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Why I’m sad to see Brendan Rodgers go

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Rodgers was a beaten man by the end of his tenure

Rodgers was a beaten man by the end of his tenure

When I first heard the news that Rodgers had finally been sacked, more than anything else I was relieved. Too long now we’d spent watching a team run around looking completely useless, unsure of what they were supposed to be doing and completely devoid of confidence.

They were led by a manager who seemed to have no idea what to do next having seen every tactical change and tweak backfire spectacularly. Every idea seemed to crash and burn in under 90 minutes.

But even though I’ll be over the moon if the rumours about Klopp are true and we have a new trophy-winning manager by the end of the week, I’ll still be sad for Brendan.

It was never meant to end like this. After a transitional debut season, Brendan Rodgers got Liverpool playing some of the best football I have ever seen at this club. His second season had so many highs, it’s unbelievable.

Spanking Spurs 5-0 with Flanagan volleying in off the crossbar. Obliterating Arsenal 5-1 in the best opening 20 minutes of football I have ever seen. Playing Everton off the park in a 4-0 win. Comfortably beating United 3-0, with both Gerrard and Suarez of all people scoring the goals. Beating Man City 3-2 in one of the most tense and exciting matches I’ve seen since Istanbul.

There were disappointing results too, and it was our naivety against Chelsea that ruined our season. But everything was there for us to keep pushing, to actually get title number 19 next year. We should have been able to go that extra mile, now we’d had a dry run. Sure, Suarez left and while he did score 31 league goals, we scored another 70 without him. Assuming we bought well, we should have been fine.

We shouldn't forget what Rodgers did for LFC during 2013-14

We shouldn’t forget what Rodgers did for LFC during 2013-14

And that is partly where it all went wrong. I assumed that, Lovren aside, our summer signings just needed time to settle in the Premier League. Can looked promising, Lallana would show flashes of brilliance and Moreno could be decent going forward.

But a year later nothing had changed. More players were signed and looked just as uncomfortable as the previous crop, who also didn’t look any better off. Of course, the transfer committee’s role in signings make it difficult to figure out exactly who was responsible for signing which player, but considering it’s all but confirmed that Rodgers pushed for Borini, Lallana, Lambert, Lovren, Sahin and Benteke amongst others, it’s got to the point where I don’t believe Rodgers can really be trusted with transfers for a club like Liverpool.

The other big mistake was letting all the criticism from the press on Liverpool’s defending get to his head. Everyone claimed the reason we lost the league is because we leaked too many goals. That’s not entirely true; we lost the league because we lost our heads against Chelsea after Gerrard’s slip.

The defence needed improving, but a win against Chelsea would’ve given us the momentum to beat Crystal Palace and win the league. We just had to be smart.

But Rodgers let it all get to him and vowed that Liverpool would never concede goals so easily ever again. We would be compact, solid at the back and hard to beat. But not only did he fail that objective spectacularly, he also sacrificed the magnificent forward play that terrorised so many teams 18 months ago. The defending had gotten worse and we couldn’t figure out how to score a goal.

Rodgers did his best so the hatred poured his way by some was uncalled for

Rodgers did his best so the hatred poured his way by some was uncalled for

Now I understand why Liverpool fans were angry at Rodgers. He was making a hash of it and there was no sign of progress for over a year. If anything, we regressed from the fantastic side he had turned us into. But I don’t really understand why a lot of fans hated him so much.

Frustrated, sure. But this was a man who really worked his hardest to figure out how to turn the team around and get them winning again. We’ve all heard about how he spent most nights with almost zero sleep, up until the early hours desperately trying to work out some new formations or tweaks to existing ones to give Liverpool the advantage.

It’s not like he wanted us to fail. People can talk about Rodgers’ ego, but surely that gave him more motivation than ever to fix what was wrong? It was incredibly obvious that Brendan was doing everything in his power to turn everything around. I’ll always respect a manager who gives his all for my football club.

Okay, he failed. He made some poor decisions. He deserved to go.

But I’ll always remember him with fond memories of 2013/14 and the nagging thoughts of what should have been. For a while, we were truly great under Brendan Rodgers. It’s a shame it couldn’t last.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

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Drummer, gamer and football fanatic. I love to write about Liverpool and spend most of my time thinking about the mighty Reds. That or Game of Thrones.

10 comments

  • tommyb says:

    that 13/14 season had very little to do with rodgers apart from the goals against up , proof was the next season suarez gone , just needed one world class player to replace him , only thing im regretting is the way he hung in there , still trying to bullchit us cos he’s after the big pay out £10million , for doing nothing but drag us backwards , you need to wake up , romanitc man you are

    • Tony says:

      Its very stupid not to acknowledge. That he lost. Sturridge for. That season. What you fail to realise. Is without. Sturridge. Suarez was. Nobody. The opposition didn’t care about him it was not until sturridge arrived that people started to see the other side of Suarez not to mention the contribution of sterling and coutinho. If it was guardiola you would be liking his ass

    • Josh Atkins says:

      Kenny Dalglish had Suarez too and finished 8th. You can’t ignore what Rodgers did with Suarez.

  • Dan says:

    He had practically every resource available to him and still couldn’t get it right. He’d probably do better as a coach. The guys probably going to compensated to the tune of £10million for his troubles. Yeah, I’m sad for him too….not.

    • Josh Atkins says:

      Oh I’m not sad for him personally as apparently he’s been paid £7m to leave haha. Just as a Liverpool fan I’m sad that his legacy didn’t blossom into what we all thought it would be a couple of years ago. It’s just a shame it ended the way it did, as he gave his all for the job. But yes, he had a lot of resources and made poor decisions so he did deserve it!

  • Iyke says:

    I really liked this, from starting to the end but Rodgers deserves to be sacked since lsst season.He tried for us but how long would we continue trying ? we our the Liverpool fc, great club,great fans and great acheivement.

    • Tony says:

      He also deserves credit for the title challenge you can talk about it was all down to Suarez but that’s bulshit sturridge 22goals.gerrard14goals.sterling7goals.coutinho5goals.henderson7goals not to name all their assists

    • Josh Atkins says:

      Thanks! He did indeed deserve to be sacked, just a shame it all played out that way.

  • Effect says:

    Rodgers: no matter what any one say, is the best. The Transfer failed him or do I say he is not good in the market? He is a very creative manager and he will do wonders when he gets to another team. I wish him the best.

  • Diego Digger Souness says:

    Rodgers always concedes 40-50 goals every PL campaign, he can’t organise a defence, this will always mean he needs two 30+ goal strikers to get him out of jail. Happened just once when we finished second and it was just a freak season to be honest. Ta ta Brenny Boy.

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