Originally posted by Puds
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Top lurking!
That rug really tied the room together. -
You do realize that they have won the double under Ancelotti only 2 years ago?Originally posted by slam77 View PostComment
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Oh **** he's backComment
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We have tried big names like Rafa in the past, previous heroes like Kenny and press favorite engerlish elder statesman. Time for up and coming manager with mild success. When it fails we will promote a young guy from within, so Carra by Christmas as boss.Originally posted by Macedonian_Red View Post
Anyone else wank when lurking? Too much?Comment
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Originally posted by ChesterDave View Post
I feel the same way. Championship manager with one promising season in the Premiership. I like the guy and his ideals on football so obviously it isn't like hiring Craig Burley, but tbh I don't like appointing a manager on the basis of one season, he's young and bound to **** up, so we need to be patient with that but it's going to be a long, tough process. I hope that the Americans give him time because this surely isn't a quick fix and we might endure some pretty rough times because of it. when you look at the calibre and experience of other possible candidates this makes me very concerned and disappointed.
As I say though, I don't feel the way I did when we hired Woy. I knew that was a ****ing disaster from day one, at least BR is young, has showed he wants to try to play good football and is only opening his career to a level that he could go on to bigger and better things. it's not nearly as uninspiring or dire as that appointment. The problem is that it shows naivety on the behalf of the owners and I'm sure that there would have been more suitable candidates to take the position. Rodgers has never managed in the Champions League or had to deal with the standard of player we have here. Both of the following will prove to be difficult at times, I'm sure of it.
He has really skipped a level, he should be proving himself at Villa or a club like that before making a step up, also the quote saying that he was at a similar level to Rafa before Rafa joined Valencia is untrue, Rafa had almost a decade of management and had promoted 3 or so teams from Segunda to La Liga. He had good win percentages and overall records. Rodgers hasn't been awful in the Championship mind, but his record is definitely not nearly as comprehensive. Given he's a young manager though, I'm not too keen to look at what he did 3 seasons ago and brandy that around as reasons because it's a learning experience. I remember an interview with him before last season, when he said "I'm not a Premier League manager, and my players haven't proven ourselves as Premiership players. Even if we survive I still won't consider myself a Premiership manager until I've stayed at the level for a few seasons". And I agree with him whole heartedly. Definitely a promising manager, but 1 season doesn't make you a premiership manager. Really hope things come right but I have huge concerns.
100% behind him though.Comment
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Alas CJ, ever since they spurned my advances of a van with a disco ball and adoption, I've lost my love for lurkers.Originally posted by CJ View Post
And when I say 'advances', I really mean 'encouraged to post more'Comment
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It says a great deal about Brendan Rodgers's current standing within football that, when he declined to apply for the job of succeeding Kenny Dalglish at Anfield last week because he felt to be seen to seek the job would be to offer an insult to his existing employers, the response of the owners of Liverpool FC – a club with five European Cups in the trophy cabinet and 18 times champions of England – was to redouble the intensity of their efforts to persuade him to join them.
Now we know that they succeeded. But we also know that Rodgers conducted himself impeccably in the sort of negotiations which so often take place to a soundtrack of acrimony. In short, he did it the right way. Which, on the evidence so far available, seems to be his habit.
Rodgers has certainly been doing his business on Swansea City's training ground in the right way. Promoted a year ago and among the shortest-priced favourites for relegation at the first time of asking, the Swans finished in a hugely encouraging 11th place in the final Premier League table. Despite starting the campaign with a 4-0 thumping at the home of the eventual champions, they had settled to the demands of the top tier and eventually claimed the scalps of Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool at home and Fulham and Aston Villa away.
Even more significant than the results was the manner in which they were achieved. Operating on very limited resources, Rodgers put together a team who played the game in a way that patrons of the Camp Nou would recognise, pursuing an ideal of composed interplay that maximised the potential of a set of players who arrived in the top flight without fanfare but enhanced their reputations individually and collectively.
They had been promoted via the play-offs and had no players of any great national renown. Indeed they had several who, earlier in their careers, had been deemed unfit for purpose at lower levels. Yet, on their day, no midfield in England provided more of a treat for the eye than the one consisting of Leon Britton, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Joe Allen. Up front the combination of Nathan Dyer, Danny Graham and Scott Sinclair posed a threat to the very best defences. The team drew praise from all quarters, including other managers, for the purity of their football.
As the season was drawing to its close, Harry Redknapp made it perfectly clear what he thought of Rodgers's team. "I*think they're fantastic," the Spurs manager said after his team had got the better of Swansea at White Hart Lane. "What the manager has done with them is incredible. I can't speak highly enough of the job he's done there. If everybody in this country looked at their youth teams and kids' teams and tried to play like they play, that's the way to play the game if you want to produce technical footballers.
"He's got players who have come from Torquay, from Stockport County, from everywhere – and they all pass the ball. They're comfortable on the ball and they take risks. If we could get kids in the country playing like that, I think the game would be much better.
"I'm a big fan of his, and not just now. Young Frank Lampard worked with him at Chelsea and spoke highly of him. Frank*Sr worked with him at Watford and went to Reading with him, and he used to tell me how good he was. They [Swansea] absolutely slaughtered Fulham last week – and Fulham aren't a bad team but they couldn't get near them. That's what they can do to you. If you aren't prepared to press them and try to make it difficult for them, they'll play round you and keep the ball and open you up. That's a credit to the manager. They should let every youth coach in the country go and watch them and learn."
Will he get a top club one day? "Of course he will."
Now he has got it but many football fans, and not just those within west Wales, will be disappointed to see the 39-year-old leave Swansea at this juncture. His decision, while perfectly understandable from almost every perspective, robs us of the chance to see what he would have made of a second season in*the Premier League with a club of modest resources. His success in convincing Sigurdsson, the outstanding Icelandic attacking midfielder, to convert a loan deal into a £6.8m transfer from Hoffenheim indicates the degree of confidence he engendered in the club's future.
Rodgers would appear to be a classic case of a thwarted playing career providing the fuel for success as a coach. Forced by a congenital knee problem to quit at 20, he stayed at Reading as a youth coach, learning his trade, until José Mourinho took him to manage Chelsea's youth team in 2004. He had graduated to the reserve team by the time he left Stamford Bridge to take the manager's job at Watford in 2008, and a year later he returned to Reading.
The poor results that saw him sacked before Christmas in his first season at the Madejski Stadium did not deter Swansea from offering him a job in the summer of 2010. Less than a year later it was at the expense of Reading, whom they beat in the play-off final, that they regained a place in the top flight.
"I like everything in him," his former manager Mourinho once said. "He is ambitious and doesn't see football very differently from myself. He is open, likes to learn and likes to communicate." Now, however, he faces the task of rebuilding a giant club which has been through a couple of years of turmoil – the climax, some would suggest, to a gradual decline over the past two decades.
It would have been relatively easy to imagine Rodgers taking over from Arsène Wenger at Arsenal and maintaining the basic approach laid down by the Frenchman. Given his past involvement, Chelsea might have been another good fit. But Liverpool presents a wholly different set of issues, starting with a squad of very mixed quality and the expectations of very demanding supporters who feel they have waited long enough for a genuine renaissance. The only things he lacks are the experience of dealing with superstar egos and of European competition. He is about to get those. Then there is the apparent desire of the owners, John W Henry and Tom Werner of the Fenway Sports Group, to create a structure in which the manager works with a director of football, although it is understood Rodgers does not favour working under anyone.
Since the apparent favourite for the latter post, should the owners insist on it, is Louis van Gaal, the former head coach of Ajax, Barcelona, Holland, Bayern Munich and AZ Alkmaar, that may not be exactly a bed of roses for Rodgers. The 60-year-old Dutchman, who once considered himself the natural heir to Sir*Alex*Ferguson at Old Trafford, is not a man who shies away from confrontation and is likely to feel that his CV gives him the right to a say in matters of team selection and strategy.
Rodgers will point out that the last year has shown him to be perfectly capable of forging his own path. If Liverpool are hiring him because of his freshness and his commitment to a progressive vision of the game, then he deserves to be given his head.
That rug really tied the room together.Comment
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i would take a ride in the molester van.Originally posted by Muddled View PostAlas CJ, ever since they spurned my advances of a van with a disco ball and adoption, I've lost my love for lurkers.
And when I say 'advances', I really mean 'encouraged to post more'dave of mutilation
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So no DoF then? The gamble thickens.Are we winning?Comment
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Originally posted by Puds View Post 
Outstanding lurking.Caused me to laugh as loudy as the first time I saw Red Dwarf episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse"Football without Origi is nothingComment
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