"I know him (Brendan Rodgers) well enough…" Newcastle manager Alan Pardew said prior to their meeting at St. James’ Park with Liverpool. With lots of Liverpool fans becoming disillusioned with Rodgers and his team selection and tactics this season, they largely agreed. But going into that game, even the most frustrated fan thought he knew his manager well enough to think that the Ulsterman would alter his tactics. The match came on the heels of the Reds’ triumph over Swansea City in the Capital One Cup, one of the better performances of an otherwise drab and sorry season. The passing and movement was very good but the penetration only came when Mario Balotelli joined Fabio Borini in attac late onk. Having praised the output profusely, the expectation was that Brendan was going to return to the diamond formation and mimic those final minutes for the full 90 against the Magpies. It wasn’t to be. Pardew proved that perhaps he knew him more than the Liverpool fans, as they took a narrow 1-0 win, but completely outplayed a poor Liverpool side.
The next Premier League came, and Rodgers' comments continued. “I am not dogmatic. I have shown in my time here we have played in various systems: possessions and fast football, counter-attacking football” Rodgers said prior to the Crystal Palace match. It is not only in tactics LFC fans may find their manager unrecognizable from last season but some of his words are also unrecognisable from the last campaign. The manager seems not a man of his words any longer, in fact they seem to increasingly differ from reality game-by-game. He denied the “dogmatic” tag but persisted with formations that isolated an effective striker - Balotelli, when paired with someone else - on his own, for over ten games ostensibly to keep his preferred 4-3-3 formation and his new found 4-2-3-1, as opposed to switching to something more suitable. He talks about his players getting a chance when they perform in training and in matches. Yet certain players are always picked regardless of form or performance, such as Dejan Lovren, Glen Johnson and before recently, Steven Gerrard.
For the Liverpool fans that witnessed the poor display by Rodgers’ team at St. James’ Park, it was difficult to agree with Pardew that his knowledge of Rodgers rather than a term that is increasingly gaining currency on social media - Rodgers’ stubbornness - led to Liverpool’s defeat. Or perhaps it was this “stubbornness” that Pardew claimed knowledge of?
Since the wretched outing at St. James’ Park, performances and the results of the team have gotten worse and worse, culminating in the heavy loss at Old Trafford. Yet by design or accident, the media seem to have let Rodgers off during the club’s poor run. He has not been asked the hard-hitting questions about formation, team selections and form of players. Instead, a raft of articles on the malaise in structure and functioning of Liverpool’s transfer set-up have surfaced. I am not denying the deep-seated and worrying problems in the recruitment policy of the Reds. Whilst the issues being brought to the fore are important, if the club is to get out of this rot, the players that have already been brought in should be utilized well and the manager should also get his formations and team selections right. The failings of the transfer committee is hardly to blame for points drop when the manager elects to pick Glen Johnson despite his form, when Lovren has a costless pass into the first XI even as he racks up more defensive errors; and when Emre Can has a reserved seat on the LFC bench despite showing plenty of promise.
After his West Ham team trounced Liverpool in September, Sam Allardyce was in didactic mood on the Premier League’s broadcast to Africa lecturing viewers on how he plotted Liverpool’s downfall. He mentioned how Gerrard drops in between Liverpool’s back-four to play out from the back and how aggression from the off could trouble Brendan’s team. Since then he has gone on to class Rodgers with a group of managers he think are dogmatic.
“There are two types of coaches. There’s coaches like me who weigh up the opposition and ask the team to adjust. Fergie was similar. Jose [Mourinho] is similar. Then there’s Arsène, who won’t adjust. There’s Brendan [Rodgers], who looks like he won’t adjust. There’s Manuel Pellegrini, who looks like he won’t adjust, even in the Champions League. He seems to favour what he’s got. City are quite open.
“Their [Wenger/Rodgers/Pellegrini] philosophy is different to ours. Ours is more about who are we playing against. Their philosophy is more, ‘We always play this way’, and they won’t change, they carry doing on the same thing. That’s why you can beat them" Allardyce said in a recent interview with the Telegraph’s Henry Winter.
Allardyce’s comments in relation to Rodgers have relevance only because of the timing. If he had said it any time last season, it would have been written off as daft. Has Rodgers’ changed or perhaps men like Pardew and Allardyce know him better than the Liverpool fans themselves? Rodgers has since debunked Allardyce’s assertion by claiming in the Liverpool Echo (November 2, 2014) that there is no coach "that has played more systems than I have played in the last couple of years". No one will begrudge the Northern Irishman on the basis of last season, where his costless-flowing side came close to the title. Each game he delicately tweaked his team to get the best out of them. 4-2-2-2, 3-5-2 and 4-4-2 diamond were all employed by him last season with the latter serving up some impressive performances and results.
So where is last season’s Rodgers’? Why is the man who masterminded the beautiful slick attacking football now a proponent of the mundane and labored 4-2-3-1 and ineffective 4-3-3? As things have panned out, Liverpool has missed last season’s Rodgers more than they have missed Suarez. Rodgers continuously played a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 formation even though they failed to yield any positive results. Yet he is still not showing any inclination for the diamond system that worked last season and responsible for one of the few good performances and results this season?
A lot has been made of the “quality” of the recruitment Liverpool made last summer. Lovren and Balotelli aside, it is hasty to write off the new recruits as poor. Indeed Henderson’s case should make fans measured and patient in judging the new players especially those Rodgers has for strange reasons denied them meaningful chance to impress. But all the failings of Liverpool so far cannot be put down to “transition” as Rodgers keeps drumming up. Against Newcastle, eight of the first eleven were in the team last season yet the performance was shocking and nowhere near last season’s standards. Against United, the frail defensive displays highlighted last season was in copious display. So is transition really to blame for Liverpool’s woes? Yes, Suarez’s departure and Sturridge’s injuries coupled with the many new faces have meant that Rodgers has had to forge a new identity for his team. Okay, that sounds like too many changes already but then why would you ditch one of the stabilizing factors; a workable and effective formula (diamond system) for a new formation (4-2-3-1) all in the “transitional" period? And why has the team become progressively worse, defensively?
Rodgers does not seem to know his team and its self-evident he is ignorant about his best XI. Things were a lot less complicated when he had just an Iago Aspas and Victor Moses on the bench. He could pick the same team match after match without any qualms especially from fans, because their starting eleven was far superior to a weak bench. But no longer. So far he has failed to utilize his squad well. Certain senior players are getting into the squad despite poor performances. However for reasons best known to Rodgers alone, these players are picked for every match. Dejan Lovren currently holds the record for the most defensive errors made by an outfield player in the league this season. Yet until recently he played all league matches. A player like Mamadou Sakho - not viewed as a Rodgers favourite - has definitely not enjoyed that much “patience” or benefitted from Rodgers’ “stubbornness”. If Sakho had made as much errors as Lovren, few would believe he would have been treated as the Croat. Of course, Lovren is a player Rodgers fought to bring in and it will hurt his pride for Rodgers to admit the defender has been poor. But if Rodgers is to stem the rot and grow as a manager, he should drop this pride as fervently as the need to drop a Glen Johnson or a Lovren from the starting XI.
After the humiliation of Old Trafford, Rodgers rued defensive errors as the cause of the defeat. Yet he is the same person who has insisted that his sside does not need a defensive coach, the same man who also insisted defending was easy when Jose Mourinho frustrated his side with a stubborn defensive set-up last season. His team has descended from unacceptable to comical levels as far as keeping their goal safe. Same mistakes are repeated match after match. In his first two seasons as Liverpool manager, the club 43 conceded and 52 goals in the league. The 22 goals in 16 matches this season means the club is on course to leak more goals than last season. “We know what the solutions are. We need to keep working and hopefully confidence will return” Rodgers was quoted as saying in response to a question about his team’s poor defence after the United match. Very few Liverpool fans will side with him that he knows the solution and fewer will share his solution: working hard to bring confidence back. As long as he persists with defenders who keep making comical errors and “ostracize” those who are better or have been denied chance, the defence won’t improve regardless of hard work. His decision making throughout the season has left much to be desired. If this team is to progress and Rodgers is to transition from good to top manager, some of his “stubbornness” should be ditched.
It is becoming a norm to see every match now as the one to kick start Liverpool Football Club's season. It started with the Merseyside derby through to the United match. That is over a dozen matches that failed to kick start our season. The club may have more disappointments on the way, and the season will only kick start when Rodgers gets to know his best team and starts playing it in the right formation.