Just saw the goal there. In fairness to Gini, he had a nice bit of power in the shot
Imagine what Brendan Rodgers could have achieved
Not as much
Didnât see the match but sounds like the redmen were not at their best, but of course champions elect find a way
Redmen top of the league and havenât hit firm yet
As Jurg might sayâŚBoom
Front 3 were gash for the second match in a row. Divock changed it when he came on. Two centre halves class again. TAA is brainless.
Over halfway to safety now
But the lads look out on their feet
Hard to see where the other 19 points is going to come from
1 Like
Could one of our Athletic men (cc @Big_Dan_Campbell, @Raylan) please post the long read on Rodgersâ return to Liverpool this weekend?
Would you believe I am just reading it.
Will post it once finished
A 180-page manifesto, Balotelliâs antics, Gerrardâs unrest and beyond â the full story of Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool
By James Pearce and Simon Hughes 6h ago
37 
As far as job interviews go, Brendan Rodgers nailed it.
The Northern Irishman presented Liverpoolâs principal owner John W Henry and chairman Tom Werner with a 180-page manifesto entitled âOne Vision, One Clubâ.
The then Swansea City boss mapped out his blueprint for reviving the fortunes of a club which had finished the 2011-12 season eighth in the Premier League with just 52 points.
Rodgers spoke at length about âmy culture, my philosophy, my game planâ. He vowed to deliver attractive, attacking football and to bring through young talent from the academy.
Henry and Werner were suitably wowed as they searched for a successor to Kenny Dalglish back in May 2012.
Not only were the Fenway Sports Group hierarchy convinced Rodgers was a better option than Roberto Martinez, who had previously been interviewed, but they were so determined to secure his services that they were prepared to abandon plans to also appoint a sporting director.
Liverpool had held talks with vastly experienced Dutch coach Louis van Gaal, who was out of work after parting company with Bayern Munich, about taking on the role. However, Rodgers made it clear he simply wasnât prepared to operate in that kind of structure. He sought clarification on the issue from the owners on three separate occasions before finally agreeing to take over.
âI wanted to make sure that I would be in charge of football matters,â Rodgers admitted after his appointment was confirmed. âI know what makes me work well and that wouldnât have been a model I would have succeeded in. Itâs absolute madness if you are the manager of the club and someone else tells you to have that player. It doesnât work.â
Yet that initial victory for Rodgers proved to be decidedly hollow. He never got the âtotal controlâ he craved. Rather than having a sporting director, Liverpoolâs owners instead set up a transfer committee â a term created by Henry and one he ended up regretting. As well as Rodgers, it consisted of FSG president Mike Gordon, chief executive Ian Ayre, director of technical performance Michael Edwards, head of recruitment Dave Fallows and chief scout Barry Hunter.
The owners viewed it as a system that provided checks and balances â ensuring too much power wasnât placed in the hands of a young coach. But it would prove to be an increasing source of friction throughout the managerâs Anfield reign. It felt like an uneasy compromise from the start. Neither Rodgers nor the owners got what they really wanted.
No-one was ever brought in against Rodgersâ will but he was regularly frustrated by a process which meant he had to try to convince others that a target met the clubâs requirements and was worth pursuing.
There were times he was blocked from signing his first pick. For example, he wanted Ashley Williams and Ryan Bertrand, but got Mamadou Sakho and Alberto Moreno. Trust was an issue and within three-and-a-half years it had evaporated completely.
Liverpool Football Club in the summer of 2012 was a world away from its current status as champions of Europe and Premier League title contenders under Jurgen Klopp. In the three previous seasons they had finished seventh, sixth and eighth.
The appointment of Rodgers had divided opinion among supporters. Many felt that Dalglish had been unfairly dispensed with considering he had delivered the League Cup and reached the FA Cup final. Others wanted Rafa Benitez brought back.
Rodgers couldnât point to a trophy-laden CV to alleviate fears about his suitability for the job. He walked into Anfield at the age of 39 with just three-and-a-half seasons of managerial experience under his belt. The highlight had been winning the Championship play-off final with Swansea. But even so, he made a positive first impression.
âI genuinely think that Liverpool is the heartland of football,â he said at his unveiling. âI promise Iâll fight for my life and for the people in this city.â Rodgers vowed to make a trip to Anfield âthe longest 90 minutes of an opponentâs lifeâ.
The soundbites kept coming. âYou train dogs, I like to educate playersâ, âEvery player I see as my own sonâ, âMy world has been about creating rather than waitingâ, âYou can live without water for many days, but you canât live for a second without hopeâ.
On the training ground, Rodgers was a breath of fresh air. He was hands-on and the players loved his innovative sessions. Although eyebrows were raised when he started quoting Latin in team meetings. âPer aspera ad astra (through adversity to the stars)â was a phrase he used regularly.
In his first summer, Rodgers was tasked with off-loading high earners like Dirk Kuyt, Maxi Rodriguez, Alberto Aquilani, Craig Bellamy and Charlie Adam. The club adopted a policy of only paying significant fees for players aged 24 or under who would have a decent sell-on value.
âWe do not expect miracles overnight,â said Henry, who wanted Rodgers to turn rough diamonds into polished gems.
Rodgers was given a transfer kitty of just ÂŁ20 million, plus what was available from sales. He spent it on striker Fabio Borini and midfielder Joe Allen â both players he had previously worked with at Swansea. Borini, who scored just three goals for the club, was out of his depth and a ÂŁ10.4 million flop. The owners initially felt that Allenâs ÂŁ15 million release clause was too high but coughed up after Rodgersâ protests.
The âWelsh Xaviâ tag bestowed by Rodgers on the Wales international did Allen no favours. âThis boy is unique, heâs in love with the football. He is 5ft 6ins but in terms of being a footballer he is 7ft 6ins,â Rodgers raved. He couldnât live up to his managerâs hype.
Brendan Rodgers with his new signing Joe Allen in 2012 (Photo: John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Rodgers was undoubtedly dealt a bad hand by the fact that prior to his appointment the club had already agreed to a six-part fly-on-the-wall documentary with Fox Soccer. It was the last thing a young manager getting to grips with a daunting new job needed. The cameras panned on to a large self-portrait of Rodgers hanging on the wall in his Formby home. It was manna from heaven for his critics. The reality was it had been a gift to him from a disabled fan in Swansea.
In another episode Rodgers was filmed speaking at a team meeting before the season kicked off. âI think thereâs three players who will let us down this year â the cause, the fight, everything â and I have written them down already in these three envelopes. Make sure you are not in one of the envelopes.â
Full-back Glen Johnson was among those who stared back, stunned.
âI remember I was looking around like âis he fucking serious?â,â Johnson said. âYou could bet your bottom dollar all those envelopes were empty. After that it was a âtrying to get a reactionâ sort of speech.â
It wasnât original. It was a psychological ploy straight out of Sir Alex Fergusonâs old handbook.
Rodgers happily off-loaded Andy Carroll on loan to West Ham in the belief it would free up funds for him to bring in more firepower. He wanted Clint Dempsey from Fulham but the owners refused to pay ÂŁ6 million for a 29-year-old who was in the final year of his contract.
Rodgers was prepared to offer Jordan Henderson in a swap deal and informed the midfielder prior to a Europa League clash away to Hearts that he could leave. Henderson went back to his room, shed some tears, rang his dad and vowed to stay and fight and prove Rodgers wrong.
Dempsey ended up joining Tottenham instead and to Rodgersâ disgust Liverpool failed to sign anyone. When Borini then broke his foot, Luis Suarez was the clubâs only fit striker for half a season.
Henry responded to fansâ fury after the window closed with a 800-word open letter, insisting âwe will invest to succeedâ but not in âexpensive, short-term quick fixesâ.
By then Fenway Sports Group had brought in Jen Chang as the clubâs new director of communications. As Liverpool made their worst start to a season in over a century, the former writer and editor at Sports Illustrated was busy briefing reporters that Rodgers was himself culpable, having turned down the opportunity to sign Daniel Sturridge due to concerns over his attitude.
Chang, who had asked for a dossier to be drawn up on every journalist who covered the club regularly, was gone within six months. Accused of threatening a Liverpool fan who had set up a spoof blog posing as a journalist, he left the club by âmutual consentâ and returned to the States.
By the halfway point of 2012-13, Rodgersâ side sat 10th in the table with just 25 points. Nuri Sahinâs loan from Real Madrid was cut short with the Turkey international blaming his lack of impact on Rodgers playing him out of position. Joe Cole was also off-loaded.
Reinforcements did arrive that January in the form of Sturridge for ÂŁ12 million from Chelsea after Rodgers was convinced about his willingness to knuckle down and commit to the cause. The transfer committee had also pushed the claims of Philippe Coutinho, who was snapped up from Inter Milan for ÂŁ8.5 million.
Their impact helped propel the club forward as they climbed to finish seventh with 61 points.
Rodgers launched the career of a teenage Raheem Sterling. âI believe a young player will run through a barbed wire fence for you. An older player looks for a hole in the fence,â he said.
Suarez delivered a series of stunning performances en route to becoming the first Liverpool player since Fernando Torres in 2008 to reach the 30-goal mark. However, the Uruguayan was hit with a 10-game ban that April after biting Chelseaâs Branislav Ivanovic.
Jamie Carragher retired on his terms, waving goodbye to Anfield after 16 years of remarkable service. Rodgers had known shortly after taking over about the one-club manâs plans but had reneged on an initial promise to find room for Carragher on his backroom staff.
âHe changed his mind and brought Mike Marsh in from the Academy, which is not a problem,â Carragher said. âI always think how would that have worked for me going forward, and would that have got me the bug in terms of coaching?â
There was something strikingly different about Rodgers approaching his second season at the helm.
Heâd had his teeth whitened and embarked on a health kick, shifting three stones in weight, with a tailor called to his Melwood office to adjust his rack of suits accordingly.
It was used as a stick to beat him with â a sign of vanity. But he had lost both of his parents to cancer during his time at Swansea and with the stress of life at Liverpool he was determined to take better care of himself. He would regularly go running around the streets of West Derby, close to the clubâs training base.
The summer of 2013 was far from straightforward. Liverpool failed with big money moves for Diego Costa and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. They just didnât have the pulling power.
Suarez tried to force through a move to Arsenal, who had offered ÂŁ40 million plus ÂŁ1 in the mistaken belief that would trigger a release clause in his contract. He publicly accused Rodgers of breaking a promise to let him leave and was banished to train on his own.
Rodgers was heavily indebted to Steven Gerrard, who stepped in and defused a difficult situation.
Suarez later revealed: âSteven told me âI promise that if you stay this year youâre going to take off and next year youâll go to Bayern, Barcelona, Real Madrid or whichever one you want, but stay this year because you wonât be better off at Arsenalâ.
âHis words convinced me in that moment. They came from a person who cared for me. They were words from a true captain.â
The arrival of Kolo Toure (free transfer), Iago Aspas (ÂŁ7 million), Luis Alberto (ÂŁ6.8 million, Simon Mignolet (ÂŁ9 million) and Mamadou Sakho (ÂŁ15 million) â coupled with loan deals for Aly Cissokho and Victor Moses â was hardly a major show of ambition.
Stewart Downing was among those to depart â being informed by Ayre that a ÂŁ6 million fee with West Ham had been agreed shortly after Rodgers had told him he was still part of his plans.
There were other occasions when players felt his man-management could have been better. Daniel Aggerâs relationship with him deteriorated over the course of 2013-14 when he didnât seem to be able to get a straight answer about why his game-time had dwindled.
âI think Brendan is an incredibly talented manager,â Agger said. âYou canât take that away from him. Heâs good in the way he trains and he is clever in the way he sets the team up.
âThe things that went wrong between us is that I say things the way they are and I expect others to treat me the same way.â
Yet despite all that, Rodgers masterminded the most unlikely Liverpool title challenge in history.
Those who try to rewrite history by claiming that 2013-14 was all down to the mesmerising brilliance of Suarez are way off the mark. âMake Us Dreamâ read the banner on the Kop and Rodgers certainly did that. He created a system which got the best out of Suarez and Sturridge, who plundered 55 goals between them.
Rodgers gave Gerrard a new lease of life by reinventing him as a deep-lying playmaker. Henderson, Coutinho and Sterling all blossomed in the roles they were given.
His astute tactical tweaks paid off as he switched between 4-3-3 and a 4-4-2 diamond with Sterling at the tip. He got the best out of the likes of Martin Skrtel and Jon Flanagan. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts.
Arsenal arrived at Anfield as league leaders but found themselves 4-0 down inside 20 minutes and begging for mercy. âThat was as explosive as it gets,â declared Gerrard.
Tottenham were routed 5-0 at White Hart Lane, Manchester United were thrashed 3-0 at Old Trafford and Manchester City were beaten 3-2 in a thriller at Anfield. Rodgersâ name was chanted incessantly as attacking masterclasses papered over defensive vulnerability.
A run of 11 successive league victories put him on the brink of Anfield immortality. Seven points from their final three games and Rodgers would have been the man to end Liverpoolâs 24-year wait for the top-flight crown. Had that achievement been realised, maybe a statue would have been built in his name.
But then the cruel hand of fate intervened. Gerrard slipped against Chelsea and Demba Ba made him pay.
Rodgers was criticised for being naĂŻve and adopting a gung-ho approach on a day when a point would have kept the title race in Liverpoolâs hands. âI sensed an over-confidence in Brendanâs team talks,â Gerrard wrote in his autobiography My Story. âWe played into Chelseaâs hands.â
In truth that team only had one way to play and it had served them well until that point. Their subsequent late capitulation at Crystal Palace after being 3-0 up gave City the spoils but the damage had already been done against Chelsea.
Liverpool stood accused of âbottling itâ but they won 12 of their last 14 games. Rodgers was left to curse the absence of Henderson during the run-in as he served a three-match ban. It was remarkable that they even came close to glory having shipped 50 league goals.
Rodgers had surpassed all expectations. He thumped his chest proudly in response to the acclaim of the Kop as the curtain came down on an unforgettable campaign.
âYes, we can make the final step,â he said defiantly. âWe wonât go into next season with doubts.â
James Pearce
If Brendan Rodgers did not believe it already, the summer of 2014 brought personal vindication that he was absolutely the right manager to lead Liverpool into a bright new era. Early in May, he was nominated as Manager of the Year by the League Managers Association. And by the end of the month, heâd signed a new four-year contract at Anfield.
Some of June was spent watching the World Cup in Brazil where he was photographed on Rio de Janeiroâs Ipanema Beach. He was suntanned and relaxed. The possibilities for him appeared endless. Englandâs group stage exit from the competition led to some suggestions in newspaper columns that heâd be the ideal candidate to replace Roy Hodgson. Yet the mood would quickly turn.
Rodgers had travelled to Brazil with Ian Ayre, Liverpoolâs former chief executive. Both knew that Luis Suarez would join Barcelona. The trip to Brazil was designed to try and attract his desired replacement to move to Merseyside. Unfortunately for Rodgers and Ayre, Arsene Wenger wanted to sign the same man â Alexis Sanchez â and the Frenchman did not take any time off, following the Chilean between four Brazilian cities where he set up meetings with the strikerâs representatives.
By the time Rodgers and Ayre were able to get their message through to Sanchez in Rio, Wenger had already convinced him that life in London was a better bet. Later, Liverpool would claim the player had always preferred the idea of living in the capital. Yet that seed was planted by Wenger in the hotel rooms of Cuiaba and Sao Paolo before it germinated. Meanwhile, Rodgers, and Ayre remained on the beach.
Rodgers had done an excellent job in identifying Suarezâs talents and building a team that had its limitations but was nevertheless able to support him. Suarez, meanwhile, was driven by the desire to leave Liverpool and this desire propelled him to deliver the level of performances that invited legendary status.
It might have been impossible to replace him but by the start of the next season, Liverpool had not replaced him at all. When Rodgers was asked by journalists in Miami on a pre-season tour of United States whether he might consider Mario Balotelli after suggestions in the Italian press that Liverpool were interested in him, Rodgers guaranteed that the controversial forward would not be coming to Anfield.
Three weeks later, he was posing in a Liverpool shirt outside the front doors of Melwood. It seemed that at best, heâd misled the press, or at worst, he was now not really in control of what was happening at his own club. In reality, he genuinely had his sights set much higher than Balotelli.
Heâd told the clubâs negotiators they should try and take advantage of Karim Benzemaâs contract impasse at Real Madrid or bring in Edinson Cavani from Napoli or Radamel Falcao from Monaco.
He was also keen on the idea of bringing Loic Remy from Queens Park Rangers before he failed a medical. After that, he turned to Wilfried Bony from Swansea but the Ivorianâs wage demands proved too steep. In the end, Rodgers was given the option of signing either Samuel Etoâo or Balotelli. Believing Etoâoâs legs had gone, he was convinced, following a five-hour meeting with Balotelli that he could do with the player what neither Jose Mourinho or Roberto Mancini had achieved.
âI think we have done a really smart piece of business here,â Rodgers insisted after signing Balotelli for ÂŁ16 million. âThis transfer represents outstanding value for the club.â Balotelli was indeed cheap. Yet damaged goods tend to come with a discount.
Had Rodgers been persuaded by Liverpoolâs transfer committee that he was capable of turning around the career of a player whose personal baggage was arguably greater than even Suarezâs? The Uruguayan certainly delivered his best football for Liverpool under Rodgers. âAnd this was in Brendanâs mind,â says one source. âHe genuinely thought he could turn Balotelliâs career around.â
Liverpool had played twice and lost once by the time Balotelli arrived. The defeat came at champions Manchester City who established a 3-0 lead in a game where new left-back Alberto Moreno made a mistake which led to one of the City goals. Moreno would go on to symbolise the woes of a struggling defence for the next three years.
Both Moreno and Balotelli would at least enjoy Liverpoolâs next fixture, a 3-0 victory at Tottenham where Moreno scored following a galloping run and Balotelli impressed Rodgers with his willingness to help out when defending corners, âI donât think heâs done that in his career before,â Rodgers suggested.
Yet that win in London came before two successive defeats, at home to Aston Villa then more convincingly at West Ham. Steven Gerrard, Liverpoolâs captain, later reflected that the lack of movement in front of him made his job as Liverpoolâs deep-lying midfield playmaker harder. He no longer had Suarez to pass to and Daniel Sturridge was injured.
âBalotelli wasnât giving me many options on his own,â he wrote in his autobiography. Gerrard was 34 and struggling to repeat his form of the previous campaign. When he went to Rodgers for reassurance that September the manager told him, âAnyone playing in your position for us right now would find it hard because our options up front are so much more limited.â
The careers of Balotelli and Rodgers at Liverpool were unravelling quickly. If Suarez symbolised Liverpool under Rodgers before the summer of 2014, Balotelli came to represent what was wrong about the team after.
By Christmas, some of Liverpoolâs players were shocked to find that Balotelli was still learning the names of some of his team-mates, though whether he was bothering to learn them at all was up for debate.
Players who lived close by in Formby initially offered to take turns in giving Balotelli lifts to training after he was banned from driving. One of those tells a story about him not recognising Joe Allen when Balotelli sat in the passenger seat one morning and Allen was in the back even though heâd been at the club for several months.
Balotelli was irritating Rodgers, who chose not to drop him for a Champions League fixture in Basel even though it was discovered that he stayed up until 1am on the morning of the game. In his autobiography, Gerrard wrote about Liverpoolâs preparation generally not being right for the 1-0 defeat that followed when Rodgers was âsuckered by the mediaâ who compared him to Paulo Sousa, the Portuguese coach of Basel and once of Swansea.
Rodgers was desperate to prove that his team played prettier football. Gerrard believed he was over-confident and that this translated into naivety and highlighted his inexperience. In the post-match press conference, Gerrard was blunt â admitting Basel wanted to win more, but he also suggested Liverpool were too soft and too open.
In the next team meeting, Rodgers used Gerrardâs message. To the captain this was a reminder that even though he was the player and Rodgers was the manager, heâd experienced many more years of Champions League football than him.
It was that night in Basel when Gerrard realised Balotelli was incapable of lifting Liverpool like Suarez did. Though he recognised his talent and the potential to be âworld classâ he described him as âunmanageableâ because of his mentality and the people around him. He was regularly late for training and always wanting attention.
When one Liverpool player arrived at training with a fancy new iPhone, Balotelli pulled up early in the session. By the time the rest of the players had returned to the dressing room heâd already acquired the very same phone by sending one of his acquaintances to the nearest retailer. He was later found smoking a cigarette in the grounds of Melwood.
Though Liverpoolâs players didnât mind him and sometimes his antics provided light relief in the stresses of a football season, for Gerrard, he simply âdidnât train hard enough â you were always fighting a losing battle. He did too many things wrong.â
Balotelli looks across at Rodgers as he is substituted against Besiktas (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
Liverpool were seventh in the Premier League by the time they went to the Santiago Bernabeu to play Real Madrid having been overwhelmed by the same illustrious opponent at Anfield a fortnight earlier. That 3-0 defeat was preceded by a scene in the pre-match press conference where Rodgers went out of his way to introduce himself to the Spanish journalists from AS newspaper by speaking in their native tongue.
It felt like a classic Rodgers scene, where he was trying too hard to impress those who didnât really matter in his present role â or maybe those who he thought might matter to him in the future.
Liverpoolâs game in Madrid was their most glamorous European away fixture in five seasons. Yet Rodgers fielded a weakened team, reasoning that he was protecting key players for the teamâs next league game against Chelsea, which Liverpool ended up losing. While many fans believed heâd bought himself an excuse for defeat by making the decision, some players began to ask whether Liverpool were really serious about competing at the elite level of European competition.
Gerrard was one who then made his mind up that it was time for a change and two months later would announce that he was moving to Los Angeles Galaxy. Meanwhile, Raheem Sterling began to consider his own future and by the next summer he was campaigning for a transfer to Manchester City.
Ultimately, Liverpool had worked so hard to get back to the Champions League after a five-year absence and it felt like Rodgers was hoisting the white flag at the first difficult challenge.
Just five months earlier, Rodgers had almost led Liverpool to the title. Yet the questions on the terraces about his suitability were becoming louder. At Melwood, it seemed only his inner-circle of coaches were willing to speak up for him.
On his arrival, he had held a staff meeting where he told everyone in a homespun sort of way that he thought of Liverpool and Melwood as a family, much like his own. By the summer of 2013 however, he had left his wife for a travel organiser linked to the club. He would later marry her.
The story appeared in the news pages rather than the sports pages of tabloid newspapers but it impacted on his credibility both at Melwood and around Liverpool, a city where it does not take long for stories to spread and impressions to form â even if the subject of them is the Liverpool manager.
If a family really existed at Melwood, a picture was formed of a dysfunctional one.
But temporarily at least, it looked as though the tide threatening to overtake Rodgers was starting to turn. Twelve victories in an unbeaten league run between the middle of December 2014 and March 2015 heaved Liverpool back into a position where it looked like they might qualify for the Champions League. Second-placed Manchester City were only four points away by the time Manchester United came to Anfield.
Before that game, Rodgers confidently explained how he had transformed the teamâs fortunes in a period where heâd learned from a bruising in Basel by switching to a 3-4-3 formation which sometimes had Sterling as the centre-forward.
Rodgers chose his time to talk badly, though. Liverpool would win just two of their remaining eight league games after a 2-1 defeat to United, a run which included elimination in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley to Aston Villa.
Having finished second in 2013-14, Liverpool would come sixth in 2014-15 despite spending more than ÂŁ100 million. A year earlier, when Tottenham had spent a similar sum of money but also finished sixth, Rodgers had suggested that for such an outlay, âyouâd expect to be challenging for the leagueâ.
This came back to haunt him throughout a campaign which concluded in a 6-1 defeat at Stoke City â Liverpoolâs heaviest defeat since losing 7-2 to Spurs in 1963. It proved to be an ignominious end to Gerrardâs Liverpool career on a day when Sterling was dropped to the bench and unused after refusing to sign a new deal.
Rodgers began his post-match press conference by saying, âTo start with, itâs an apology. For everybody connected with Liverpool, we are all embarrassed by that today. They, the supporters, deserve an apology.â
Two days earlier, Rodgers had insisted he was â150 per centâ sure heâd remain in charge of the club. Yet Fenway Sports Group were unhappy, not only with Liverpoolâs slump but the way Rodgers was conducting himself. When he was asked in the summer of 2014 to work closely with Gerrard ahead of his move into coaching Rodgers agreed but the relationship between the pair never developed further than manager and player.
It was during this period that Rodgers asked Gerrard to text Toni Kroos, the German midfielder, and encourage him to join Liverpool from Bayern Munich rather than contact the player himself. Gerrardâs reputation and word simply meant more than that of Rodgers and his decision to join LA Galaxy was fuelled by the apparent lack of appetite to keep him. Chief executive Ian Ayre arrived late for a contract meeting with his agent Struan Marshall and that discussion lasted less than 15 minutes, with Ayre not promoting the idea of a coaching role.
The managerâs relationship with Michael Edwards was also a cause for concern. The now sporting director led the transfer committee around that time, only without the title. In the summer of 2015, Edwards pushed for the signing of Roberto Firmino while Rodgers wanted Christian Benteke, the centre-forward whoâd punished Liverpool on more than one occasion in a Villa shirt. Liverpool ended up signing both players in an unhealthy compromise.
Given Firminoâs importance to the current Liverpool team, it is fair to say that history sided with Edwards in that particular argument.
Rodgers remained until October 2015, surviving the end of season review with Mike Gordon by promising to make changes to his coaching staff. After first-team coach Mike Marsh was sacked, Rodgers abandoned his assistant Colin Pascoe who was told about his departure while he was away on holiday.
Rodgers possessed an âI showed youâ expression after beating Villa towards the end of September. But that came after a five-game winless run, which had only been ended earlier that week by a penalty shoot-out victory over League Two side Carlisle United (even though Liverpool were more or less at full-strength).
The October international break was looming when, a few days before the 225th Merseyside derby with Everton, FSG met Jurgen Klopp for the first time in New York.
Following a 1-1 draw on that warm Sunday afternoon, Rodgers went to the Liverpool supporters in the Bullens Road stand and clapped them for longer than usual. Deep down, maybe he knew what was coming. On the short drive back to Melwood, he was asked by Gordon via telephone call to meet Ayre in his office before he went home.
That was when he was told he was no longer Liverpoolâs manager and the Rodgers era ended with the club 10th in the league, two places below where they had finished before he arrived, dossier in hand, in 2012.
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Super Mario needs to sign for Celtic.
Decent read but heâs being a bit kind to Rodgers on the tactics front â Defensively, Liverpool were a shambles throughout his time - you cant blame the transfer committee for that
A lot of these athletic articles seem to be overly kind to the subject of the story.
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no American football reference either
Tbf we just couldnât sign any decent defender during that time, in 2012 when he joined no decent player were attracted to us. When he left just after buying Gomez and Clyne we were alright defensively but still youâre right, 2013/14 was particularly a defensive shambles and really cost us the title in terms of points dropped due to 2-2 and 3-3 draws throughout the year. Jon Flanagan was our best defender during the tail end of the year and we genuinely thought he was the answer! We donât know how lucky we have it rn.
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Murderer
Yeeeeeeesssssss
For the first time Iâm allowing myself to believe - to believe we might just reach that magic 40 point mark, and safety
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I never thought that. He was always muck.
Up the mighty Reds. 17 wins on the bounce
Napoli beat you