IN MANY WAYS, Brendan Rodgers has been a dead man walking since Liverpool so meekly limped over the Premier League finish line last term.
Just two wins from their final nine games said much: the players just wanted the season to end. They wanted to be put out of their misery. They wanted a holiday. They wanted to be anywhere but Liverpool.
The campaign that had promised so much proved to be an unmitigated disaster that dramatically veered off course many times. Many questioned whether Rodgers would even make it to Christmas after a numbing November saw four straight defeats, including that bizarre experience at the Santiago Bernabeu.
But December was relatively more settled despite another setback at Old Trafford. Rodgers changed the system and Liverpool began to get results, going on a lengthy unbeaten run. In 23 games, they lost just once – a Europa League penalty shootout to Besiktas. But where Rodgers had stemmed the bleeding for a prolonged period, he never properly cleaned out the cut and when the pain returned, it was sharper and more intense than ever.
And when he faced his American overlords after such a miserable finale to the season, you can bet the conversation was all business. Results were not good enough. Mass investment had yielded no return. After three years in charge, why should Fenway Sports Group keep Rodgers in charge? John W. Henry and his cohorts took a risk in appointing Rodgers to begin with. A youthful practitioner of the game, an inexperienced personality, he had minimal background in high-profile football management. But if there was a selling point, it was his plan, his philosophy, the belief he had in a system. FSG were sold on his ideas and allowed him the opportunity to implement them.
And right now, the biggest worry for FSG is that Rodgers is all out of ideas. Last season, when the pressure was on him previously, he made a change and reaped the rewards. Now, he needs something similar to happen.
FSG will look at Liverpool as both a club and business. In March, they recorded a profit for the first time in seven years but there has been an eye-catching outlay on players in the last twelve months with minimal return on investment while there will be no Champions League money this term either. Should they feel the football side is having a detrimental effect on the overall organisation, there is an inevitable conclusion to all of this.
Patience, of course, plays its part. Rodgers has begged for it already this term. He certainly begged for it too when meeting FSG during the summer and offered up his long-time assistant Colin Pascoe and another coach Mike Marsh as fall-guys. They lost their jobs and Rodgers kept his, just about. For Rodgers, it was an act of desperation and he was granted some mercy though faced with another summer window, the stress probably returned with interest.
After losing Luis Suarez, Rodgers brought in a litany of players – Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren, Lazar Markovic, Mario Balotelli, Alberto Moreno, Divock Origi, Emre Can and Rickie Lambert, at a cost of £104 million according to TransferMarkt.com. Three of those players aren’t even at the club anymore. But it gets worse than that.
An unproven, raw and inexperienced teenager is now preferred to Moreno at left-back, Origi finally made his debut for the club at the weekend, Lallana’s injury problems and lack of form mean he’s in and out of the side, no one can quite figure out where Can’s best position is and the other player is Lovren – with the least said about him the better.
Take it back even further and look at Rodgers’ signings for the 2013/2014 season – Sakho, Aspas, Mignolet, Luis ALberto, Tiago Ilori, Kolo Toure.
And then there are the players he’s lost. Outside of Suarez and Sterling, there’s been the weirdness in his treatment of of Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard (why neither were offered coaching roles within the club akin to Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, Phil Neville at Manchester United makes little sense). The same goes for Daniel Agger – a calm and composed centre half and beloved by the fans but who paid the price for having differences with Rodgers. Having made up his mind regarding Gerrard, he ignored the similar talent possessed by Jonjo Shelvey and sold him to Swansea where he has flourished.
But that’s deviating from the main point here. Rodgers, who has always extolled the virtues of having a thought-out plan and system and, in many ways, has built a career out of it, is unrecognisable. It’s clear that he’s a man under extreme duress and is panicking. Against Manchester United at Old Trafford, the hosts’ approach was boring but at least they had one.
For Liverpool, there seemed a lack of any cohesion. And without Philippe Coutinho, there was no dramatic magic moment that could get them out of jail. The goal from Christian Benteke almost hints at something else – that they rallied in the late stages and may have deserved more from the game. But they didn’t. In fact, the penalty incident involving Ander Herrera and Joe Gomez seemed a perfect metaphor for how the clash played out. United weren’t really going anywhere but Liverpool offered nothing but a limp and weary challenge and presented them with opportunities as a result.
There are those that will continue to be hopeful. Liverpool have been here before, they’ll say, and quite recently too. Some will argue that back-to-back defeats can be followed with a confidence-boosting win and the season will soon be back on track.
But for FSG, there’s one main question: what’s the plan? When they hired Brendan Rodgers, everything seemed clear and concise. But the second-place finish in 2014 seems more and more like a freak occurrence rather than something to build upon. There’s been too much discrepancy either side of it to believe it was anything but a temporary blip. So, what’s the best-case scenario here? Is Rodgers the man for the job? Can he get this side to the top-four and Champions League qualification? Or, will this be another campaign lost to inconsistency and meekness?
Rodgers is currently thrashing about in deep and dark waters. There seems little pattern to the signings, to the style, to what he’s trying to implement. With so many new faces at the club – players and staff – what’s the identity? Maybe Rodgers doesn’t care anymore. Maybe, just like during the summer, he cares only about keeping hold of his job for as long as he can, regardless of the consequences.
But what is clear is that he’ll do well to find a lifeline. FSG have been here before and won’t make the same mistake twice.
