Brendan Rodgers

Liverpool prosper from flexible philosophy of Brendan Rodgers
It was José Mourinho who branded Arsène Wenger a "specialist in failure" but Brendan Rodgers' actions could give those words more clout. Despite not benefitting from the "financial doping" that Wenger says falsifies the Premier League title race, Rodgers, in only his second full season at Anfield, has guided Liverpool into a position to do what Wenger has been trying and failing to achieve for the past 10 years: win the league with a swagger.

The purpose of the comparison with Wenger is not to aim a gratuitous kick at the Frenchman but rather to acclaim a manager who has an equally strong commitment to playing attractive football but has applied it with greater intelligence.

Liverpool may ultimately fall short of top spot this season and could even finish below Arsenal but the progress made by the club in the past year bears testament to the methods of a manager with whom the Merseyside club can look forward to an exciting future.

The rise of Liverpool from seventh place last season to title challengers at the sharp end of this one is often presented as a triumph of Rodgers' master plan. That is not quite right. Yes, the 41-year-old has a philosophy but things have not panned out precisely as he foresaw and perhaps the most admirable aspect of his work in the past year has been the extent to which he has adapted to circumstances, opponents and his own mistakes, all while retaining a clear identity.

Where Arsenal are constrained by Wenger's dogmatism, Liverpool have prospered from Rodgers' flexibility.

The former Swansea City manager was quick to realise that "the right way" is the wrong way if it does not work. And he has then found the right way – or rather the right ways, since one of the hallmarks of Liverpool this season has been the frequency with which they have changed formations or personnel from game to game or within games, using slightly different means to reach the same end.

The most obvious quality that Rodgers has added to Liverpool this season is penetration. This season they have scored 25 more goals than they had done at the same stage last term, despite averaging 3% less possession per match: they have attacked with greater speed, unhinging defences with devastating movement and technique; players' imagination flourishing in space wrought by the manager's design. Opponents never quite know what shape Liverpool will start with.

He introduced a three-man defence to get Luis Suárez and Daniel Sturridge firing together when the Uruguayan returned from the ban that ruled him out of the first five matches, and since then Liverpool have also lined up in 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1 and 4-4-2.

At Southampton at the start of this month Liverpool began with a diamond in midfield for the first time this season and took an early lead. Southampton then threatened to equalise so Rodgers switched to 4-3-3 and regained the initiative, Liverpool running out 3-0 winners. He then redeployed the diamond at Old Trafford and cruised to another 3-0 win.

In January Liverpool were trailing 2-0 at home to Aston Villa before Rodgers sacrificed his playmaker, Philippe Coutinho, and brought on Lucas Leiva to lay the platform for a fightback to 2-2. "For me the system is irrelevant," Rodgers said after that. "But the style will always be maintained, to control and dominate games."

Rodgers is derided for spouting David Brent-style soundbites but in fact his utterances are another manifestation of his efficiency. He condenses his thought to easily digested units. His tinkering is born of the same efficiency. He is not a self-regarding manager who changes for the sake of it. Liverpool, indeed, have made fewer substitutions (71) than any other team in the league this season.

Rodgers's mid-game changes tend to work but, with a limited squad that was not reinforced in January, he makes them only when necessary – and that is not very often because his original game plan is usually the right one, as shown by Liverpool's superb first-half record, the best in the league.

Further evidence of the clarity of Rodgers's vision and communication is the extent to which individual players have improved under him to better serve the collective. His coaching works. Sturridge and Jordan Henderson have consistently shown the potential that only flickered under others.

So few people, meanwhile, saw the potential in Jon Flanagan that what distinguished him in the Liverpool reserves was that no lower league clubs sought him on loan, yet the 21-year-old has filled in at left-back with gusto in recent months. Flanagan has won the same number of tackles as Southampton's new England international left-back Luke Shaw has this season, despite playing in only half as many matches.

The list of player improvements goes on – and it has been needed because, although they have been spared a European expedition this season, Liverpool have still had to work around the absences of key players, with Suárez banned for the first five league matches, Sturridge and Coutinho enduring significant injury lay-offs and full-backs falling like dominoes.

Rodgers has had to improvise and ensure his players do so as well. They have usually obliged. Raheem Sterling has evolved from a rapid and tricky winger into a rapid and tricky winger with the poise and precision to function also as a bona fide playmaker, diminishing the dependency on Coutinho.

Joe Allen has redefined his game to re-emerge from the sidelines in recent weeks – the midfielder, a decaffeinated additive last term, has given the side real pep by nearly doubling the number of tackles he makes per match (from 2.53 to 4.42) this season to overtake the figures of Liverpool's most prolific tackler last season (Lucas, 4.33), thereby softening the impact of the loss of Lucas to injury.

And it is not only young players whom Rodgers has nurtured: Martin Skrtel seemed destined for the Anfield exit but has become the club's most dependable centre-back, which is just as well as the £16m signing Mamadou Sakho has been out injured for long periods. And, of course, Steven Gerrard has performed his new deep-lying midfield role with a considered effectiveness that is unlikely to have come to him naturally.

Not everything is rosy in the garden. The defence retains a brittleness that suggests there is only so much improvement even a top coach such as Rodgers can wring from some players and further investment in the summer will be required.

And Rodgers's investment record is not spotless, as Iago Aspas and Luis Alberto, for instance, have yet to justify the millions spent on them, although giving up on them now would be premature.

For Rodgers has restored hope to Liverpool through skill, imagination and realism.

Ian Herbert Author Biography

Friday 28 March 2014


The observation felt like a David Brentism at the time, confirming some of the early doubts that the immensely cynical world of elite football, always looking out for bull****, had for a rising star who had maybe swallowed one management manual too many.


“It’s not just about training players, it’s about educating players. You train dogs,” Brendan Rodgers said in the 2012 Being:Liverpool documentary, which was one of the club’s less bright ideas. “Player plus environment equals behaviour,” he added, in another of the more excruciating soundbites from the series.

Those observations have a rather different ring about them now. As we reach the denouement of a Premier League season dominated by David Moyes’ plaintive declarations that his inheritance is not all it was cracked up to be, it did not entirely escape attention that the Liverpool starting XI which pummelled Manchester United at Old Trafford 13 days ago included eight players Rodgers had taken on from his predecessor, Kenny Dalglish.

Rodgers said on day one – in his quintessential way – exactly what Moyes has been insisting about the United squad he adopted. “I need to align the playing group with the supporters. There is an imbalance at the minute,” were his words when he was presented to the world as Liverpool manager 21 months ago, adroitly grafting on to his assessment of his players a compliment to the fans which revealed an immediate intuition as to what makes them tick.

By a combination of tactical prowess and motivational power, Rodgers has equipped Liverpool with the best collective mentality in the Premier League this season and made good on what he inherited. His success – and Liverpool’s position a point off the Premier League summit – damns Moyes’ struggles all the more.

There are question marks about Rodgers’ transfer market activity. Iago Aspas, Aly Cissokho, Luis Alberto and Mamadou Sakho cost more than £37m between them and have yet to make much impact. But Steven Gerrard’s observations about Rodgers’ modus operandi were far more significant than the customary post-match propaganda, when he spoke after the game at Old Trafford.

“He manages every single player,” Gerrard said. “He knows we have different characters in the dressing room. His one-to-one management is the best I have known. He makes you go out on to the pitch feeling a million dollars, full of confidence and belief.”

This is precisely the Brendan Rodgers who his former charges will talk about to anyone who cares to listen. A half-hour in Garry Monk’s company a year or so ago was intended to be a discussion of Michael Laudrup’s Swansea but Monk wanted to linger on the memory of Rodgers instead. “We loved him to death,” Monk told me, describing how the Northern Irishman would make it his business to know what every player was into, outside of football – “whether it’s golf, movies, cars or something like that, he will tap into that. Not in a devious way. When you’ve got that sort of understanding with someone, you want to do your best.”

But this level of accommodation with the players comes – as the Liverpool squad will now admit – with an honesty bordering on ruthlessness when needs be. “In the canteen, they would all go up to him, smiling and laughing,” says another witness to Rodgers’ years at Swansea. “But he expected them to be able to take it when he told them they were not good enough. He would not pull punches.” It is this blunt honesty that Monk, since succeeding Laudrup at Swansea, has declared to be the most important management lesson he has taken from Rodgers.

The Liverpool manager confirms this today, in his discussion below of how his dismissal at Reading in 2009 changed his mindset. He returned to the game from that – which coincided with the sudden death from a heart attack of his 53-year-old mother Christina, with whom he spoke every day – intent that players might get a second chance, but not a fourth or fifth. Chris Wathan, the south Wales-based Western Mail journalist who knows him as well as any, will never forget the intensity with which Rodgers always spoke of this time – “one of the most learned periods in my life”.

Like so many of the managers who have not made the grade as a player, Rodgers is absorbed with detail in a way which suggests that he knows he must make up with intelligence what he lacks in experience. He was talented enough as a young player in Ballymena, Co Antrim, to be spotted, early in the Alex Ferguson era, by Manchester United scout Eddie Coulter, who more recently discovered Jonny Evans. Rodgers’ appearances at schoolboy level for United – alongside a far superior compatriot and friend Adrian Doherty, whose premature death at 26 is one of football’s many stories of tragically unfulfilled promise – are relatively unknown. A congenital knee weakness meant he knew he would be no more than a journeyman, so Rodgers set a course through youth management at Reading before Jose Mourinho hired him at Chelsea.

Some say the years in junior football honed his emotional intelligence, as he inveigled his way into the affections of families whose sons he wanted to sign. It was also a period which developed his interest in improving and rehabilitating players, which has been fundamental to the last two years at Liverpool. The Manchester United boardroom is acutely aware – and impressed – with Rodgers’ recasting of Gerrard as a regista (deep-lying playmaker) this season and, though Mark Gower of Charlton Athletic is not exactly in the Gerrard mould, he, too, attests to Rodgers’ capacity to recast a player.

Gower was a failing Swansea winger – on a road to nowhere, years after Tottenham had let him go – when Rodgers’ arrival at the Liberty Stadium repositioned him at the base of the side’s midfield. Gower was shocked to hear Rodgers referring to Claude Makélélé’s equivalent switch from the wing, as a 26-year-old, in a press conference discussion of his own positional change. Gower, just like Gerrard, felt “a million dollars”. He never looked back.

Rodgers rescued others at Swansea, where they liked to say he would take on “birds with broken wings”. Few thought Wayne Routledge, another Tottenham reject, had much of a prayer. Rodgers restored him.

“He’s like a teacher,” said Liverpool’s Jon Flanagan. “You listen. If you take his advice on board and give everything, the opportunity will come. But every day, it has to be 100 per cent. You have to take it seriously.”

There has been serendipity about Flanagan’s emergence at Anfield this season because Rodgers would have loaned the defender out if he could only have found him a club. But the 21-year-old is testament to Rodgers’ disinclination to close his mind to a player. Jordan Henderson, whose degree of improvement has also surprised some of Roy Hodgson’s England scouting team, is another who Rodgers was willing to wait to be proved wrong about. Joe Allen, in whom he invested £15m, is also displaying signs of Liverpool class at last.

Waiting and hoping are not easy at Liverpool, a club of very great expectations, which has made Rodgers’ assiduous work on his relationship with supporters another sophisticated triumph. His casual reference at his first press conference to becoming the club’s second Northern Irish manager – as if the name of John McKenna, Liverpool’s first, should be assumed knowledge – was deft. His exhortation to the fans to lift their support levels for Wednesday’s match against Sunderland, which created scenes reminiscent of the 1980s glory nights, had echoes of his call to supporters to go dressed as Elvis to Swansea’s last game of their first Premier League campaign. He had stored away the fact that one commentator had suggested that “The King” was more likely to be seen on the Mumbles than Swansea survive that season. They duly broke the record for the highest number of Elvis impersonators standing in one place.

“We were brought up not with the silver spoon, but with the silver shovel,” Rodgers told that documentary of his upbringing as the eldest of five brothers in working-class Carnlough, and everyone laughed at the sound bite. But he has dug Liverpool into the position they occupy this weekend. Few titles would be more attributable to one man than this one, if Liverpool can hold out and take it.

Great read

As he prepares his Liverpool side for their final game of an unforgettable season, Brendan Rodgers has allowed a moment of reflection on the campaign in between training his thoughts on what lies in the future.
The Northern Irishman's team host Newcastle United at Anfield on Sunday as the Barclays Premier League concludes for 2013-14, with a mathematical possibility of actually lifting the championship trophy.
A 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace earlier this week allowed rivals Manchester City to move into the driving seat just days before the denouement, meaning victory over the Magpies is the absolute minimum for Rodgers and his players.
However the last 90 minutes unfold, though, the Reds have ensured they will compete in the Champions League next season and produced a series of displays which will take permanent residence in the club's history books.
Rodgers was therefore in positive humour as he spoke to radio station talkSPORT on Friday morning, pointing to the lessons learned during the past nine months and outlining the next stage of development for his squad.

On the 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace...

I've watched it three times since and when you analyse it, you just cannot envisage the result being what it is. It's incredible. Fair play to Crystal Palace, they came back, but we let them into the game. The goal that we conceded for 3-1 was a goal that you would never concede at 0-0; maybe there was a lapse in concentration where you think the game is won. The message at half-time was just to win the game. People look at it and think we were going all out to try to score a load of goals - it was near impossible to get that amount of goals back. But because we got the two goals early on in the second half, it gave the players momentum and confidence to keep going. We'll learn from it. Away from home, we've conceded too many goals. At home, our record of wins and goals conceded is up there. So we know the areas that we need to be better in and we'll certainly be that next year.

On Sunday's season finale...

I have been delighted with the progress we have made here; the players have been absolutely outstanding. In terms of where we were at last year, we've improved from last January and continued with that consistency. We'll keep going right until the end of this season, knowing that we've improved a great deal, and look to continue our improvement into next season. In terms of Sunday, all we can do is win our own game, and send the supporters away happy - they have been brilliant for us this year. I think we have seen the true power of the Liverpool supporters this season. The team has been fantastic and they have shared in that. All we can do is win the game. If we win our game and the result goes against us, we'll end up finishing second - that shows how much we've progressed and we've actually pushed them all the way to the very end. That's something we'll draw strength from.

On his plans for next season...

We will strengthen next year; we will add players to our group and our younger players will have a year's experience. Steven Gerrard, for everything that he has won, this is probably his first real title run-in at 33 years of age and it's absolutely amazing. The level that he has played at this year has been incredible. For him, me and the rest of the team, we'll finish the season strongly. The young players have been brilliant and they will have gained from this experience. You need guys like Steven Gerrard, Luis Suarez and Daniel Agger, those types that the young players can learn from - that's important for them. There's no doubt that we need depth in our squad. We move into the Champions League next season and there are going to be a lot of games for us. It's always about players that have the technical capacity to play how we want to play, players with personality and players that are hungry. Those will be the three key ingredients for the players coming in.

On the support from the fans…

I think it's great for football that we're back up there challenging, because you really see in the supporters that passion. It has been incredible. In the last few home games, they have obviously been willing us on and the streets have been lined - it took me back to years ago watching Liverpool, with the supporters, the flags and the passion that they had. That's also been a trademark of this season, the Liverpool supporters showing their strength. Right around the world, they have given us huge support and that's what really pushes us on.