Breaking: Liverpool sack Brendan Rodgers

iftikhar wrote:El-Cujo, like I said, you are nice guy. But at times you are needlessly mean to fellow fans just to stick to your points.

Saying he was the only one being mean! Is mean in itself!!

Hapless_Hans wrote:
You can't exclude player sales if you want to make a point how much you spent.

Chelseae, City, and Utd have all outspent you in the last 10 years, Chelsea and City to a ratio of 2:1.
That doesn't make it impossible for you to win a trophy but to demand them, "trophies are the only thing that is important", is indeed very irrational.
What would be important for you is to establish a CL spot.
Because only then you can hope to get similar traction with top players as the other clubs, which at the moment you haven't. Hence your spending on hopefuls etc.

Not saying Rodgers is better than Rafa or anything like that, but let's be real.

Yes you can. We STILL SPENT 220M. It's not the player sales went straight to FSG and wasn't reinvested. 220M went straight back into his budget. The 220M was used to get HIS players in.  

Chelsea, City and Utd outspent us because they're not dumb in the market. They buy quality players. Quality players = success. Success = you start racking in the cash.
It's irrational for a football club to demand trophies? Are you kidding me? Do football clubs not play football to win silverware?
Establishing a CL spot is important, yes. But I highly doubt you can say that we did that by backing what we did in the summer; it was the total opposite ffs. All our "hopefuls" could have been brought in WITHOUT CL.

iftikhar wrote:El-Cujo, like I said, you are nice guy. But at times you are needlessly mean to fellow fans just to stick to your points.

I don't think it's fair to just call me out. Anything 'mean' I post is generally a poor reaction to things that have already been directed at me multiple times. I've since ignored Red Alert since I've tried to make it a habit not to argue with 14 year olds on the internet, but I can see where you're coming from and it's not my intention to be 'mean'. Sorry.

Hapless_Hans wrote:You can't exclude player sales if you want to make a point how much you spent.

Chelseae, City, and Utd have all outspent you in the last 10 years, Chelsea and City to a ratio of 2:1.
That doesn't make it impossible for you to win a trophy but to demand them, "trophies are the only thing that is important", is indeed very irrational.
What would be important for you is to establish a CL spot.
Because only then you can hope to get similar traction with top players as the other clubs, which at the moment you haven't. Hence your spending on hopefuls etc.

Not saying Rodgers is better than Rafa or anything like that, but let's be real.

I agree with all of this. The thing is that it's not just as simple as saying 'spend smarter' 'get elite players' blah blah blah. Our team has a wage structure, supposedly, that they won't break. Not only are we not willing to pay players as much to play here as clubs like Chelsea, United, City or even Arsenal but we're not as attractive a destination because we haven't been a consistent CL team since 2009.

Personally I've seen progress in this team since Rodgers has taken over. He has improved our position in the standings every year he's been our manager (first year from 8th to 7th and second year from 7th to 2nd). Now obviously that's not going to happen again this year having lost Suarez, and having Sturridge out for most of the season as well. He definitely has room to improve in certain areas (mostly in the transfer department, but again that's a smoky area given he doesn't have full control over the transfers) but seeing as a) we don't attract top tier players and b) we haven't been very good for a while now I'm pretty happy with his progress. He's in his third year as manager and I think there's a good chance he'll grab a trophy, and continue putting this team on the path to being a sustainable, consistent top 4 club.

I wish I was 14 again. Maybe if I was 14 I'd be as optimistic as you are. In reality, we're shat.

I've had it. Rodgers out. That's the boat I'm in now.

How come most of us fans can see that tactical mistakes that he just keeps on making? Gerrard - Lucas in CM, Henderson pushed out wide again. Earlier in the season, how come most of us fans realize that we're repeatedly hitting our head against the well with the 4-3-3 with the wrong XI to play it? How come most of us fans wouldn't have started Henderson at LAM and Gerrard at CAM in the Basel game when we had Coutinho and Lallana on the bench? How come our professional football manager can be so clueless?

And how come most of us fans were going "woah, what is this, signing three Southampton players with our huge transfer kit?". How come a manager who in 2.5 seasons and in 3 summer transfer windows with over £200m to spend ends up with a squad that has one injury-prone proven goal scorer in it and after that has to play a 20-yo winger/AM as his best striking option? How is it possible that our highest-scorer in the league - for a club who finished 2nd last season - is a 34-yo penalty taker who, as things stand, isn't even contracted to the club beyond this season?

How come we can be lacking direction so badly under a manager who has had both time and money to spend?

Today we were lucky not to lose at home to the worst side in the league. Yet given how badly our first half of the season went, this was totally the kind of game we had to win.

I've had it. I've lost faith in Rodgers. I want him out.

Okay, so how many of us have actually called for his head?

Myself, Arthur, and Albert?

I know Mr-r, Hank, and Heil have all been frustrated with him. Don't remember if they actually called for his head though. Did you guys? I know Heil said he will make up his mind after December  

Ifthi and Fahim have kept it on the down low regarding this. What do you guys think?

EL Cujo I know is the only massive supporter of him still.

Don't know where Sep and Buster stand now regarding this.

And of course RO, Stev, BG, ICS have all disappeared on us during the hard times and so did EE but he did call him fraud a bunch of times before he disappeared.

I've been massively frustrated with him, but haven't called for his head yet, at a bare minimum he deserves till the end of the season.

I'd keep him only if we finish in the top 5 or win the EL.

mr-r34 wrote:I've been massively frustrated with him, but haven't called for his head yet, at a bare minimum he deserves till the end of the season.

I really don't see the point in firing him at this point. I don't see any available manager with the required tactical & leadership skills to turn around our season.

Biggest problem with Rodgers is, he makes it impossible to support him. I'm pretty certain all (yes, ALL) of us would have been supporting him still, if he made the right decisions. Decisions that are exclusive to him.

I don't think any (yeah, ANY) of us would called for his sack at the end of the season, even if we finished beyond T4 if he just made the team selections, substitutions and defensive planning/training right.

May be, just may be, our squad isn't good enough due to elements beyond his power (transfer, injury). But he could have optimized the situation by making the right choices. But as things stands now, he simply made it worse.

I will not (NEVER) accept the notion that our squad isn't good enough for getting more than 18 points against Villa, WBA, QPR, Hull, Swansea x2, NUFC, Palace, Stoke, Leicester x2, Sunderland, Burnley. This is where the managerial acumen should have come into play.

Good post ifthi, though I feel you kind of avoided giving a straight answer to the question

For me it's pretty simple I ain't gonna judge till the end of the season. Cause i still feel his system hasn't synced in entirely with the new squad. And with Stevie leaving and a change of manager too, next season just might catastrophic effects.

But for now i am backing him. Not blindly but just because it makes more sense for NOW.

Good post there, Ifty.

And I agree with it, I'd have a lot more sympathy for Rodgers if, even when not getting results, I looked at his decisions and thought "he's doing the right thing". But it's been way too many times now when I simply don't think he's making the right decisions and in general showing enough know-how and understanding of managing a top football club. Whether it's the transfer business or tactics or team selections or man-management, I've just lost faith in him.

Don't get me wrong, I still hope we win every single one of our games this season and that I get proven wrong by him - I'm not at that Mole-when-Pardew-at-Newcastle stage where I actually would prefer a losing run so that the manager would get canned. But until Rodgers demonstrates better than so far that he is good enough for our club, until then I'm now calling for his head.

I don't get it. Did he not show enough when he changed, tweaked tactics and groomed players to get Liverpool to 2nd place in the PL when they had no business being there? He took the team from 8th when he took over (and in a bit of turmoil) to 7th, and then challenged for the title with an amazing run finishing ahead of teams outspending us by quite a bit. People attribute this to Suarez and Sturridge carrying us, but do you really think they would have looked nearly as good without Rodgers' tutelage and system? No, it was mutually beneficial for them. Rodgers had the players and he set up the team to make use of those players and be successful.

Now Rodgers is learning to adapt with different players, a declining talisman, and transfers that at least some of which he wasn't exactly keen on. I'm not saying he's a transfer wizard, but truthfully how many transfers have even been bad this summer? Lallana and Can look great. Lovren has had good and bad games, but was a highly lauded player last season and still young so there's time to give there. Markovic, Origi, Moreno and Manquillo are all young showing a lot of promise (I don't know if we'll hold on to Manquillo). The only real 'duds' are Lambert (a whole 3m for that guy, who was a feel good story) and Balotelli who from most accounts was forced onto Rodgers by the board when there were no 'better' striker options available. Could he have made some better buys? Probably, but it's not like these were horrible and the really top level players that we wanted weren't interested in coming to Liverpool.

I wouldn't say I'm a huge supporter of his necessarily. I'm happy with the success, style of play, and the way some of our players have flourished under Rodgers. I like that he has a very big interest and focus on youth development because we don't have the money or attractiveness as a club at the moment to compete with the 'top dogs' any other way right now. I like his philosophy and that he's young and has the chance to learn a lot. I would never put him before the club though. There are a lot of things I'm not happy about which have gone on this year, but realistically speaking he's only been in charge for just over 2 years and he's seen quite a bit of exciting football and success in that span. Some things happened that were out of his hands (Suarez leaving, Sturridge getting injured, Balotelli flopping and being forced on him, etc.) and now he's trying to clean up that mess. Does he have the ability to? We'll see. I would still rather give him this season regardless, and see how he does into the beginning of next season before making any rash decisions especially since the players seem to hold him in pretty high regard.

But we live in an age of 'what have you done for me lately' in the most literal sense. So what he's done up to this point doesn't seem to matter.

The main question is, whom do we replace him with at this point of time ? I am sure some of you have answers and some of you dont have them probably. I would hate to say the same excuse again "new style" "adjusting" "give him some time" "blah...blah".

Better give him till the end of the season and lets see where we go. So I am with Nish

HEIL MEIN REDS wrote:The main question is, whom do we replace him with at this point of time ? I am sure some of you have answers and some of you dont have them probably. I would hate to say the same excuse again "new style" "adjusting" "give him some time" "blah...blah".

Better give him till the end of the season and lets see where we go. So I am with Nish

As most of us know it ain't really possible to replace him LIKE for LIKE but i believe to certain extents we have players who can cover those roles he occupies in time. For example the forward positions he sometimes covered have already been to some extent been answered for. I sort of feel Can has the mold to turn to something close to what he did in the CDM position. However, those Stevie G specials in runs & set pieces . . . . those are totally different discussions altogether. I would have to say there are not many in the world to do so, actually there fewer than our 2-3

Fahim89 wrote:As most of us know it ain't really possible to replace him LIKE for LIKE but i believe to certain extents we have players who can cover those roles he occupies in time. For example the forward positions he sometimes covered have already been to some extent been answered for. I sort of feel Can has the mold to turn to something close to what he did in the CDM position. However, those Stevie G specials in runs & set pieces . . . . those are totally different discussions altogether. I would have to say there are not many in the world to do so, actually there fewer than our 2-3

wrong thread

iftikhar wrote:

Fahim89 wrote:As most of us know it ain't really possible to replace him LIKE for LIKE but i believe to certain extents we have players who can cover those roles he occupies in time. For example the forward positions he sometimes covered have already been to some extent been answered for. I sort of feel Can has the mold to turn to something close to what he did in the CDM position. However, those Stevie G specials in runs & set pieces . . . . those are totally different discussions altogether. I would have to say there are not many in the world to do so, actually there fewer than our 2-3

wrong thread

hahaha my bad i'm stuck with replacing Stevie

Gerrard seems to hold Rogers in the same high regard that Suarez and most other players on the team do:

I had an idea it was going to come at some time - I'm a human, not a robot. I'm not 24. I wish I was 24, I wish I'd met Brendan when I was 24 because I think I'd be sitting here talking about a lot of titles that we'd won together. The reality is, Brendan came into this club when I was 32 years of age and it's a shame that relationship didn't start 10 years ago. I had an idea the conversation was going to come at some time, but it was a painful conversation to have and that was the key moment - along with other things over the last six to 12 months, but that was the conversation. That was the key one.

Something else worth noting, if anyone cares to look for positivity out of this season, is that since Rodgers has been manager the team has had much better second halves than first halves under him.

12/13: First 19 games were 6-7-6 (25 pts) and second 19 were 10-6-3 (36 pts).
13/14: First 19 games were 11-3-5 (36 pts) and second 19 were 15-3-1 (48 pts).
14/15: First 19 games were 8-4-7 (28 pts).

First season was 11 points better (44%), second season saw 12 points better (33%) and now in the third season maybe we'll see 13 points better? 41 points would see us finish with 69 points which would not be top 4 in the past, but given how Arsenal and United have struggled this season (though Southampton is a wild card) it could put us there this season.

The stats are good but the only hope is ManUtd tumbling away because of LVG fever otherwise I dont see Arsenal losing so many points, they will surely lose games against so called big clubs but they will keep getting points against lower sides. The next club is Southampton, I still expect them to eventually drop out of top 4.

Well, to be fair, we're only 4 points behind Arsenal and 5 points behind United. There's no reason we can't make up that difference with a strong second half especially with games against both of them still to play.

I genuinely want Rodgers at Chelsea next season after we win the fourple and Mourinho leaves. He can take Sterling with him as well.

dont tell that to RA, he will jump to the fantasy of Rodgers and Mourinho swap

One wins trophies, the others the apprentice that refuses to learn. lmao

^ One is 10 years older than the other.