Brendan Rodgers

[Kenneth]

Coming from the Kenny shouldn't have been appointed camp, I'm putting last year to one side almost completely. Eventually we appointed a replacement for Rafa, and we should be looking at 5 year plans again.

[MrMichael]

Which players are you alluding to?

Most of them in all honesty. This core group have either been underperforming for 4 years, or actually this is their level. And to be honest, the latter explanation makes more sense. Our only unquestionably top quality player right now is Suarez, all the rest have questions over them to some degree imo. Not that I'm saying they suck, just that some of our fans overrate many of them both as individuals and a collective.

[BobTheCharmer]

Coming from the Kenny shouldn't have been appointed camp, I'm putting last year to one side almost completely. Eventually we appointed a replacement for Rafa, and we should be looking at 5 year plans again.

There was plenty to enjoy last season.

[BobTheCharmer]

Most of them in all honesty. This core group have either been underperforming for 4 years, or actually this is their level. And to be honest, the latter explanation makes more sense. Our only unquestionably top quality player right now is Suarez, all the rest have questions over them to some degree imo. Not that I'm saying they suck, just that some of our fans overrate many of them both as individuals and a collective.

exactly right.

[dom9]

Most of them in all honesty. This core group have either been underperforming for 4 years, or actually this is their level. And to be honest, the latter explanation makes more sense. Our only unquestionably top quality player right now is Suarez, all the rest have questions over them to some degree imo. Not that I'm saying they suck, just that some of our fans overrate many of them both as individuals and a collective.

So that would be the core of Reina, Johnson, Skrtel, Agger, Lucas and Gerrard.

The first and last have had a lot of stick on here. The others less so.

[Kenneth]

There was plenty to enjoy last season.

Sure, not suggesting otherwise. It just wasn't part of a long term development plan. The last one ended with rafa, and we've just started one with Rodgers i think.

[Neil Young]

Most of them in all honesty. This core group have either been underperforming for 4 years, or actually this is their level. And to be honest, the latter explanation makes more sense. Our only unquestionably top quality player right now is Suarez, all the rest have questions over them to some degree imo. Not that I'm saying they suck, just that some of our fans overrate many of them both as individuals and a collective.

I have had a creeping realisation recently that maybe most of our best players aren't that great. The best players perform at a very high level consistently - that's both the definition and the requirement. And it simply doesn't apply to anyone but Suarez.

[kingfunk]

The first thing every new manager should be afforded before been lashed is his own team. This is not BR`s own team by far. It was always too much to expect him to overhall the team in one transfer window, this was not helped by the INSANE amount money Kenny paid for Downing, Hendo, Adam and Carroll making them almost impossible to offload and wheather people want to admit it or not this has set the club back years.
BR needs time and support to put this right. The next 6 months may not be pretty, forget about January, next summers window is the big one and only after that can we really judge our manager.

[dom9]

The first thing every new manager should be afforded before been lashed is his own team. This is not BR`s own team by far. It was always too much to expect him to overhall the team in one transfer window, this was not helped by the INSANE amount money Kenny paid for Downing, Hendo, Adam and Carroll making them almost impossible to offload and wheather people want to admit it or not this has set the club back years.
BR needs time and support to put this right. The next 6 months may not be pretty, forget about January, next summers window is the big one and only after that can we really judge our manager.

There are exceptions. Imagine if Hodgson was given time to build his own team.

[kingfunk]

Come on, that is the easy thing to say. Surly you can admit that Hodgson and BR are like chalk and cheese. Hodgson used to use his pre-match conference to tell everyone not to expect a win ffs.

[dom9]

Come on, that is the easy thing to say. Surly you can admit that Hodgson and BR are like chalk and cheese. Hodgson used to use his pre-match conference to tell everyone not to expect a win ffs.

Of course. I'm just saying that your oversimplistic generalisation isn't valid.

[Kenneth]

There are exceptions. Imagine if Hodgson was given time to build his own team.

I guess he could have been moderately successful in a horribly brutal kind of way.

[dom9]

I guess he could have been moderately successful in a horribly brutal kind of way.

Who knows. But he was a terribly bad fit from the very off.

Every case should be judged on its own merits and individual combination of circumstances.

Nobody is calling for Rodgers' head. Everybody recognises this is a work in progress. Everyone knows we have a rookie manager at top level football.

These things are beyond dispute.

Where there is variance in opinion is the level of concern with current form. There are short and long term views. We will only find out if it's gonna work in the medium to long term.

[baitman]

We are so concerned about short passing that. We take so long to get to the opposition box, that when we do, there are 10 defenders waiting for us.

Am not convinced by any aspect of the club at the moment - be it manager, owners , or team. I am not sure what direction we are going in with the manager, believe fsg are here to make money and the plaYers simply are not good enough for a club that is supposedly one of the biggest in the world. We're trialing managers when we should have the best out there . The club stinks of amateurism.

I have had a creeping realisation recently that maybe most of our best players aren't that great. The best players perform at a very high level consistently - that's both the definition and the requirement. And it simply doesn't apply to anyone but Suarez.

we are feeble, lacking any bite. how long will suarez stay to watch this "project" bounce along.

[G]

Three Pieces Of Advice For Brendan Rodgers
Brendan Rodgers was too quick to claim consistency at Liverpool, and while he is working with restrictions, Nick Miller thinks there are three things he can do to improve things...

A standard response from your fearless correspondent about Brendan Rodgers is 'I like him, but he makes it pretty difficult for me.'

Brendan accentuated the latter point this week by firstly using the word 'linear' to describe Liverpool's season, but also by mentioning his side and second place in the table in the same remark.

He said on Friday: "For a club that has been very poor and disastrous by all accounts from other people we lie four points off top four.

"For me the ambition is to grow higher. We are 11 points off second and that can all turn around very quickly so you need to get consistency - and that is what we have at the minute."

At that point Liverpool had won three games in a row - one was against Southampton, one against Udinese reserves, and one against West Ham. That isn't consistency, that isn't the time to start being smug and saying 'I told you so' and that certainly isn't the time to start talking about making the top two.

It was perhaps fitting that Rodgers's chutzpah should be given a quick slap by a truly dreadful performance and deserved defeat by Aston Villa on Saturday, but that's not to say Rodgers is the wrong man for Liverpool. Given his restrictions (money, current squad, inability to talk like someone other than a motivational speaker) and the relatively short space of time he has been there, it's probably impossible to tell that for now.

My instinct is there's something there, and that Liverpool should stick with him and thus should give him the appropriate financial backing in January. This is a squad that badly needs strengthening, a statement that up there with 'Luis Suarez - he's a bit of a room-splitter, isn't he?' in the 'Well duh' stakes.

There are, however, three relatively simple things that Rodgers can do at Liverpool, one of which is easy, one requires a bit of imagination and the other one requires some balls.

- The Easy One: Give Raheem Sterling a rest. Clearly a hugely talented prospect, the lad is only just 18 and has started every league game since August 26. He looked weary against Villa, and it's hardly a surprise given his age. He has been thrust into the Liverpool first team through circumstance, since the alternatives are not good enough. By playing him every week, Rodgers is risking running Sterling into the ground, and arguably even weakening the club's own negotiating position with his new contract. The more games he plays, the more important he is to Liverpool, and the more his agent can demand from the club. Obviously, resting Sterling will be easier should new players be bought in January. Which leads us to...

- The Imaginative One: Don't buy Daniel Sturridge. The word in most of the newspapers is that Sturridge and Thomas Ince are Liverpool's primary targets for the transfer window, for a combined fee of something like £18million. Ince is an exciting prospect and might be worth recruiting, even if it will look pretty brainless to pay £4-6million for a player they let leave for pocket change last year. Sturridge however, will cost at least £12million to buy, will cost more in wages, will demand he plays through the middle and will bring a beefy ego. And, frankly, he isn't that good. The standard line about Sturridge is that if he was half as good as he thinks he is, he'd be twice as good as he actually is. Liverpool are a club a budget, and spending a lot on a young English forward when there might be better/cheaper alternatives sounds awfully familiar.

So if Liverpool need a striker, and Sturridge isn't that man, who should it be? This is where the imagination comes in. Sarah Winterburn wrote a couple of weeks ago that January is a better time to find value than many would have you believe, with Nikica Jelavic, Papiss Cisse and Pavel Pogrebnyak delivering 34 goals between them after their clubs paid a total of around £13million in January last season. Scouting for Liverpool strikers isn't the job of F365, but so far this season Burak Yilmaz has 15 goals for Galatasaray, Wilfried Bony 15 for Vitesse Arnhem and Jackson Martinez has 14 for Porto. This is not to say these players are guaranteed to be better than Sturridge, or that Liverpool should buy one of these players or that they'd even want to come, but it is just to illustrate that there are alternatives out there. It's up to Rodgers and his scouts to have a little imagination.

- The Ballsy One: Don't pick Steven Gerrard in every game. The Liverpool captain has started every Premier League game this season (as well as four in the Europa League), and while it would be foolish to suggest he is done at 32, he is indisputably past his peak and has not done enough this season to merit automatic selection. If Rodgers believes Gerrard has deserved to be in every first eleven then fine - we shall have to disagree. However, if his decisions are being influenced by what he might believe to be a backlash from the fans, he should realise that dropping Gerrard would not be a universally unpopular decision at Anfield. It seems like Gerrard is being forced into every Liverpool side like an extra pair of shoes into an uncooperative suitcase. It need not be like this.

Rodgers might be the man to rebuild Liverpool. He might not. He needs time, but at the moment there are a few areas in which he is doing himself no favours.

http://www.football365.com/f365-says/8335272/Advice365