The Board out! Rodgers out! Kenny in!
Yes. Kenny in.
Can you believe it? This was the profound conclusion of a Liverpool phone-in fan this weekend.
Others called Rodgers 'a clown'. Talk about a rush to judgement.
Someone even bestowed upon their new manager the ultimate insult - comparing him to Steve Kean. This is a man whose role in football seems to be the standard against which all failure and delusion is set.
This kind of hysterical reaction was exactly what Liverpool fans of old mocked in others. They were the model for an empire built on phlegmatic stability.
So okay, the whoopy-doop yeehawers are already getting their posse together for a lynching. These early calls for Rodgers' sacking reveal a more corrosive belief which infects football; the belief that you can clear out one lot of owners, players and management and replace them with a new successful raft. Just like that.
Rubbish out, quality in. Easy.
This is an intellectual redux which can't be allowed to pass unchallenged because while it is easy to mock, it certainly creates an atmosphere which is antipathetic to a regime with vision and long-term planning. It would trade long-term success for short-term gain. Indeed, it seems to have no conception of long-term at all - their existence is all about jam today.
Vision in football is a rare thing. Most managers do just that. They manage. But they don't really have nor are required to have a long-term vision.
However, the most successful managers usually do have The V Thing. Sir Alex Ferguson had it, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola have had it. In the past, managers such as Bill Nicholson, Bill Shankly and Brian Clough had it. Internationally, Rinus Michels had it.
The V Thing is hard to define but you know it when you see it and it seems to me that Brendan Rodgers has The V Thing too. You might not like it or you might not want to wait as long as it takes for it to be successful, but he does have it.
He seems affable but also unsettling and hard-faced. He is dismissive of foolishness as the clips of him slapping down Raheem Sterling in pre-season training show. He has the iron fist in the modern, velvet glove. Pleasingly, he seems slightly bonkers in a Rafa-style manner with his eyes betraying a brain in overdrive even when saying very little. His features are too big for the size of his head and his chunky legs too short for his body, all giving him a slightly hobbit-like quality.
He sees Liverpool playing in a specific manner and he sees this being the club's philosophy from youth and development upwards; a kind of governing football morality.
But he has arrived at a time when the club has been taken, somewhat rudderless, in the wrong direction, so there is much work to do to turn the tanker around. There is no underestimating this.
This is not the time for impatience from LFC fans. Rodgers' aim is nothing less than to transform the club from being the basket case it has been for years, into the club it once was; a by-word for pass-and-move quality which is built on solid ground and definite principles.
This will almost certainly mean casting off old heroes. Is there a regular place for Stevie Gerrard in this new environment? Suddenly, Gerrard looks like the past, playing a kind of football at odds with his new modern environment. It's going to be messy but on such revolutions are new empires built.
The constant churn of middling quality players has to stop. Long-term proper investment in players who can all fit into a single system can't be done in one or two windows, not when the overhaul needed is so deep. And this isn't just a matter of providing lavish money to buy in a new regime - plenty of money has been spent and almost all of it wasted at Liverpool for years now. Scouting and player development will be axiomatic to the Rodgers' revolution not least because when you are no longer the brightest star in the sky, you can't attract the very best.
The Liverpool academy has many fans but hasn't produced a world-class player for years. This also has to change but also can't change overnight. It takes time and investment and proper coaching. It needs that V Thing again to interlock the development players with the first team.
All of us who enjoyed the dynasty that Liverpool once was would like to see them become a major player again but it could get worse before it gets better. Maybe it has to. When Sir Alex Ferguson took over at United, 1000 league games ago, like Liverpool, they had recently won a few cups - though nothing as prestigious at the Champions League - and kept misfiring in the league. For the first three years under him, they were nothing special, 'still crap' as the famous 'Fergie Out' banner stated at the time.
But Ferguson was changing the culture of the club in that period, improving fitness, coaching and youth development. He gradually bought better players and married them to home-grown talent that he could shape into an unbeatable team. Eventually, it paid off and paid off big. Eventually he built a dynasty precisely because he was not a slave to instant results. He knew to build anything big you needed massive foundations. It needed a big fix.
Modern football is more impatient and the financial implications of failure are worse than they once were but the underlying principles remain the same. Profound generational and lasting change for the good still can't happen overnight in football and needs vision to happen at all.
You can briefly buy success but you need a deep, ingrained quality married to a winning culture to maintain it. This is why Ferguson's mob dominates and others now have to spend a billion to try and merely imitate.
This isn't just about having one decent season now and again, it's about re-building the very DNA of Liverpool from the roots up and swallowing the fact that while this happens, bad days will out-number good. LFC fans need to self-police themselves into being patient and into not over-reacting to every perceived mistake. They are not being let down, these are the birthing pains for a new future.
Because if not Rodgers' V Thing, then what? More nostalgia? More wasteful spending? More directionless drifting? Liverpool was a football empire built by a short, chunky, slightly odd Celtic man with a vision. Remember that.
Yes. Kenny in.
Can you believe it? This was the profound conclusion of a Liverpool phone-in fan this weekend.
Others called Rodgers 'a clown'. Talk about a rush to judgement.
Someone even bestowed upon their new manager the ultimate insult - comparing him to Steve Kean. This is a man whose role in football seems to be the standard against which all failure and delusion is set.
This kind of hysterical reaction was exactly what Liverpool fans of old mocked in others. They were the model for an empire built on phlegmatic stability.
So okay, the whoopy-doop yeehawers are already getting their posse together for a lynching. These early calls for Rodgers' sacking reveal a more corrosive belief which infects football; the belief that you can clear out one lot of owners, players and management and replace them with a new successful raft. Just like that.
Rubbish out, quality in. Easy.
This is an intellectual redux which can't be allowed to pass unchallenged because while it is easy to mock, it certainly creates an atmosphere which is antipathetic to a regime with vision and long-term planning. It would trade long-term success for short-term gain. Indeed, it seems to have no conception of long-term at all - their existence is all about jam today.
Vision in football is a rare thing. Most managers do just that. They manage. But they don't really have nor are required to have a long-term vision.
However, the most successful managers usually do have The V Thing. Sir Alex Ferguson had it, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola have had it. In the past, managers such as Bill Nicholson, Bill Shankly and Brian Clough had it. Internationally, Rinus Michels had it.
The V Thing is hard to define but you know it when you see it and it seems to me that Brendan Rodgers has The V Thing too. You might not like it or you might not want to wait as long as it takes for it to be successful, but he does have it.
He seems affable but also unsettling and hard-faced. He is dismissive of foolishness as the clips of him slapping down Raheem Sterling in pre-season training show. He has the iron fist in the modern, velvet glove. Pleasingly, he seems slightly bonkers in a Rafa-style manner with his eyes betraying a brain in overdrive even when saying very little. His features are too big for the size of his head and his chunky legs too short for his body, all giving him a slightly hobbit-like quality.
He sees Liverpool playing in a specific manner and he sees this being the club's philosophy from youth and development upwards; a kind of governing football morality.
But he has arrived at a time when the club has been taken, somewhat rudderless, in the wrong direction, so there is much work to do to turn the tanker around. There is no underestimating this.
This is not the time for impatience from LFC fans. Rodgers' aim is nothing less than to transform the club from being the basket case it has been for years, into the club it once was; a by-word for pass-and-move quality which is built on solid ground and definite principles.
This will almost certainly mean casting off old heroes. Is there a regular place for Stevie Gerrard in this new environment? Suddenly, Gerrard looks like the past, playing a kind of football at odds with his new modern environment. It's going to be messy but on such revolutions are new empires built.
The constant churn of middling quality players has to stop. Long-term proper investment in players who can all fit into a single system can't be done in one or two windows, not when the overhaul needed is so deep. And this isn't just a matter of providing lavish money to buy in a new regime - plenty of money has been spent and almost all of it wasted at Liverpool for years now. Scouting and player development will be axiomatic to the Rodgers' revolution not least because when you are no longer the brightest star in the sky, you can't attract the very best.
The Liverpool academy has many fans but hasn't produced a world-class player for years. This also has to change but also can't change overnight. It takes time and investment and proper coaching. It needs that V Thing again to interlock the development players with the first team.
All of us who enjoyed the dynasty that Liverpool once was would like to see them become a major player again but it could get worse before it gets better. Maybe it has to. When Sir Alex Ferguson took over at United, 1000 league games ago, like Liverpool, they had recently won a few cups - though nothing as prestigious at the Champions League - and kept misfiring in the league. For the first three years under him, they were nothing special, 'still crap' as the famous 'Fergie Out' banner stated at the time.
But Ferguson was changing the culture of the club in that period, improving fitness, coaching and youth development. He gradually bought better players and married them to home-grown talent that he could shape into an unbeatable team. Eventually, it paid off and paid off big. Eventually he built a dynasty precisely because he was not a slave to instant results. He knew to build anything big you needed massive foundations. It needed a big fix.
Modern football is more impatient and the financial implications of failure are worse than they once were but the underlying principles remain the same. Profound generational and lasting change for the good still can't happen overnight in football and needs vision to happen at all.
You can briefly buy success but you need a deep, ingrained quality married to a winning culture to maintain it. This is why Ferguson's mob dominates and others now have to spend a billion to try and merely imitate.
This isn't just about having one decent season now and again, it's about re-building the very DNA of Liverpool from the roots up and swallowing the fact that while this happens, bad days will out-number good. LFC fans need to self-police themselves into being patient and into not over-reacting to every perceived mistake. They are not being let down, these are the birthing pains for a new future.
Because if not Rodgers' V Thing, then what? More nostalgia? More wasteful spending? More directionless drifting? Liverpool was a football empire built by a short, chunky, slightly odd Celtic man with a vision. Remember that.
Rafa had a clear vision and was trying to implement it, difference between Rafa and Rodgers? Medals on the table. Ive an open mind on Rodgers but the way Rafas toils/achievements are unrecognised by many annoys me. Anyhow...
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