Brendan Rodgers

[Captain Stu]

I'm going to the match on Swansea and my instant reaction last night after the final whistle was to question whether I even want to go. I just don't enjoy spending hours getting to Anfield only to watch the team underperform and utterly embarass themselves and us.

Anfield was a ghost town against West Brom on Monday, it made the Emirates sound loud by comparison.

Exactly right. Sami rarely let people run at him and past him. It was timing. More often than not, he nicked it away. If he didn't he took a booking. Carra was like that to an extent too. But in the last 4 years or so we've become pretty lame. Just allow people to run and run at us, run past us and more often than not score.

It's why I love Kompany so much, he has as much pace as a defender could ever need but he tries to make sure he's never in the position to need to run after someone.

[Pedenj]

It does annoy me that we never bring people down.

You see a move formulating and think - take the yellow card - and we never seem to. It is an area we need to improve in and maybe Rodgers does need to look at getting a coach in to look at this area.

[Sarb]

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liver...0252-32813268/


Jan Molby: We have to be realistic about where Liverpool FC can finish this season



FOR as long as Liverpool suffer with inconsistency then expectations must be realistic. For as long as the Reds continue to have nights like they did on Monday against West Bromwich Albion then we need to realise that the best to hope for is a finish somewhere between sixth and 10th.

Liverpool had created so many chances and it was not a game I could see them losing.

But as we all saw, they were punished.

Yet over the last three months I have seen slightly more progression in this team than results would suggest.

People may question that, given the frustrating 2-0 defeat earlier this week and those chastening results against Aston Villa and Oldham.

Some may wonder how I’ve come to such a conclusion when the side’s current points total is the second worst in our Premier League history at this stage of the season.

All this is not great but I believe the players can see where the club are trying to go.

And we must put those bad performances into context with the encouraging displays at Arsenal and Manchester City.

What Brendan Rodgers is trying to achieve here is worth sticking with and worth believing in.

The players still believe in what the manager is working towards.

Some might be sick and tired of hearing the word ‘project’ but that is what it is at the moment.

And it is all about the players and the quality you have got at your disposal.

The better players you have, the quicker you’ll get to where you want to go.

This is a project that is going to take time, but I believe the majority of supporters understand this.

When Liverpool have been at the top of their game, they have shown themselves to be as good as those sides above them such as Tottenham Hotspur and Everton.

But with inconsistency still hanging around, we cannot be looking at the top four.

[Captain Stu]

Think Molby's wide of the mark there - my expectations for this squad are perfectly realistic and that's 6th place.

Anything less than that and we're basically excusing consistent poor performances. Even with a new manager we should be better than we currently are.

[Shaggy]

This was written by an Arsenal fan...

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/early-doors/comical-brendan-leaving-himself-open-ridicule-085931453.html

Comical Brendan leaving himself open to ridicule

By Eurosport | Early Doors – 2 hours 14 minutes ago

Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers are a team of contrasts. Though their style has undoubtedly improved from last season, their results – which see them out of both domestic cups, impotent against top-10 clubs and now likely heading out of Europe – are undeniably worse. There is a disconnect between the veneer and the substance, the ideal and the reality, and it extends to their manager.

On Thursday night, following a 2-0 defeat away at Zenit St Petersburg that has nearly extinguished their hopes in the Europa League, Rodgers provoked bemusement when claiming Liverpool’s performance on the rutted pitch of the Petrovsky Stadium was "a near-on perfect away performance."

Near-on perfect. Apart from standing off and giving Hulk – the man who can kick a football as hard as his superhero namesake – the chance to belt in a trademark effort from 20 yards, of course. Oh, and Glen Johnson letting Sergei Semak free at the back post to add a second. Luis Suarez had a few excellent chances, but he missed them and Liverpool had just six shots in total, with only two on target.

A near-on perfect away performance? That’s how you might describe holding Juventus to a 0-0 draw in Turin in 2005 or going to the Bernabeu and beating Real Madrid 1-0 in 2009, but not this. Never this.

You might argue that such an audacious claim from the Liverpool manager was a slip of the tongue - one little ill-judged line from an entire press conference. Yet Rodgers has form in this regard.

After another 2-0 defeat – at home to West Brom on Monday night – Rodgers was heard to lament that: "I'm just disappointed for the players, they've been on a terrific little run, especially here at home." Easy victories over the might of Fulham, Sunderland and Norwich had come at Anfield, true, yet overall they hadn’t won in four and had been knocked out of the FA Cup by League One Oldham.

It seems that all too often we are left scratching our heads at one of Rodgers's post-match pronouncements.

It is one thing to awkwardly wield envelopes in pre-season, have a portrait of yourself in your sitting room or use terms such as "the helicopter view" – such quirks merely mark you out as an eccentric in the David Brent mould – but when comment becomes divided from fact to such an obvious degree it leaves you open to ridicule.

That’s not to say pure blind optimism doesn’t have a part in football. All managers bend the truth with the enthusiasm of a particularly pliable Pilates instructor. When Arsene Wenger says his young players have the character to do great things in the game, do you believe him? What about when Rafa Benitez says Fernando Torres is doing just fine?

But Rodgers appears to be rapidly earning a reputation as the Premier League’s answer to Comical Ali: Saddam Hussein’s arch propagandist who confidently declared there were no infidels in Baghdad as American tanks trundled along ominously behind him.

Rodgers’s own brand of optimism - a rather more breezy kind, it must be said - is also made to seem silly when unsupported by reality. This was a trait he displayed at Swansea too - most famously following another of those pesky 2-0 defeats, this time at Sunderland last season.

On that occasion he boldly declared: "It is great for the public here at Sunderland to see us. 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."

When other teams might have wilted. Swansea, it bears repeating, lost 2-0. It could have been worse: Sebastian Larsson also hit the woodwork.

Another favourite refrain is to insist that Liverpool are still on a steep learning curve. There is some merit to this argument: the club have undergone substantial change over the past 12 months and have a number of young players who are still finding their way in the professional game.

But they also have players like Steven Gerrard, Luis Suarez and Daniel Agger. Liverpool should be getting substantially better results than they are at present - their failure to beat a single team in the top 10 is glaring proof of that. How many times can Rodgers spin another disappointing result as an important lesson for his side? Well, he certainly had another go last night.

"In six to 12 months we won't be making those mistakes," said Rodgers. "This is a group that is growing and has come together. And this is part of our growing pains as a group. We've put in some terrific performances this season and not always got the results. We have to be more clinical and that is something that, over the coming months, will certainly take place."

The promise of a brighter future can be persuasive, but there will come a time where reality impinges on rhetoric.

Rodgers has Liverpool playing more artful football than under Kenny Dalglish; their use of the ball is more considered and intelligent. He has placed his faith in promising young players and recruited other exciting talents. All of this is true.

But despite the pronouncements of Comical Brendan, the reality cannot be masked. They cannot beat good teams and as well as now being on the verge of an exit from a third cup, Liverpool can forget about any lingering hopes of Champions League football.

As late as December 14, though, their manager said this: "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."

Liverpool challenging for second? No one really believed him - and it's an increasingly familiar scenario.

[Captain Stu]

Can't fault that.

[Arn]

Good article

Brendan blaming the young players in the media after the Oldham game but he never blame the experienced players.

[barnes10]

if he doesnt watch it he (and us) will quickly become a laughing stock.

seriously. who the f**k in their right mind thinks its a good idea to say some of the sh1t he comes out with. He's got to stop. It'll undermine the good he is doing.

[elrichio86]

Also, tbf given the amount FSG have given the Managers to spend I think it was quite realistic to expect a quick turnaround.

Well, FSG deserve credit for giving, by my loose calcs, at least £120m in 2 seasons. We should have a world class team for that kind of money.

These made me lol

£120m to quickly turn-around years of under-investment and create a world class team.

How much money and time did it take City to accomplish the same aims?

[Maxiedge]

It was a shocking pitch in very cold temperatures. It was a difficult away game and as said many times, we had some good chances.

If you want to blame anyone, blame Henderson. He was shocking absolutely shocking and I know he's been brilliant recently.

Wouldn't surprise me if him and Downing got the axe this weekend.

[EwarWoo]

If they wanted a quick turn around they wouldn't have hired the relatively young and inexperienced Swansea manager.

Hes here to stay for now, for better or worse.

Personally I think better.

He makes it bloody hard to be sure, however, for now, I'm still quite optimistic about the future.

[Tee]

These made me lol

£120m to quickly turn-around years of under-investment and create a world class team.

How much money and time did it take City to accomplish the same aims?

Each to their own but £120m to spend in 2 years given the players we already had at the club should have left us with a world class team. City had a team of ****e to start with so it was obviously going to take longer.

[Lecter]

There are some experienced players in the team who are folding like a deck of cards at the slightest sign of pressure. For me that says more about them than it does about Rodgers. It's those experienced players who have been part of an underachieving team for about 4 years. For me, he could justifiably replace the whole back 5.

He isn't faultless for sure. For me, Borini should have played the last 2 games from the start to keep the same set-up as when Sturridge played. But some of the more experienced players are playing pants. It's not on

I'm not convinced its solely down to players folding

There are a whole host of tactical things wrong such as pressing as a cohesive unit, being defensively and tactically & positionally organised

Football is a trade off often and its about finding the right balance

I have thought for sometime the balance is off kilter

[BigChief]

Something is happening that shows that some players are either not adapted to Rodgers' style of play or that they are not happy with it.

The body language of some of our players during the west brom game is worrying.

Given the choice of keeping the system, or keeping the flabbergasted players, I'd opt for the system every time.

If we want to ditch the system (i.e. the manager) then Sam Allardyce can come in and make us "Imy" Hard to beat "/Imy".

[DeanoUK]

It was a shocking pitch in very cold temperatures. It was a difficult away game and as said many times, we had some good chances.

If you want to blame anyone, blame Henderson. He was shocking absolutely shocking and I know he's been brilliant recently.

Wouldn't surprise me if him and Downing got the axe this weekend.

And nothing to do with Suarez's missed chances, Johnson not tracking his player (for the umpteenth time), and an overall lacklustre performance? I don't disagree he was poor, but no more than most of the others.

I'm glad Rodgers is being called out for the bull**** he's been saying after matches, as someone else said, it's becoming Roy-esque.