Red Alert wrote:Rafa:

-Recorded his 50th league win in just 93 games – a record bettered by only 2 Liverpool managers of the previous 57 years, Dalglish and Shankly.

-Rafa Benitez won 81 of his first 150 league games in charge. Only Kenny Dalglish (87) won more as Liverpool manager.

-Recorded his 100th league win as manager in his 181st game. It was the 3rd quickest ever by a Liverpool manager and 50 games faster than Alex Ferguson.

He's also had to rebuild Liverpool, too. Yeah, he wasn't 8th but he didn't exactly inherit the best team either. Both managers had to rebuild. Rodgers inherited a team in a better position off the pitch too. Again, FSG have been huge to Brendan with their generous support both on and off the pitch, as well as in the market; Benitez didn't have that under Moores (imagine if he sold the club to the Sheikh...........what if eh) or G+H.  

Again, Rodgers has done well in his last 18 months here, but let's not kid ourselves and compare him to Rafa to make him look like the better manager out of the two.

The thing is, it's not just about winning.

It's how we're winning.

I'm 33. I've been supporting Liverpool since I was 5. I fell for the Reds properly when Barnes was signed. The first team I truly saw was Kenny's 87-91 vintage.

So basically, you can say I got my footballing education from that side. The triangles, the short passing, Beardsley dropping off the striker, Barnes' magnificent wing play, the late runs into the box from midfield by Mcmahon and Houghton, the comeback wins, the never say die attitude.

That was the Liverpool I fell in love with. The style of play that got me hooked. Since then, every Liverpool side I've watched has always been compared to that team for me. Look at my first few posts on this forum 9 years ago or so and you'll see me moaning (as ever) of our transfer market failings. You'll see me begging for a Pablo Aimar (i.e. a Beardsley type). For flair. For more creativity.

For close to 15 years (since 97 basically. Just after my desire for a defensive midfielder was sated by Paul Ince...), I've been begging Liverpool bosses to buy that sort of player. The type that can unlock tight defenses. That can thread a through ball through an eye of a needle. That can terrify defenders with pace and guile, creativity and flair. And year after year, I had to see the likes of Overmars, Pires, Ronaldo and Modric being snapped up by other teams while we signed the likes of Leonhardsen, Barmby, Kuyt and Jovanovic: hard workers, first and foremost. Flair and trickery sacrificed for keeping the shape and defensive solidity.

Why? Because since Evans decided he needed more workers in the side after the debacle of Spring 1997, every manager we've had has valued workers over flair players.

Houllier brought success but he also brought some of the most mind numbingly boring football I've ever seen. He had the closest thing to Peter Beardsley in modern football (Number 37) and used him like he was John Fashanu.

Rafa brought success, amazing nights and for a few months some wonderful attacking play, but he also brought a sometimes spirit crushing refusal to take risks, to go for broke, to sacrifice the system for more creativity. He spent fortunes on every position except attacking midfield. He was all about compactness, the shape, control.

Hodgson was Hodgson and Kenny was hamstrung from the very start with a 35m pounds absolute *bleep* up of a signing who was so limited he required us to go spend more fortunes on limited players to bring the best out of his limited skill set. We all, for a couple of lovely months in Spring 2011 saw a version of a modern Liverpool which mirrored the 87-91 vintage. But then, it was gone with the need to limit our attacking play with our limited record signing.

In Brendan Rodgers, we have a man who puts flair before anything else. We have a man who's first thought is attack. Whose every thought is about scoring goals. It's about winning football matches. Who will not hesitate to go for broke if we're drawing, who wants us to play exactly like the 87-91 vintage did. And, Jesus Christ, he's very close to making it happen.

Philippe Coutinho is exactly the type of player that I've been begging us to sign since Mcmanaman left in 1999. He's the Peter Beardsley we've been crying out for years. He's a player who is full of flair, creativity, vision and skill. And Rodgers adores him, absolutely swears by him. Raheem Sterling is the closest thing (but still miles away) from a John Barnes for 2 decades. Full of flair, pace, trickery and fight. And he's 19. Rodgers adores, has played him since he was 17, has never wavered in his support for him.

We have the best player I've ever seen in a Liverpool shirt in my life in Luis Suarez. A man for which the word flair is not enough. And we have Daniel Sturridge, a man who is scoring goals faster than ANY Liverpool striker in modern Liverpool history.

This isn't about Rodgers getting lucky. This isn't about Lambert being better. This shit did not just happen. It was Rodgers who had the balls to play Sterling (even at 17 years of age). It was Rodgers who went out and bought Coutinho when most of our previous managers would have had not touched him with a barge pole. It is Rodgers who is getting Sturridge to look like the English Thierry Henry. And it is Rodgers that is getting Luis Suarez to break goalscoring record after goal scoring record.

For those who know me, you'll know how adamant I was from the start that the Carroll - Suarez partnership was doomed to fail. I was going nuts at how we were wasting Suarez's talent, using him like Jermaine Defoe, when he was so much better than that. I argued endlessly on here that we needed to surround him with movement, with pace and with intelligent footballers. Well Rodgers came in, sent Carroll packing , backed himself, backed Luis and now look. We have 2 strikers that have more than 1 goals a start this season in the league. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE. BY ANYONE.

It's because of all of this that I look at Rodgers and give him my full support. People can't just brush off what's been happening this season (and indeed since last Jan) as luck or anything else. It's genius. We've beaten teams by 4 goals or more 5 times this season. Do you know how many times Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs and United have done that combined? ZERO. Not once. Everton? 1 time. City? 4 times- and they have had 5 years or so to Billion pounds up their squad.

You know what… *bleep* our rivals. Compare us to our previous manager. We’ve beaten teams by 4 goals or more in the league 10 times in Rodgers' 64 league games: the same number of times as in Houllier's 6 seasons, 2 less than in Evans' 5 seasons, and 5 less than in Rafa's 6 seasons. This guy has barely managed us for a season and a half!

I've never seen (not even the 87-91 team) Liverpool absolutely destroy the teams around us. We went from breaking records in a bad way to breaking records in a good way, almost in the blink of an eye. The likes of Wolves, Fulham, Spurs, West Brom etc etc... all came to Anfield from 2010 to 2012 and won for the first time in decades. Now? We've gotten our biggest Derby win since 1982. We've had our biggest win at Spurs in our history. We matched our record for goals scored against Arsenal in our history.

This kind of shit you don't just brush off. We're DESTROYING these teams. 5-0. 4-0. 5-1. And we're missing penalties, hitting posts, missing chances while we're doing it. Who from our rivals are doing this? Which Liverpool teams from the last 20 odd years have done this?
You don't just call this shit luck, or talk about Paul Lambert. You *bleep* respect it.

I could go on for ages about what Rodgers' has done right: playing the kids (name me one manager we've had in recent history who would have put Suso on at half time for his league debut vs United? Or sent in Texeira for his debut with 8 minutes to go in a game we desperately needed to win?), attacking substitutions ( putting on a second striker vs Stoke when 3-2 up- in complete contrast to what most of our recent bosses would have done), playing the media brightly and in a non confrontational manner…

And you know what… It’s maybe the last point that’s the issue for some as well as me. Because, while I absolutely adore Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool and almost everything he’s done so far, I still struggle to warm to Brendan Rodgers the man. I still call him Rodgers for example, like I called Gerard- Houllier- after a certain time. Why? Maybe it’s because it’s his love in with the media. Maybe it’s because of little things like calling Howard Webb “Howard” after THAT shambles on Sunday. Maybe it’s because I’m still not certain this bloke is one of us, like Kenny was, like Rafa was. Maybe it’s because, as Tony Evans rightly says, we haven’t actually achieved anything yet.

But Brendan Rodgers the manager? Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool? They make me look at my telly (sorry locals; Out of Towner here) with amazement. They make me see things I haven’t seen for decades, dream things I haven’t dare to dream, feel things I haven’t felt for years.

They make this 33 year old man stay up till 4am in the morning with the adrenaline still racing after watching a master class of an attacking performance; watching replay after replay, full match after full match.

They make me feel like a 7 year old again. And that’s all that counts.

We could go on a bad run sure. But that won’t erase what we’ve done since January 2013. I think people have forgotten how bleak it was before that. Finishing 7th, 6th and 8th. Losing 3-1 in a fortnight or so to Villa and Stoke. Looking like we had absolutely *bleep* all to play for. Couldn’t score a penalty, let alone a goal, if our lives depended on it. Losing game after game against awful sides at Anfield.

From that to 4 points off the top with 12 games to go and 66 goals scored in 26 games played. In barely 13 months. Rate Lambert all you want but for Christ’s sake, have some respect. Even rival fans (go to Red Café if you don’t believe me) sing Rodgers’ praises.

Leave your bitterness to one side and just enjoy this incredibly exciting team we have which is making us dream like we haven’t dreamed for eons.

mr-r34 wrote:It was just a god dam comparison of what is the reality of their starts as a manager of Liverpool, it hardly can be seen as a indication as to who's a better manager. Everybody know's what rafa has done for us, all it shows to me is that Rodgers could emulate or surpass him potentially in the future. Took too much out of it RA.

Art Morte wrote:Lambert's still above us in the table

Art Morte wrote:Lambert's still above us in the table