Rodgers is out of his depth at Liverpool

LIVERPOOL’S sorry 2014/2015 campaign came to a tortuous end with a 6-1 massacre at Stoke City. That heart-wrenching humbling at the Britannia Stadium followed another low point in a 3-1 home defeat to another lowly team Crystal Palace and it was the Reds 12^th league defeat of their 38-match campaign.

The defeat also saw them cede 5^th place to Tottenham Hotspurs and with the unwanted consolation of Europa League 3^rd round play-off next season. Yet, this was a team which came within whiskers of winning the championship last season, thanks mostly to the incredible exploits of Luis Suarez.

Yet, this was a team which played exhilarating football last season and blew most opponents away within the first 10 minutes. This was a club loved by most neutrals who were always happy to pay to watch the Reds pulverize their opponents.

So, where did it all go wrong? We need not look further than the manager Brendan Rodgers who has unwittingly taken the Reds ages backward barely a season after leading them to the brink of a title success. It may sound unfair, but it’s a plausible argument that all Liverpool achieved last season was down to Suarez, a player who lifted his barely average team-mates and turned them into awe-inspiring bulldogs.

Rodgers took the plaudits last season and was even voted BPL’s manager of the year. Therefore, now that things have gone awry, it’s only fair that he takes the blame too, and this with VERY STRONG JUSTIFICATIONS, namely:

1-MEDIOCRE TRANSFER BUSINESS: This more than anything else is BR’s worst offence as a Liverpool manager. Yes, we hear rumours of certain transfer committee of which the manager is reportedly a prominent member. So how do you exonerate him from some of Liverpool’s shambolic transfer businesses?

Looking at Liverpool and the four clubs who finished in the UCL, it’s glaring the Reds were very inferior to all these clubs in all departments including the managers. Yet Rodgers spent a tidy 110 million quid in the transfer window last summer, the second highest spender in the league behind Manchester United!

Some of his transfer deals were worse than laughable too. Or how do you rid the club of a goalkeeper of Pepe Reina’s stature and replace him with Simon Mignolette, never mind that the former Sunderland goalkeeper had a better season this term than last?

How do you replace Liverpool born and bred Jonjo Shelvey or battle-hardened Charlie Adam with lightweight Joe Allen? Both Shelvey and Adam have performed for their respective clubs this season alone than Allen has done in his three seasons at Liverpool put together! As if to rub it in, Adam was among the goals in Stoke’s 6-1 rout of sorry Reds at the Britannia. Of course, Rodgers’ ‘son’ Allen played in the match and was lost without a trace.

To further analyse Rodgers’ sickening transfer deals, you need to ask yourself why he failed to replace thirty-something-goal-a-season striker Suarez with a very decent striker. Rodgers and his faceless transfer committee knew the Uruguayan hitman was destined for the exit even before a ball was kicked at last year’s World Cup. So how come they couldn’t land any decent striker all summer?

 

All they did was to drop fanciful names like Radamel Falcao, Alexis Sanchez, Edison Cavani, Gonzalo Higuain among others only to end with aged Ricky Lambert and football enfant terrible Mario Balotelli! Shame!! That was Rodgers’ first major error that precipitated this pitiable campaign.

Rodgers has spent over 230 million pounds in transfers in his three years at Anfield, and you can only praise him for two, possibly three out of over 20 signings – Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho. Maybe one can whisper the name of Mamadou Sakho and to some extent Emre Can.

But balance that with such hollow names like Fabio Borini, Iago Aspas, Luis Alberto, Dejan Lovren Javier Manquillo, Asaidi, Mignolette, Allen among many others players who shouldn’t even dream of donning Liverpool’s famous red jersey, and you know how abjectly backward Rodgers has taken this once great club.

Or how do you describe the coach’s buying and quickly loaning back players to their previous clubs even if Liverpool might need their services – Lille forward Divoc Origi and young defender Thiago Ilori are two examples?

Also, only Rodgers could keep poor striker Borini in his team despite getting a dream 14 million pounds offer for him in last summer.

Simply put, the Northern Irishman has failed abysmally in his transfer business. And for this alone, any club with real ambition will dispense with his services without any fuss. Truth is were Liverpool to be a public property where EFCC existed, Rodgers could be helping the anti-fraud agency with their investigations into all sort of financial malpractices.

2-FAILURE TO ATTRACT STAR PLAYERS: Rodgers problems are not limited to the poor signings he made. His inability to attract marquee signings is also a big flaw. And the list of the marquee signings he failed to land is near legendary, the latest of whom was Depay who has just completed his medical at Manchester United.

Even not so stellar names like Mohammed Salah, Willian (Chelsea), Christian Eriksson (Spurs), Mkhtiryan (B. Dortmund) just to mention a few all shunned Rodgers and Liverpool for other clubs.

Man United had this problem with David Moyes and had to quickly terminate his contract even with over five years remaining on their agreement! Today, a world class manager in the person of Louis van Gaal calls the shots at OT and players don’t need to ask who the manager or his achievement is before they sign for him.

Sad to say, Rodgers has no big CV to attract big players. And like we have witnessed this season, only teams with seasoned players and managers would continue to make BPL top four unless you can conjure up another Suarez!

3-VERY POOR SEASON: Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish was sacked three seasons ago because of poor league performance. Yet, that same season he won the Capital One Cup (Reds first trophy in six years) and controversially lost the FA Cup final 2-1 to Chelsea!

John W Henry and his FENWAY Group were unimpressed and dispensed with King Kenny, never mind his legendary status at Anfield as both a player and a manager. The bottom line was his league performance of the season was not good enough and he got the boot.

So why would the same group overlook Rodgers’ terrible failure this season? At the start, the sturdy Northern Irish man set three targets for his team, namely: retain Top 4 finish, progress from the group stage of the Champions League and win at least one trophy this season.

Well, his report card could not be more damning as he failed in all these three objectives. As the saying goes, a manager is as good as his last result. And Rodgers’ last result or campaign as a whole has been anything but satisfactory.

If Henry and his FENWAY group would be consistent, Rodgers might be gone before you read this piece.

4-MISMANAGEMENT OF PLAYERS CONTRACTS: One of BR’s big problems this season was his inability to manage players’ contracts. The unpalatable saga of Raheem Sterling’s future rages on while legendary captain Steven Gerrard is off to the US, ending over two decades of romance with his only club up till now.

Interestingly both Gerrard and Sterling said they would have signed contract extensions at Anfield if the deals had been offered earlier.

We would never know the truth to the players’ claims. But one fact that is undeniable is that Rodgers messed up big time regarding players contracts this season.

5-KLOPP’S AVAILABILITY: With the availability of a proven achiever like Jurgen Klopp, there can be no better time to sack Rodgers and go for the young German gaffer.

Liverpool are in a far better situation than the Borussia Dortmund that Klopp inherited less than a decade ago. But not only did he break the monopoly of Bayern Munich in Germany by winning two league titles and a couple of domestic cups, he also help reestablished the Yellow and Black as a European force.

Yes, Dortmund have failed to shine this season, no surprise really after systemically decimating themselves by selling their best legs to their bitterest rivals Bayern Munich, but they are in the final of Germany’s FA Cup and have qualified for Europa League in a season where they had spent more time in relegation spot than mid-table.

Simply put, Klopp turned things around while Rodgers couldn’t. And now that the German is available this summer after tendering his resignation at the Signal Iduna Park, there can be no better opportunity for Liverpool to at least address one of the major problems mitigating against a consistent Top 4 finish – lack of top class manager.

 

Truth is Rodgers has a small-team mentality. I mean only a manager with small-team mentality will line-up a second string team against Real Madrid in the UCL! Sounds very much like relegation-haunted mediocre throwing the match against more established teams even before kick off.

At this juncture, only a Liverpool enemy would want Rodgers to remain at the helm of affairs at Anfield. And should he be sacked, I’m willing to wager with anybody that he may never get a club as big as Liverpool again. His managerial career is still very young – just six years, three of which have been spent at Liverpool. But he would have to win something very big consistently at modest clubs before he could dream of another shot at any high profile club.