturridge not been injured, Balotelli not flopped or Costa and/or Sanchez not rejected us, I'm inclined to believe we'd have finished ahead of one of one if not both, despite them having proven winners in charge of vastly superior resources and our own manager apparently a useless cunt who is completely out of his depth at this level.

So why are we bearing Tottenham in mind in your post again?

I said we couldn't do X, never mind Y, to illustrate a point. That phrase can't be new to you, surely?

Tottenham who haven't spent more than sales on transfers for the whole time Brendan has been in charge?

Yes, them.

I am not that bothered about Brendan’s popularity .

 

Like others, I do not know him personally. I do know someone who has worked with him professionally and whose wife knows him socially. The impression was of a man professionally driven, open to ideas, who craved success, personally, the impression was somewhat more jaundiced.

 

For me the problem is, and always has been, an imbalance between a man who, rightly, could not believe his luck in securing the job and a Club who needed, and need, a manager with considerable, tested and proved, skills. For him, simply surviving three years, a second finish, competing in Europe and two domestic semi - finals are huge advances on his CV, at LFC they have less significance. Laudrup at Swansea, and KK here second time around, achieved more in less time.

 

There are few multi-talented managers. There are quite a few who are good in specific situations. The case for Brendan seems to be last season, and he did well. But that still does not compensate for his lack of experience in others. Is Di Matteo a great manger as an EC winner? Henry declared that we could not outspend our rivals, but would outsmart them. For all his qualities, and Brendan does have some, his credentials to outsmart our rivals seem pretty thin.

Ignoring the fact that almost all of the recent against-the-odds title triumphs in Europe that that we're trying to replicate have come off the back of appointing young, hungry, unproven managers, where do you think we'd be now if we had gone for a "proven winner" instead of Rodgers (AVB, for example, who many were clamouring for at the time, or Frank Rijkaard)?

In purely league terms, what would have been an acceptable 3 year performance, bearing in mind we'd just finished 8th, 37 points off first and had been unable to get near Tottenham in the 3 years previous, never mind the financial juggernauts ahead of them?

Spurs finished on the same number of points last season as they did the year before Rodgers took over, when they were 4th and we were 8th. 3 less than their highest ever points finish in the Premier League. Hardly a "nightmare" or an "implosion".

Our previous 4 finishes before last season were 7th, 6th, 8th and 7th. United's were 2nd, 1st, 2nd and 1st. Last season we massively overperformed in the league and they massively underperformed in it. They were never going to stay 7th and we were always going to have a hard time staying in the top 4, which is why the bookies had us down for 5th (and United 3rd) before a ball had been kicked.

We could (and should) have spent our money much better but at the same time, it's hard to spend it as well as the teams around us when they can sign established world class players who simply have no interest in coming to Liverpool. How would the table look now if Sanchez's missus didn't prefer London to Liverpool? Or if we were able to pluck 4 of the absolute best players in their respective positions from La Liga, as Chelsea did?

We'd have been shorter odds than Spurs. We have been every year since the first of ever.

Why would we have shorter odds than Spurs after finishing behind them 4 years in a row?

I don't know where you get that from, it's not what I recall.

Bookies had us 6th favourites after (can't remember the exact order) Chelsea, Utd, City, Arsenal and Tottenham.

Guardian had us predicted 6th - http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/aug/16/premier-league-predictions-guardian-writers

BBC had us 6th - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23001874

Independent had us 6th - http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/your-complete-guide-to-the-201314-premier-league-season-8764230.html

Telegraph had us 6th - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/10237196/Premier-League-201314-preview-how-will-Arsenal-Manchester-United-Liverpool-and-your-team-fare.html

None of the 15 Daily Mail writers (including Carra) had us in the top 4 - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2395055/Premier-League-2013-14-preview-Sportsmail-experts-views.html

What do you recall?

6th or 7th with Suarez and Sturridge up top?

According to the bookies, neutrals and everyone but the most wildly optimistic Liverpool fans, yes.

5 league games we didn't win from leading positions. Then there was games like Swansea where we surrendered the lead 3 times but managed to nick it 4-3, threw a 2-0 lead away at home to City in the second half (and nearly lost the game) and then the Norwich game where we were 2-0 up and coasting and then 3-1 up and it was panic stations trying to see it out because we kept letting them back in it. It all caught up with us against Palace.

 

What we were boss at doing last season was going 3-0 up early on at Anfield which killed the game off. We weren't really controlling games last season, we were playing boss attacking football in spells and being very clinical in front of goal. When put under pressure we usually wilted.

You're nitpicking a team which was expected to finish 6th or 7th and came 2nd, a whisker away from 1st.

If he's able to oversee our best league campaign in 25 years (and one of the most impressive league campaigns of any club in recent years) whilst he's still learning the basics of football management, can we really afford to let go of him?

You don't think 13 games of relegation form in the middle of 80 games of top 4 form can be classed as an outlier?

We've taken 40 points from our last 19 league games. That's half a season of form that will get you into the top 4 every single time. The horrendous start to the season was clearly a massive outlier since we've been miles better than that at every other point over the last 2 and a half years.

We're 5th because we had a run of 13 league games of relegation form earlier in the season. Now of course that shouldn't happen but I don't see how you can objectively conclude that those 13 league games, rather than the 60 that came before it or the 19 that have come after it, represent the true level of Rodgers as a manager.

The team that got 52 points, finished 8th and gave regular first team football to the likes of Jay Spearing, Charlie Adam and Stewart Downing would twat us and Gerrard's decline is the fault of the manager, who Gerrard himself praises to the heavens and who oversaw his best campaign in years the season before? Sound.

I mean suarez leaving was clear for the previous two summers but your post said it was unforseen circumstances.

I said "2 of them due to unforeseen circumstances", referring to Sturridge being injured for the entire season and Gerrard declining far more rapidly and dramatically than anyone could have predicted.

An ageing squad in decline?

Suarez. Reina. Agger. Gerrard.

Now look brad jones gets an extension mario balo here for the long haul borini aspas danny ings our marquee for the summer.

How do i reach your planet from earth. Is there a bus that runs there?

Can assume you reached here via rawk?

You just named 4 players, 3 of whom peaked about 6 years ago.

There is different criteria to evaluate in picking a manager rather than just trophies. Out the list Guardiola and Simeone were proven winners as club legends in their playing days with massive personalties. Risky, bold appointments but were worth a go (Barca turned Mourinho down to appoint Guardiola which took balls). Klopp got the Dortmund job when they were on their arse so didn't have many options. Rafa at Valencia proved to be a masterstroke.

 

The one that springs to mind is when Milan got Sacchi in the mid 80s. He was managing in Serie B and they were that impressed with the football his team played when they won at Milan in the cup that Berlusconi hired him. Taking a risk that like can really pay off but it is also more of a risk than hiring a proven winner. Within three seasons he'd won every trophy and was the last manager to retain the European Cup. He wouldn't have lasted three years without a trophy there or forgetting trophies he wouldn't have lasted three years without his vision being implemented (i.e a team with no identity) in terms of that style of play that got him the job. But that football that so impressed Berlusconi to hire him he had Milan playing soon enough.

 

I don't think Rodgers has shown enough overall in 3 years to suggest he's anywhere near ready for this job. He got it off the back of two years at Swansea where he won the play offs and had a mid table season. The reason FSG went for Rodgers rather than say Paul Lambert (who had just achieved a similar feat with Norwich) was because of the style of football Swansea played. But it wasn't Rodgers that implemented it and he's been unable to implement it here in 3 years and we look a team devoid of ideas and inspiration. That's what FSG have to look at and figure out where Rodgers is actually taking us as a team. I'm a believer that all teams are a reflection of their manager once they've been their long enough. Mourinho's teams full of cunts, Simeone's teams full of bite and aggression, the purism of a Guardiola team. We're listless.

Last season was the best football I've seen us play in 25 years and the closest we've come to winning the title in 25 years. It would have been one of the most odds-defying elite league wins over that period and therefore (according to neutrals at least) one of the most impressive single managerial feats. To disregard that entirely because our captain miscontrolled a simple pass and then slipped over is, in my opinion, utterly absurd.

Atletico Madrid won the title last year, in part, because Barcelona were unable to beat Getafe and Elche in their final 3 games. We lost the title because Man City won 5 in a row against opposition superior to that. If those things (out of either manager's control) had gone the other way then, according to the criteria laid out in this thread, Rodgers would be undisputedly world class and Simeone would be out of his depth and not good enough for the top level. It's ridiculous, ignores all context and is indicative of the attitude that sees us think we're above hiring unproven managers, while clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Milan etc are not.

We were going absolutely nowhere when Rodgers took over, coming off our worst league campaign in decades, with an ageing squad in terminal decline. Within 6 months he had a young team playing exciting, attacking football and followed that up with 18 months of superb form and a down-to-the-wire title challenge that not even the most wildly optimistic fan could have expected. Even if you think he needs to be moved on now, to deny him all credit for that remarkable turnaround is completely unreasonable.

You say we have no identity under Rodgers and yet there's been a consistent trend of lowering the average age of the squad and looking to fill it with technically gifted players who are comfortable with the ball at their feet, playing fast-paced, incisive football. Even as recently as a few weeks ago, when we were the form team across all of the major European leagues, I thought some of the interplay between Sterling, Coutinho, Lallana and Henderson was a joy to behold. We've changed our system since last season but that was necessitated by the loss of the 3 most important players in it (2 of them due to unforeseen circumstances) and I can't help but think you'd be giving him even more of a kicking had we persisted when that ceased to work.

There are certainly question marks surrounding Rodgers and areas in which he needs to improve but there have also been plenty of positives (which you refuse to acknowledge), enough for me to give him another season to see whether last year (when we punched massively our punch our weight) or this year (when we've punched slightly below it) better represent his level.