FSG Were Right Not To Consider AVB Over Rodgers

UPON parting ways with club legend Kenny Dalglish, our owners, the Fenway Sports Group embarked on a long and arduous mission to recognise and hire Liverpool’s next manager.

They were in the market for a young manager with a modern approach to football, an exciting and clearly laid out tactical strategy who would be able to thrust Liverpool into the top four of the Premier League, and into the UEFA Champions League of Europe.

After two weeks of speculation & anticipation, with almost any and every manager linked to the job, FSG finally hired Brendan Rodgers, the then manager of Swansea City, to replace King Kenny.

Those strongest linked with the job were André Villas-Boas, the former Chelsea & Porto FC manager (and now new Tottenham Hotspurs manager), Roberto Martinez (the manager of Wigan Athletic), and Brendan Rodgers.

While Roberto Martinez had done a credible job at Wigan last season finishing 15th in the Premier League, and was well respected for his tactical style, I don’t think he would’ve been ideal for Liverpool. Most of the Liverpool fans were most excited about the link with André Villas-Boas. Even though his time at Chelsea had ended prematurely, and not in the best of terms, most people agreed that the time there was not a proper benchmark of how good a manager he was, and maintained that he was still one of the most talented young managers around.

It was Brendan Rodgers, however, that the owners of Liverpool trusted and eventually hired as the new manager of Liverpool FC. And although the Premier League season has just begun, I believe the appointment has been the correct one.

Rodgers & André Villas-Boas, or AVB for ease of use in headlines and articles, are both gifted and highly rated managers with a modern take on football. They have quite a few similarities between them when it comes to their style and tactics. While they follow different philosophies of playing, both of them like to employ a fluid 4-3-3 formation with an onus on passing and pressing the opposition.

I do believe that Rodgers’ style, which is based on fluid movement and keeping possession and recycling the ball is much more suited to the Liverpool way of playing; a team who were once regarded as the benchmark in implementing the pass and move philosophy – what we call ‘the Liverpool Way’.

AVB’s recognition comes from his time at the Primeira Liga in Portugal, where in his first full season as manager, he led Porto to a treble of the League, the Portuguese Cup, and the Europa League, going the entire season without losing a single home game. While that is a very impressive statistic for any new manager, the English league is an entirely different beast, as Villas-Boas found out himself last season. He only spent eight months at Chelsea as the manager tasked with injecting some youth into an ageing side, being let go when the team was on the verge of elimination from the Champions League and lying outside the top four in the Premier League.
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Rodgers, in the same season, and the same league, was able to get his newly promoted Swansea side to play very attractive football, which was acknowledged everywhere, and finished the season a very respectable 11th, finishing just 5 points off of Liverpool.

While most people agree that AVB’s time at Chelsea was cut short due to him angering some senior players who forced him out, I still believe that not everything was down to politics. Even when Chelsea were losing, AVB showed an inability to work on the deficiencies in his system to get the best out of the players, and stuck to it. Also, instead of trying to work the system into one which would most benefit the Chelsea squad he had in his hand, he tried to force the system on to the players, leading to unhappy players, and less than desirable results.

Rodgers is also very highly respected by all the players who have been managed by him. Already, both of his signings since joining Liverpool, the Italian Fabio Borini and Welshman Joe Allen, have spent time under him, and have both said how he was a major factor in them joining Liverpool. He is known as an excellent man manager, and that is something that will come very handy, no matter which team you manage.

I don’t believe AVB is a manager under the same mould. He believes in a strict manager-player relationship, and isn’t shy to met out punishment to players who digress from his vision. This can lead to some serious friction in the camp, which no manager would like.

I do think that Villas-Boas is a talented manager and will succeed, but Liverpool wasn’t the club for him, nor he the manager for it. And when compared to Brendan Rodgers, the more I see and hear of Rodgers, the more I’m convinced that Liverpool made the right choice in hiring him.

Right from the first press conference, Rodgers has come across as someone who’s very confident & is passionate about football. The more you hear him speak, the more he comes off as someone who’s very knowledgeable about his football, and someone who believes in the system he is talking about. He gives you confidence the more you hear him speak about football. And for a club with support like Liverpool has, with our history and our passion and knowledge of the game, he is the right man to lead us into a new era. An era, which I can only hope, is a glorious one.
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