WHAT a stressful few weeks it’s been. No manager; the bookies making someone else the favourite every 5 minutes and neither the club itself or our ‘official’ website offering any insight in to what was going on or who was going to be the new man at the head of the club. But now, it’s all over. Brendan Rodgers has stepped in to the fray and we can move forward. Thank God for that!
So now that the dust has finally settled, we can all start pulling in the same direction. You may not agree with his appointment and you may have somebody else in mind but our new manager is young, confident and highly thought of and, everybody’s got to start somewhere.
After a very assured and articulate press-conference on Friday, Rodgers has impressed many with his views and self-belief and while there will always be doubters until a major trophy is put on display but he at least didn’t compound concerns over his appointment with a witless and ‘deer in headlights’ first press-conference like we saw with one our previous managers. It was good to see a Liverpool manager able to dominate a press-conference again without having to be tetchy and overly-defensive.
While I don’t think the squad will see a massive amount of change this summer, we will still probably see a handful of players coming in and out, and if we can bring in a couple of players that whet our appetites for next season then Rodgers will have taken a step further to assuaging our fears that he’ll attempt to buy half the Swansea squad. Thankfully, he’s agreed to leave off his former side for 12 months, so there’s no worries there. But the good news for many is that he is planning to get together for a meeting with both Joe Cole and Alberto Aquilani to discuss whether they have a future at Liverpool. If he felt he could get performance out of either or both those players, or saw something in them, it’d be like having two new £10 million signings before the season even started.
Likewise, there will probably be a bit of coming and going from the back room staff as well and Rodgers has already brought in a few of his own men. I’ll be particularly interested to see what happens to Steve Clarke and who replaces John Achterberg when he leaves over the summer too. But I think that now that the Director of Football position is a moot point, it’ll be interested to see who FSG bring in to support Rodgers, particularly with the name of Txiki Begiristain once again doing the rounds in the rumour-mill. While Rodgers may be a great young manager, he could certainly do with somebody that has a hugely extensive network on the scouting front and with an ability to pick out rough diamonds and stars in the making the world over. With the budget he’ll likely have to work with, some support when it comes to identifying – and negotiating the signing – of players should be paramount.
Either way, I’m just glad that the job is filled and the speculation can stop. At least in terms of the manager, because once the transfer window gets in to full swing and the 2012 Euros begins, silly season will officially start and we’ll be linked to everybody from Messi to Grant Holt. But, at the very least, it’ll mean we’ll be able to start looking to the new season with a renewed sense of optimism for what might be to come.
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That pretty much summerises everthing alright, Good read.
Steve Clarke was layed off,and already has a new position at Celtic I believe! Rodgers has his staff following him from Swansea!
totally off the subject but i’ve noticed liverpool
-kop (jamie kanwar) website has stopped running articles on newsnow liverpool. has he been barred,or has he just packed it in now that kenny’s been sacked ? that seemed to be his agenda. not that im complaining about brendan’s appointment, quite the opposite in fact, i think he’s a superb manager and im very optimistic for the future. but i would like to know what became of liverpool-kop as i always suspected he was a manc as every article he wrote was anti kenny,suarez.
please reply