Five months ago, Brendan Rodgers was untouchable. He was perhaps the most popular man on Merseyside, in the red half at least. The only way he was going to leave Liverpool, would be if a top European club poached him away from the Reds. He was a hero, and rightly so.
His swashbuckling attacking set-up saw his Liverpool side win 11 back-to-back league games, coming just two points off the Premier League trophy after agonising late slip-ups. Nevertheless, their all-guns-blazing attacking style saw them scored 101 goals and an automatic Champions League qualification place. Rodgers received all the plaudits, and the future looked very promising indeed. After a torrid few years, things took an up-turn again for the club.
The summer of 2014 was the biggest in the club's recent history. A golden opportunity to build upon their success. Rodgers was given funding to spend big in the summer and with the attraction of Champions League football to attract the best players, Liverpool looked like they could go on to start challenging for major honours regularly once more. Unfortunately, that opportunity wasn't quite taken and within a matter of months, everything seems to have gone south.
Things are very different for the club and the Northern Irishman, just five months later, and the pressure is beginning to mount.
The Reds are in a real rut, having lost five times and won just 33% of their games this season. Once again, it seems as though Liverpool are plagued by inconsistency, just a few months after their incredible success last season. Rather alarmingly, the problems start with the same manager who guided them to success less than 12 months ago.
It seems quite strange to suggest a manager, who five months ago was the orchestrator of the best attacking team in Europe, is now at fault for his side's staggering toothless performances. The decline of Brendan Rodgers' side is almost unimaginable, particularly given that it's affecting all departments. The defence has always been a flaw for Rodgers, but now his side look flat in the final third and in the centre of the park.
The Ulsterman hasn't seen much go right for him in 2014-15 and though he's being let down by his players, but he's hardly helped himself. Over the summer, they suffered a gigantic loss in the departure of Luis Suárez, the magical little Uruguayan who spearheaded their exciting title charge. £75 million helped ease the loss, or it would have if the money was spent more wisely.
None of the summer signings can already be written off just merely two months into their Liverpool careers, but the Reds are yet see much of a return for their spending. Who is to blame? Well, unfortunately, it has to be Rodgers - the man responsible for the signature of most of their signings.
The seismic overhaul of his squad was always likely to cause a ripple effect. It was always going to take time for the squad to readjust, but it should have been far from what it has become - a phase of transition.
The current campaign was meant to be one where, though Suárez had gone, Liverpool moved on by strengthening across all their areas. Sure, they'd lost by far their best player, but they could shore up their defence and improve their strength in depth in order to maintain their quality. That, at least, was the aim.
Nine new players came in, and as a result likenesses to were drawn Tottenham Hotspur. Two years ago, they exchanged the services of Gareth Bale for a world-record £85 million fee. Those nine, Lazar Marković, Dejan Lovren, Emre Can, Alberto Moreno, Javier Manquillo, Divock Origi, Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert and Mario Balotelli totalled just short of £130 million. It was one of the most expensive spending sprees in the club's history, but it's had an adverse effect on Liverpool's form than what was intended.
In fact, the summer spending has gone down as a big a failure as Kenny Dalglish's British-inspired expenditure three years ago. So far at least, Rodgers' signings can almost all be deemed failures. Though, it has been less than surprising, Rodgers' signings underperforming have been a bit of a running theme throughout his reign. For every signing like Daniel Sturridge or Philippe Coutinho, there has been a Iago Aspas or a Nuri Sahin, or a Victor Moses, an Aly Cissokho, an Oussama Assaidi or a Fabio Borini. Of the 25 players he has brought in, and the £212 million spent in total, barely half-a-dozen can be considered successes.
As a result of those failed signings, Rodgers' side this season are hugely disjointed. The attack is as ineffective as last season's defence, whilst the midfield is continually declining.
The defence, still as leaky as it was last season, has been far from bolstered despite spending £38 million on Lovren, Moreno and the on-loan Manquillo. The belief was that they would ensure Liverpool don't concede as many goals as the previous season. On paper, Lovren, Liverpool's most expensive ever centre-back and the likes of Mamadou Sakho, Martin Skrtel and Kolo Toure would be ample enough quality at the back. Though, Rodgers has still not found the right central defensive partnership, and it's costing them dearly.
Worst of all Liverpool's problems, Rodgers' tactical and personnel decisions have worsened. Defensively, despite his new signings, Rodgers has yet to realise that Lovren and Skrtel are a chaotic concoction when combined. Their contrasting individual styles of play do not mix and the consequences are quite simply, disastrous. Yet, Rodgers has yet to react, even after Toure's solid performances recently.
The Reds are lacking a leader at the back, with Lovren failing to live up to expectations but Toure's experience is still being overlooked. The Croatian has not been the Jamie Carragher-esque presence he was expected to be when £20-million was splashed on the ex-Southampton defender.
The situation is far from helped by Simon Mignolet, who isn't vocal or commanding enough. Lovren and Skrtel are confidence stricken enough, without having a nervy goalkeeper between the sticks behind them. Centrally, the defence is a mess. It has no organisation, solidity or reliability. Their alarming rate of individual errors is concerning, given that it's difficult to discern whether Rodgers' defensive coaching is at fault, or whether it's just that the defenders are lacking in the most basic areas.
Yet, Rodgers startlingly claims his back-line is "nowhere near as bad as people make out." It suggests the fact the Northern Irishman is struggling to come to terms with reality, as do his post-match comments. "I wouldn't have done anything different at all" he claimed, after his side's three consecutive losses against Newcastle, Madrid and Chelsea within a week. Instead of confronting and conquering the issues head on, Rodgers seems to prefer the route of ushering them under the carpet and forgetting about them, regardless of how many times they continue to occur.
That, at the end of it, is the root of all Liverpool's problems. Take Rodgers' formations recently, which have been vastly ineffective. Be it the 4-2-3-1, or the 4-3-3, his tactical approach is failing, all because he's regularly fielding formations that fail to suit any of his players. The fundamental problem with Rodgers' recent set-ups, it deprives the side of their identity, particularly going forward. Last season, they thrived off having a style-of-play that everyone abided by but now none of their players seem to have any clear idea of how to play.
On paper, their players are more than capable of causing any team damage with their attacking recruits such as Adam Lallana, Phil Coutinho, Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling, Mario Balotelli and Lazar Markovic. Yet for all their attacking threat on paper, they're toothless up-front in their current system.
One up-front doesn't work, it's quite clear, but Rodgers seems to be infatuated with the idea. Having done so well to find a set-up that moulded to all his player's strengths last year, he seems to be doing the complete opposite this time and he's lost the adaptability that made them such an unpredictable team in 2013-14.
Their best formation is a diamond set-up. The same set-up that they used as they took victory after victory towards the end of last season. The three-man midfield, with Steven Gerrard deepest and Raheem Sterling supporting the famed 'SAS' partnership in the no.10 role worked wonders last season, particularly in masking their defensive failures. The formation has been as successful this season as it was last, except it's been used significantly less frequently. They started in a 4-1-2-1-2 away at Spurs this season when they emphatically won 0-3. Despite it's prosperity, Rodgers only seems to have used it sparingly in other games, such as in the final minutes against Southampton and Manchester City, meaning they've posed little attacking threat in their other fixtures.
Unsurprisingly, those quick-thinking, fast-paced counter-attacks full of fluidity and creative pass-and-move football have almost disappeared with a lack of the diamond formation. Nowadays, the Reds seem stripped of ideas as soon as they pass the half-way line. Liverpool sit 15 points off 1st place after only 11 games because of that. Rather than build upon last season's success, they seem to have hit the rewind button back to the tenure of Kenny Dalglish and that is inevitably why Rodgers is coming in for so much flak.
Rodgers' decision-making up-front is what has seen his reputation drop so suddenly. Mario Balotelli, according to some was the wrong signing. Yet, has the £16-million striker really been given a fair crack of the whip? He doesn't like playing up top alone, and he's almost always left isolated, hence the frequent off-target shots from range. Balotelli is not the type of striker to sit on the shoulder and burst away with pace to go one-on-one, like Sturridge. He suits a different style of play, which Liverpool haven't really accustomed to. Instead, they've shoehorned Balotelli into a system that may have suited Suarez last year, but won't suit his predecessor.
Furthermore, with one of Fabio Borini or Rickie Lambert alongside, Balotelli has looked much more comfortable and a considerably bigger threat. But for some reason, Rodgers insists on playing him on his own. Despite the fact the Italian has actually contributed some encouraging performances and shown improvement in his work rate, it has all been for nothing without a strike partner. Raheem Sterling is another victim of Rodgers' ill-judgjed decisions, having been shunted out wide and expected to perform even though his best performances have come in the hole.
The Northern Irishman's post-Suarez era has been undecisive and full of amateur errors. He hasn't yet sussed how to move on from the Uruguayan, who could single-handedly win games in an instant, and he hasn't adapted his side to get the most out of his men. Stubbornly, he's sticking with static formations, and it's costing him. His approach is almost always doomed to fail. Players are asked to play out of position and it helps no-one, a dreadful defence receives no help from a flat midfield, which fails to support an immobile attack. But with Sturridge returning, Rodgers at least has an opportunity to redeem himself. An opportunity to return to the diamond, to return to Liverpool's glorious attacking performances, and to restore their imperious home form. Last season they dropped just seven points at home, but this season they've already lost 10 on home turf and the fortress that Rodgers worked so hard to build is starting to fall to pieces - as is everything else Rodgers has built.
Rodgers has had troubles previously, but this test might be the biggest of Brendan Rodgers' career so far. The sooner he goes back to basics, gets Liverpool playing to their strengths and finds his best formation and best starting 11, the sooner the Reds can find their feet. Plain and simply, Rodgers needs to revert to the diamond - that way, Liverpool can try and rediscover the spark that made them so good last year.