Brendan Rodgers

[MrMichael]

So what dude? That's just an attempt to manage expectations... didn't work with you obviously

We don't have an entitlement to any position in this league, the only reasonable target any manager should ever really set is to do at least as well as, or preferably get more points than in the previous season. Especially when wholesale changes to a squad which has not been performing well for seasons on end now have not been made.

[el matador]

Are you high mate.

[MrMichael]

Eh, what? Wow, well that's a constructive response to a relatively reasonable post. I'm high because I don't think its fair to expect a team which Rafa Benitez, Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish all couldn't get into 4th place to instantly achieve that with Brendan Rodgers? I'm high because I'm choosing to challenge your utterly unevidenced assertions about the relative strength of our squad?

No, as it happens I'm at work right now and as sober as it is possible to be. Thanks for asking though.

[el matador]

Eh, what? Wow, well that's a constructive response to a relatively reasonable post. I'm high because I don't think its fair to expect a team which Rafa Benitez, Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish all couldn't get into 4th place to instantly achieve that with Brendan Rodgers? I'm high because I'm choosing to challenge your utterly unevidenced assertions about the relative strength of our squad?

No, as it happens I'm at work right now and as sober as it is possible to be. Thanks for asking though.

you keep calling me dude so I thought maybe you were tripping or something.

but we've spent 50m this season. Normally you would expect a push for a champions league with that sort of investment.

[MrMichael]

I call people dude a lot. Not sure what that remotely has to do with tripping, but whatever.

That's incredibly reductive. Firstly, £20m of that was spent in the last few weeks. Then you're totally not accounting for players who have left, players like Kuyt, Maxi and Bellamy who we really missed, and the cutting of the wage bill etc. Fact is that we started this season with one of the lightest squads we've had in a long while. I can't see how anyone could argue that. Remember Morgan, Yessil, Sinclair etc playing in competitive games for us? Suso, Wisdom and Sterling all being regulars? Suarez being our only available striker for several months?

We've had 4 managers in 4 seasons, a massive turn over at all levels of the club and a huge amount of instability. And then we had our worst start to a league season since the dinosaurs. Absolutely things have not been perfect, but to take the view that we should be in fourth right now, with no allowance for any sort of medium to long term sustainable development / progress to get us there that might take a season or more to complete, I find quite absurd. And more than that, a definite path to disappointment.

[el matador]

I call people dude a lot. Not sure what that remotely has to do with tripping, but whatever.

That's incredibly reductive. Firstly, £20m of that was spent in the last few weeks. Then you're totally not accounting for players who have left, players like Kuyt, Maxi and Bellamy who we really missed, and the cutting of the wage bill etc. Fact is that we started this season with one of the lightest squads we've had in a long while. I can't see how anyone could argue that. Remember Morgan, Yessil, Sinclair etc playing in competitive games for us? Suso, Wisdom and Sterling all being regulars? Suarez being our only available striker for several months?

We've had 4 managers in 4 seasons, a massive turn over at all levels of the club and a huge amount of instability. And then we had our worst start to a league season since the dinosaurs. Absolutely things have not been perfect, but to take the view that we should be in fourth right now, with no allowance for any sort of medium to long term sustainable development / progress to get us there that might take a season or more to complete, I find quite absurd. And more than that, a definite path to disappointment.

I think you will find that the 20m was closer to 30. Allen, borini, assaidi and yesil were combined 30m or thereabouts.

part of the underperformance aspect is that we've had very little payback from that investment.

We want fourth, Rodgers sacrificed both cup competitions early on so where's the need for the massive squad if the cup competitions don't count.

[Red_Polo]

but we've spent 50m this season

£20m of that was spent in the last few weeks

I think you will find that the 20m was closer to 30. Allen, borini, assaidi and yesil were combined 30m or thereabouts.

These weren't signed in the last few weeks.

Just so you know, dude.

[MrMichael]

No, I said £20m was spent in the last few weeks, ie Sturridge and Coutinho. One of them hasn't even moved to Merseyside yet. I'm quite aware that the summer buys were around £30m, but we did sell people too.

Just counting senior players, we had Allen, Borini and Assaidi come in, Kuyt, Bellamy, Maxi, Carroll, Aquilani, Adam and Spearing all out. Whatever opinions may be of the relative merits & necessity of each of those departures it is bloody hard to argue that we came out of it with an immediately stronger squad. More potential came in, players with room to improve etc, a trimmer squad to build upon, but right then on Sept 1st we had lost a massive amount of experience.

As for return on our investment, Borini has spent months out injured and regardless is hardly more than a kid who needs time to develop & grow. You don't score 10 in 21 in Italy and go to the Euros in their squad if you're terrible. And Assaidi is just random and cost very little. So basically the lack of payback on our investment comes down to Allen, who has really lost form in the last few months. We'll see if he comes good again in future, but sure he's not been as impressive as we could have hoped.

What? Sacrificed how exactly? You are aware that we're still in the UEFA cup, in which we've already played what, 12 games? We'd already played 10 more games than one of our opponents over Christmas I remember a commentator saying. We got beaten by an in-form West Brom in the league cup with a weakened team, but the FA cup wasn't sacrificed, that team was well strong enough to defeat Oldham. We just got beaten. Happens in football.

Your squad argument makes no sense at all. Anyone can see the teams we've been forced to play at points in the UEFA especially have been weak, very weak, not out of choice but necessity. No way was anyone thinking or expecting Suso, Sterling & Wisdom to need to play as often as they have this year. You say "we want fourth" like its just something we can snap our fingers and be good enough to achieve, despite there being several other teams who are obviously more viable candidates for that position than we are, and despite the core of our squad having already failed to have achieved that position, or even close to it really, for a number of seasons on end.

Our ambition is, rightly, to get back into the CL first, then to put together a team capable of challenging for a title. To do this we need to have a stable and cohesive plan which is enacted over the course of several seasons. Can you really not see that some moderation of immediate expectations is not only fair, but also the only really sensible and constructive attitude for us to take right now?

[Glenn Hysen]

No, I said £20m was spent in the last few weeks, ie Sturridge and Coutinho. One of them hasn't even moved to Merseyside yet. I'm quite aware that the summer buys were around £30m, but we did sell people too.

Just counting senior players, we had Allen, Borini and Assaidi come in, Kuyt, Bellamy, Maxi, Carroll, Aquilani, Adam and Spearing all out. Whatever opinions may be of the relative merits & necessity of each of those departures it is bloody hard to argue that we came out of it with an immediately stronger squad. More potential came in, players with room to improve etc, a trimmer squad to build upon, but right then on Sept 1st we had lost a massive amount of experience.

As for return on our investment, Borini has spent months out injured and regardless is hardly more than a kid who needs time to develop & grow. You don't score 10 in 21 in Italy and go to the Euros in their squad if you're terrible. And Assaidi is just random and cost very little. So basically the lack of payback on our investment comes down to Allen, who has really lost form in the last few months. We'll see if he comes good again in future, but sure he's not been as impressive as we could have hoped.

What? Sacrificed how exactly? You are aware that we're still in the UEFA cup, in which we've already played what, 12 games? We'd already played 10 more games than one of our opponents over Christmas I remember a commentator saying. We got beaten by an in-form West Brom in the league cup with a weakened team, but the FA cup wasn't sacrificed, that team was well strong enough to defeat Oldham. We just got beaten. Happens in football.

Your squad argument makes no sense at all. Anyone can see the teams we've been forced to play at points in the UEFA especially have been weak, very weak, not out of choice but necessity. No way was anyone thinking or expecting Suso, Sterling & Wisdom to need to play as often as they have this year. You say "we want fourth" like its just something we can snap our fingers and be good enough to achieve, despite there being several other teams who are obviously more viable candidates for that position than we are, and despite the core of our squad having already failed to have achieved that position, or even close to it really, for a number of seasons on end.

Our ambition is, rightly, to get back into the CL first, then to put together a team capable of challenging for a title. To do this we need to have a stable and cohesive plan which is enacted over the course of several seasons. Can you really not see that some moderation of immediate expectations is not only fair, but also the only really sensible and constructive attitude for us to take right now?

[Yozza]

I call people dude a lot. Not sure what that remotely has to do with tripping, but whatever.

That's incredibly reductive. Firstly, £20m of that was spent in the last few weeks. Then you're totally not accounting for players who have left, players like Kuyt, Maxi and Bellamy who we really missed, and the cutting of the wage bill etc. Fact is that we started this season with one of the lightest squads we've had in a long while. I can't see how anyone could argue that. Remember Morgan, Yessil, Sinclair etc playing in competitive games for us? Suso, Wisdom and Sterling all being regulars? Suarez being our only available striker for several months?

We've had 4 managers in 4 seasons, a massive turn over at all levels of the club and a huge amount of instability. And then we had our worst start to a league season since the dinosaurs. Absolutely things have not been perfect, but to take the view that we should be in fourth right now, with no allowance for any sort of medium to long term sustainable development / progress to get us there that might take a season or more to complete, I find quite absurd. And more than that, a definite path to disappointment.

It amazes me how so many cant see where we are at the moment

BR has totally revamped the whole age of the squad; one that will begin to compete next year & more importantly for years after that - patience was needed this year but that's where the SKY generation fail

I think he's doing a brilliant job....

[Shaggy]

I don't think Dion likes him.

http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/premier-league/no-escaping-grim-reality-3375702.html

NO ESCAPING GRIM REALITY

Brendan Rodgers is talking the talk but not walking the walk, writes Dion Fanning

Brendan Rodgers had been talking beautifully about the progress he is overseeing at Liverpool. He marvelled at the brilliance of Luis Suarez – the term 'false winger' was used impressively. He spoke at length about the tactical advances of Jordan Henderson. He let it be known that he had been watching the new signing Philippe Coutinho since he was 15 – "another great product to come into the league" – and had talked to his friend Jose Mourinho about him.

He was happy here at the Emirates, talking away, bursting with "real pride" after Liverpool had thrown away a two-goal lead against an Arsenal side that has fragility in its DNA, in front of a crowd that was ready to revolt and a team that knew it.

Rodgers kept talking and we slid down in our chairs as relaxed as if we were in an all-night lock-in, with the sweet soothing sound of bull**** allowing us to believe we were experiencing what David Bowie liked to call the "eternal now".

When the question came it was as if somebody had switched on harsh spotlights and yanked open the blinds to reveal unforgiving sunlight and a brutal dawn. Rodgers was asked if he was concerned that his team had yet to beat a side in the top six (they have yet to beat a side in the top half.) This was reality intruding and it felt bad.

He said he wasn't "overly" worried, even if "you guys keep going on about it". He made this failure sound as if it was just a secondary piece of tittle-tattle, a contract extension or a poor disciplinary record, that the press wouldn't let go.

Anyway, Liverpool should have beaten Manchester City, he said, and if they win at the Etihad today they would have four points from two tough road trips. He is right but he was dealing in abstractions. The elephant in the boot-room is that reality will always break through in football.

Liverpool had a couple of brutal intrusions from reality last week. They lost at Oldham, looking "soft" as Rodgers said. On Wednesday night, Liverpool played brilliantly at times but reality also revealed that there is no killer instinct in the side being created by Rodgers. At Arsenal, they took part in a thrilling game against another side which has lost sight of the ultimate point of football: winning.

Last week, Brendan Rodgers finally took a stand but he took it against the weakest at the club: the young players, with Martin Skrtel thrown in.

Everything Rodgers does suggests that he is not just postponing the moment when he will be judged but, beneath the self-confidence and the projection of authority, that he is worried what that judgement will reveal. His friend Jose Mourinho also projected this authority before he had the CV to match it. When the results and victories came they seemed like the inevitable consequence of all he had been telling the world about himself.

Rodgers has mastered the looking confident bit but it remains to be seen if he can produce a successful side. He has tried to make it seem an irrelevance. When Swansea played in Sunderland last year, Rodgers talked about the game in language that is now familiar.

"It is great for the public here at Sunderland to see us," he said after the game. "They must have been wondering what this team everyone is talking about are all about and now they have seen. We were wonderful. Our intention is always to pass teams to a standstill, but give credit to Sunderland, they defended ever so well when other teams might have wilted." Sunderland had just beaten Swansea 2-0.

His words would be irrelevant if Liverpool didn't play as if they have absorbed his central message. At Boundary Park, at the Emirates and at Old Trafford, Liverpool have performed as if glimpses of spirit and some thrilling football is enough. Even Rodgers seemed to think the Oldham performance had been transformed at a certain point, remarking that Steven Gerrard played as if he had been "dropped in from heaven" when he came on.

Liverpool scored in that time and Gerrard hit the bar but Liverpool were playing a League One side which had won one of its previous nine games. Some doubt was inevitable and to see a transformation in turning a 1-3 scoreline into a 2-3 scoreline makes Pangloss seem like Beckett.

Rodgers then went to the other extreme in criticising the young players, but if a manager must sometimes look ridiculous to protect his players, it is not a good idea for a manager to make his players look ridiculous to protect himself.

By Wednesday night, he was saying "Sunday was more my fault than theirs". By then Liverpool had their pride and he was finding leadership in reliable places, certainly more reliable places than a Brendan Rodgers press conference.

Jamie Carragher will probably start at the Etihad today. At the Emirates, he brought authority to the side. At one point in the first half, Glen Johnson took a knock on the head. Carragher went around the Liverpool players, reminding them of their responsibilities. He then had a quick word with the referee. The referee restarted the game with a drop ball and Arsenal knocked it back to Pepe Reina. The Arsenal fans howled. They believed the ball should have been given back to them.

Carragher is a player who has always been looking for an edge. He seemed less inclined to be consoled by the performance or talk of his pride in drawing against a team that is sixth in the table. Carragher has competed for titles and won the European Cup. In those years, he was at the heart of everything Liverpool achieved. "A manager going into a club would want those guys right behind you," Rodgers said afterwards and he is right.

Rodgers will also point to progress. Liverpool collapsed against Arsenal in August so he saw Wednesday night as a benchmark of how far they have come (Arsenal have nosedived since then).

There may have been signs of progress this season but Luis Suarez has delivered most of them. Suarez plays as if to win is the only thing and he plays with a ruthlessness that is out of step with Rodgers' better-luck-next-time philosophy.

Suarez is making encouraging noises about staying at Liverpool but he is also talking about making a decision in the summer. He is 26, he has scored 17 league goals already this season and he will be wanted by all the top European clubs.

If Suarez leaves then Liverpool's greatest test will be how they replace him. Rodgers has been average in the transfer market.

If Joe Allen has faded (perhaps because he is too closely identified with the manager, Rodgers exempted him from blame for the Oldham defeat), Henderson has grown and Rodgers can take some credit for that.

Yet Liverpool, and presumably Rodgers, were prepared to let Henderson leave the club in August as they tried to find a way of getting Clint Dempsey to Anfield. Henderson refused and Liverpool refused to pay the money for Dempsey. Whoever made that decision, and it wasn't Rodgers, was right.

In the aftermath, John Henry, who has yet to visit Anfield this season, issued a statement declaring FSG's ambitions for the club.

Like many things FSG say, their words had an appeal but the reality is different. Rodgers can talk about the project and the group and the product but Liverpool's future depends less on him than it does on Luis Suarez.

Every year spent away from the Champions League is another year when it becomes harder to attract the players necessary to return to the Champions League.

Rodgers must deal with that and he has managed, in the main, to remove himself from criticism.

There is a feeling that Rodgers is just a proxy, that those who criticise him only use him to further another agenda. This view allows Rodgers off the hook. His mistakes are obvious and need no agenda to be pointed out.

Liverpool has been dominated by feuds in recent years and in the summer FSG decided to go with their instincts. It was a courageous and sensible decision. They wanted to move on from the past and they wanted to create a club where the manager was one of many voices and couldn't cause too much havoc.

Rodgers probably hasn't done much harm at Liverpool. FSG wanted a middle manager to lower the wage bill and the age of the squad without causing too much fuss as they sought to cut costs. They didn't want a manager like Benitez who would always demand more and who would prevent them breaking free of the past. It was an understandable point of view, but there were coaches who could have been pursued, men like Frank de Boer, who would have taken Liverpool forward with more intent than Rodgers.

In blaming the weakest and most marginal at the club last week, Rodgers gave little indication that he is a manager capable of doing more than middle management, despite all his empty rhetoric.

If bull**** is designed to conceal the truth, a point arrives when bull**** reveals it. The truth about Rodgers is that when he talked of the young players after the Oldham game, he was revealing something of himself. When he said they were soft and needed to understand the demands of playing for Liverpool, he was getting closer to the truth. Everything he said about those players could as easily be said of him.

Brendan Rodgers promotes football without a reckoning. In football, there is always a reckoning.

[Alex]

I agree with a lot of what he has said there. But it does seem like a hatchet job. The way he has dismissed Arsenal was stupid. Making them sound like some second rate mid table team.

I think Rodgers is doing fine. I'd like to win a few more, but I think that will come with time.

[Fredo]

Harsh assessment. I wonder what Dion was saying in Rafa's first year.

[Shaggy]

I get Fanning's concerns but he's clearly made his mind up. Personally I think it's too early to be so definitive, to be so harsh. Results will dictate whether Rodgers can walk the walk or is a bull**** merchant. I understand why people think the latter - I just think it's too early to dive in with such conviction.

[Fredo]

Agree.