The situation at Liverpool has very quickly deteriorated in recent weeks
Funny how bad things can get in a month, eh?
With an inexplicable defeat against a team managed by Tim Sherwood of all people, Liverpool’s season seems to have come to have become a huge failure. Our last chance of silverware (which would have been the first of Rodgers’ reign) has gone up in smoke, our chances of qualifying for the top 4 have gone from likely to very slim and the less said about our efforts in the Champions League, the better.
It’s hard to say where the problems begin. Rodgers has been unlucky in some regard; certainly when considering injuries. It’s bad enough that he was basically forced to sell Suarez when Barcelona came knocking, but when his second best striker in Daniel Sturridge got injured for 5 months, it was especially cruel. Especially considering that since returning, the man that scored 21 league goals has been a shell of his former self and likely won’t recover his form until the next season.
Throughout the season, nearly every single player in our squad has been injured at some point: Sakho, Skrtel, Can, Flanagan, Johnson, Lucas, Allen, Gerrard, Lallana, Markovic and Balotelli have all seen time on the treatment table as well as Sturridge.
When they haven’t been injured, key players have got themselves suspended; Gerrard has struggled to stay relevant to the team at the best of times, even when he isn’t getting himself sent off less than a minute into a substitute appearance against Manchester United. Skrtel getting banned for a stamp in the same game certainly didn’t help things; neither did Can’s red card in the following game. Markovic’s red card against Basle was harsh, but nevertheless he presented the referee with an opportunity.
Suarez still hasn’t been replaced and the money has been spent – mostly – very poorly
Yet, many other problems could have been avoided.
I think we can safely conclude that the Suarez money was not spent well. Emre Can seems like money well spent but Lallana, the manager’s marquee signing, has confessed himself that he has not lived up to his £25m price tag this season. The midfielder has shown signs of the player he was at Southampton, but has always seemed to need a run of games before he hits anything resembling top form. The only problem is that he also seems to be injury prone, so once he gets his run of games he soon gets sidelined again.
Markovic was bought with the knowledge that he wouldn’t become world class for another 2-3 years, but nevertheless he has often struggled for consistency and due to missing personnel we have often been forced to rely on him when really that shouldn’t have been necessary. Moreno seems to struggle defensively (a trait ill-suited for a left back) and Manquillo has barely been played since the turn of the year.
Balotelli and Lambert both seem ill-suited to our style of play so you have to wonder why we bought them in the first place, and Dejan Lovren has been so catastrophically poor that it’s tough to remember the last time we wasted such an incredible amount of money on one player.
Perhaps the most irritating thing about this state of affairs is that no one really knows who’s responsible. Some players were reportedly signed by the manager, others by the transfer committee. There are conflicting reports, and no one really knows if Brendan Rodgers and the committee even see eye to eye. If our transfer policy is to be sorted out, someone needs to take responsibility and come up with a new strategy when it comes to player recruitment.
Losing Sturridge for most of the season has, admittedly, been a huge blow for Liverpool too
Then there’s matters on the pitch. While injuries definitely took their toll early on in the season, matters weren’t helped when Rodgers tried to get the team playing his favoured 4-2-3-1 formation even when it clearly didn’t work after 3 months of sticking with it. Whether that’s stubborness, confidence in the team and his methods or just plain arrogance like some have suggested, Rodgers took way too long to change things and we lost a lot of ground in the process.
The 3-4-3 worked well for a few months and the manager should be commended for that, but now it seems teams have figured it out and know how to play against it. So far, Rodgers has failed to find a work around. It’s unclear if he will before season’s end. Then there’s also mistakes that Rodgers made during the 90 minutes. Whether it’s an error in the selection of the starting XI that requires a tactical change or substitution to fix, or poor substitutions have threatened to derail a match that had been going well.
There’s no denying that despite Rodgers’ strengths as a manager, he’s still very much learning on the job when it comes to managing a top club. He did stellar work last season, but then seemed to struggle this season when tasked with playing 3 games a week on a regular basis. He may well lament not having enough time to coach the team with so many midweek games, but that doesn’t seem to faze top managers like Wenger, Mourinho and Pelligrini.
This season was very much treading new ground for Rodgers; not only was he expected to at least pass the group stages in the Champions League, but he was expected to repeat the same form in the league. You’d hope that he’ll have learned from his experiences if he’s still in the job next year, but there’s no denying his lack of experience hasn’t really helped this season.
I still think Rodgers’ incredible achievement last season has bought him enough goodwill for another season to prove himself; I suspect the owners might agree. But if we are to move on and get back to where we were last season, a number of things will need to change.
If Rodgers is tasked with doing that after the summer, then I hope he’s learnt his lessons. Otherwise, we could be in for another rough season.
Brendan totally out of his depth,championship manager at best.Always signing average players.We deserve better pls.
“Our last chance of silverware (which would have been the first of Rodgers’ reign) has gone up in smoke”…
that sums up Brenda. he’s been at LFC for how long now? everything he does has gone up in smoke.
spent 200+ million bringing in players.
no cup final.
no champs league.
nothing.
time to go.
“What has gone wrong at LFC?” – one word : Brendan.
does anyone know LFC transfer policy ? Is Brendan picking the players or is there a team put in by LFG that check statistics and offer him a choice ? No manager will come in and do much better with this team . Apart from Coutinho , Sterling , Sturridge and Martin S, the rest not good enough. Henderson as our next captain shows the decline
Naive manager, learning on the job, starts to belive his own hype on the back of a super player, falls flat on his face.
CL? Worst ever.
Pl? Bar last season dreadful. Lost every big game. Make or break
Deserves another year ? Most definitely, but at Newcastle.
He is just a poor manager, it’s not the formation that has been sussed out, it’s the way we play, for example, when we “press the ball” we literally only do that, close down the player on the ball, but doing that isn’t enough, the other players have to be closed down at the same time, making it more likely of a mis placed pass gong to our player and putting pressure on the player with ball to find someone he can pass to that isn’t being marked, off the ball we are neither hard working enough, or organised enough, often you can’t tell what formation we are playing, something that without the ball should be obvious, we rarely win headers in open play, due to the type of players we buy not being strong, brave or even competitive enough,
With the ball we are equally poor, our wide men are never over lapped by our wing backs/full backs, a basic that add width, a bonus against teams “parking the bus” we don’t cross the ball enough in a way that gets defenders facing their own goal to defend, when we push forward there is never ever any movement from players giving who ever has the ball little or no options and our goals, we know we need goals, but a decent team shouldn’t take over 10 attempts for every goal, and should get at least 50% of their shot on target,
In short we are too easy to beat, site the teams we have beaten but thankfully we have been good enough to do that, but never convincingly regardless of score lines.
Then there is the man himself, talks about integrity, for examples, insisting he was watford? manager and was being insulted just because he was asked a question about if he will be in the near future, 4 days later, he left for Reading, Publicly claims how important stevie G is to the team, then drops him for the guys last chance to play on a stage like Madrid, oh and lets not forget left his wife for someone young enough to be his daughter,
As a manager, even a coach, he looks lacking, as a man, he looks spineless.
The most damning thing, imagine we’re losing an important game, players look to the bench for some instruction, and see BR and his staff, what must they think,, i’ll tell you what they would think, “what the hell are they going do?!” becuase when it comes down to it, who are they? a bunch of nobodies, who collectively and individually have achieved nothing in football terms, and that reason alone should mean, this summer, while there are managers available, he has to replaced.