Brendan Rodgers

[King Binny]

Dated November 2008:

Jose Mourinho made a personal recommendation to the Watford board to appoint Brendan Rodgers as their manager.

The Inter Milan boss, who made 35-year-old Rodgers youth-team coach at Chelsea in July 2004, was one of several high-profile figures in the game to give the Watford directors a glowing report.

Mourinho, who offered Rodgers a job at Inter after he replaced Roberto Mancini at the San Siro in the summer, was among a number of top bosses consulted by Watford.

The Portuguese head-hunted Rodgers when he took over at Stamford Bridge, before promoting him to reserve-team manager in his second year.

Rodgers' reputation soared at Chelsea where he helped Mourinho change the culture of the club by coaching the midfield 'diamond system'. The tactical switch helped bring the club two successive Premier League titles, the FA Cup and two League Cups.

Fascinated by tactics, Rodgers is a manager with modern methods who believes he can transfer to Watford's players the winning mentality instilled in him by Mourinho.

Rodgers turned down the chance to follow Mourinho to Italy, preferring to wait for a management opportunity here to come his way. That moment has finally arrived, the culmination of 15 years' labour at Reading - where his playing career was cut short through injury at the age of 20 - and his successful spell at Chelsea.

He is credited with bringing through defender Michael Mancienne, called into the England squad for last week's friendly in Germany, Scott Sinclair and Jacob Mellis from the Chelsea academy.

His hard-working nature has persuaded Watford to take a chance, in the same way they did with Aidy Boothroyd, who arrived with the club in a similarly lowly position in the Championship.

The first text to flash up on Rodgers' mobile phone on Monday was from his old friend Roy Keane - 'Welcome to Hell' - but he is well prepared.

He has been planning for this appointment since he coached Reading's junior teams, studying formations and tactics used by the best teams in Europe as he worked his way towards the UEFA Pro Licence.

Rodgers is, for instance, more qualified as a manager than Blackburn's Paul Ince, who does not hold the Pro Licence. Rodgers travelled around Europe watching the best coaches and adopting the habits he intends to impress on Watford's players.

He has appointed Frank Lampard Snr as football consultant and Dean Austin from Southend as assistant manager. Rodgers will meet Malky Mackay, the choice of the players to succeed Boothroyd, to discuss a coaching role.

Rodgers said: 'Talking to Frank and being in his company, I was always very interested in what he had to say and always came away having learned something.

'He has great experience and as a young manager it is important to have that alongside me. He is a football man, an honest man and a loyal man and those are the key qualities you want in a mentor.'

Rodgers was in the stands to watch Watford's 3-0 demolition of QPR on Saturday and he will travel on Tuesday to see the Championship clash at Bristol City but he does not take charge officially until Wednesday morning.

Watford chairman Graham Simpson said: 'We are always punching above our weight and Brendan's job will be to make sure we continue to do so.

'He's a terrific talent. We have looked very closely into his work at Chelsea and been very impressed. People thought we were taking a chance with Aidy Boothroyd and that turned out to be a very successful period. I believe Brendan will be just as successful.'

 

[King Binny]

Dated Mar 2011:

Up A hill in Neath, Welsh football begins to regroup. After the Wales-England disappointment the focus returns to Swansea City and Cardiff City, to see if either can become the first top-flight Welsh club since 1983.

Swansea are third in the Championship; Cardiff are fourth. There are eight games to go. ‘The marathon has become a sprint,’ as Swansea manager Brendan Rodgers said.

Both Welsh clubs have had their hiccups, but Rodgers has a full squad available to tackle the run-in.

His side have reaped praise for their style but if there has been a failing, it is that of the top nine only Nottingham Forest have scored fewer goals.

But at their Neath training ground Swansea will have new loan strikers Fabio Borini (Chelsea) and Tamas Priskin (Ipswich) back from international duty. Concentration will be on Saturday’s trip to bottom club Preston. For a club with promotion ambitions, this game falls into the must-win category.

A fortnight ago Rodgers said: ‘80 points is a number that could get you automatically promoted — you’d be unlucky if you got to 80 points and didn’t go up.’

Swansea have 66 now. Norwich, one place above them, have 67; the two meet in South Wales on Saturday week.

‘No matter what happens from here,’ Rodgers said, ‘we’ve had a terrific season. We’ve played some great football and got praise — and that’s important to us because it’s about our identity as a club. But you want to validate that with success.’

Validation would be collective and personal. Swansea, with a bottom-six budget, are on the verge of an achievement akin to Blackpool’s last season. Locally, they estimate that one particular Cardiff player earns more than Swansea’s team do.

For Rodgers, promotion would mean a dream end to his first full season as a manager. That fact still half-surprises the 38-year-old Northern Irishman. He has, after all, been manager of both Watford and Reading. Yet he left Watford after six months in charge only to be dismissed by Reading barely six months after succeeding Steve Coppell.

That hurt, because Rodgers had signed for the Royals at 16. He had not played organised football until his early teens because his school was Gaelic games only, but once he did, this cousin of Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington was soon whisked off to Manchester United and elsewhere.

‘I went there a number of times in ’85, ’86,’ Rodgers said of United. ‘I was a typical Irish boy, went to about 400 clubs when I came over. But there was something about Reading.

‘When I was 20 I had a year of injuries. By that time I knew I wasn’t going to be what I hoped to be.

But I knew the game, I could communicate, I was technically gifted, so I could demonstrate. I enrolled on my first coaching course at 20.

‘I was younger than everyone. I’d be sat in a room talking about football development and Liam Brady would be there, Steve Heighway. But I felt comfortable, not arrogant — I knew my place — but I’m a football man.’

Rodgers received major validation when Chelsea recognised his youth work in 2004.

A couple of months later Jose Mourinho arrived and the two found ‘lots of commonalities’ such as a shared birthday, but most importantly a shared method.

‘Sometimes the British tradition was to be aggressive, work on the basis of fear,’ Rodgers explained. ‘I’d never worked on that, I didn’t have the protection of being the big footballer who’d played 600 games.

‘So I worked more on a basis of respect. Sometimes in a British environment in particular that can be deemed “too nice”. Suddenly I go to the highest level at Chelsea and I see an operator working on the basis of respect. That was a big thing. It’s about understanding human needs before football.

Then there’s the football aspect, how he got players to control and dominate games.’ Rodgers left Chelsea for Watford more confident as well as more experienced.

‘I could have sat in my blue chair at Chelsea but I actually wanted to go there to go through it, to go through the pain as a man and as a manager,’ he added.

In December 2009, the pain arrived with his exit from Reading, whom Rodgers said he ‘mis-read’.

‘It was the first failure I’d had since I began coaching. That’s what it was, failure. Coming away from that I’d six months of personal reflection. One of the biggest things for me was learning to become more clinical.

‘That was in December. I went away with my wife in January. Then I came back and my mother passed away in early February. Myself and Jim Magilton were sacked on the same day and then our mothers died on the same day, February 3. I now had two voids — my mother was only 53, she died of a sudden heart attack. That took me down a different road in terms of reflecting on life.

‘Once I came around, I got myself mentally and physically right. I then went out to speak to Steve McClaren at FC Twente. I had a week out there — that was really good, some really good conversations. Then I went to see (Birmingham boss) big Alex McLeish. He was fantastic.

‘It was about getting on the bike again. And it does make you better. I’m better, absolutely, than at Reading. I understand more. I understand that for a lot of players football is about two things: game time and money. Maybe before I’d pushed that to the side a bit. I’m a lot clearer now.

‘I knew then I’d have to go to the right club, not just any club. Swansea and I fit hand in glove.’

 

[King Binny]

Dated May 2011:

In the neighbourhood of the now-demolished Vetch Field and from behind a barred window in Swansea Prison, a lone waving arm saluted Brendan Rodgers and his Premier League-bound squad as they embarked on an open-top bus parade which enthused a region.

Joy reached into the unlikeliest of places in South Wales last night. Black and white everywhere, smiles, cheers, shirts, scarves, Cyril the Swan, the obligatory Elvis and even hundreds of inflatable silver European Cups. Everyone wants a piece of Swansea City.

It seemed that all of the city's 250,000 citizens had turned out to revel in the moment. They should do. The glory of a play-off final win will soon dissolve into the reality of trying to stay among the elite on a budget that makes Blackpool look like high rollers.

Swansea's playing wage bill this season was £7million. Blackpool's, admittedly fortified by Barclays Premier League bounty, was £20m, while Manchester City paid their players a collective £122m.

What they lack in finance, Swansea will make up for in spirit and a refusal to compromise their passing principles.

Like Ian Holloway before him, Rodgers defines his club, but this will be no gung-ho attempt to outscore the opposition. Rodgers has a steadfast belief that to succeed his team must retain possession by passing, but organisation and structure are other bywords of his meticulous mind.

He has coined a steel and style philosophy. His players must be comfortable on the ball but they must also work hard.

The Ulsterman shakes off mention of his former Chelsea mentor Jose Mourinho, to whom he still talks, because he wants to create his own footprint in the game.

He gave up his playing career the moment he realised that a hereditary knee problem would prevent him from reaching the top.
After managing the Reading academy and Chelsea's youth and reserve teams, and brief spells in charge of Watford and Reading, the 38-year-old has just completed his first full season as a first-team boss.

His impact on Swansea was immediate, not least because he embraced, literally, the club's stalwarts. When he met first-team coach Alan Curtis, a star of the last Swansea side to join England's elite in 1981, Curtis offered his hand. Instead, Rodgers hugged him.

He is trusted by his players because they can see their hard work mirrored in him. He arrives at the training ground around 8am each day to plan the day's training with his coaches, even laying out the cones.

Defender Ashley Williams said: 'He demands 100 per cent every day and he gives that himself, so you can't complain about his exacting standards. He is very organised, knows exactly what he wants at all times. That leaves no room for excuses.
'But he's not a sergeant major. We like him and we know we can always talk to him.'

Fortunately, the foundations for the passing principles were laid down two managers ago, by Roberto Martinez. It has been evolution, not revolution, instilling belief where there was confidence.

Bringing Scott Sinclair, the Chelsea wonderkid he converted from lightweight striker to dynamic winger, to Swansea was a masterstroke. Such judgment breeds respect, which will be needed to lure his 'two or three' targets to the Liberty Stadium this summer.

While others were recovering from the play-off final, Rodgers met with chairman Huw Jenkins to plot for a long stay in the Premier League. 'We want to move the club forward,' he said. 'We're not going into the Premier League just to take the money. I was fortunate to work at that level for four-and- a-half years as a coach so I understand the different strengths, the power, the pace, the physicality of the game there.

'We just need to add two or three players because the changing room is very strong at this club and the last thing I want to do is disrupt that.'

Swansea have been here before, and fallen. Just 22 years after sitting atop the First Division, they sat in 92nd place in the Football League in 2003. Crowds had dwindled and the Vetch was crumbling.

'The legacy of the old First Division days didn't last,' said Curtis. 'The club just overspent. It was heartbreaking, but sometimes to prosper, you need to drop as low as you possibly can. Hopefully we can build on the success this time so we never find ourselves in that position again.'

 

[localny]

Excellent Reading

It was about getting on the bike again. And it does make you better. I’m better, absolutely, than at Reading. I understand more. I understand that for a lot of players football is about two things: game time and money. Maybe before I’d pushed that to the side a bit. I’m a lot clearer now.

Sometimes the British tradition was to be aggressive, work on the basis of fear,’ Rodgers explained. ‘I’d never worked on that, I didn’t have the protection of being the big footballer who’d played 600 games.

‘So I worked more on a basis of respect. Sometimes in a British environment in particular that can be deemed “too nice”. Suddenly I go to the highest level at Chelsea and I see an operator working on the basis of respect. That was a big thing. It’s about understanding human needs before football.

 

[localny]

VITALS

Team Nation From To Matches ----------------------Won Drawn ---Lost Win%
Watford England 24 November 2008 5 June 2009 32 ---13 ----7 -- 12 40.63
Reading England 5 June 2009 16 December 2009 23--- 6 ----- 6 --11 26.09
Swansea City Wales 16 July 2010 present ---------96 ---43 ---- 20 -- 33 44.79

 

[King Binny]

Dated August 2011:

Brendan Rodgers looked down at his mobile as it exploded with beeps demanding his attention.

The Swansea City boss was in the bustle of Nairobi Airport when the Premier League fixtures were released, relying on his shaky phone signal and updates from friends gathered nearby for news.

The giant leap up to the Premier League had offered a delightfully vague promise of something infinitely better after the play-off success and a summer of celebration. But now the stark enormity of the challenge facing Rodgers popped up on the screen of his BlackBerry. The message said: Manchester City v Swansea.

His Welsh side, a club who were once unable to pay their electricity bill and almost dropped out of the Football League eight years ago, would face the richest club in the world on their Premier League debut. Welcome to the big time.

‘We might as well start as we mean to go on,’ Rodgers said with a wry grin. Another beep drew his gaze back to his mobile and he showed me the text.

‘Man City first game? Three points guaranteed for you top man! — Jose.’ Rodgers laughed at Mourinho’s unshakeable confidence.

The Swansea boss was under no illusions about what lay ahead back then. Spin forward through two hectic months of preparation and I find he is equally realistic now.

‘They say there are three tiers in the Premier League — well, now there’s a fourth tier,’ he says. ‘We’re in that fourth tier on our own. There’s everyone else plus Swansea.’

Rodgers’ resources are undoubtedly meagre. One of his squad was on £1,300 a week last season, approximately a half of one per cent of the salaries the likes of Carlos Tevez and Yaya Toure will recoup for turning out against Swansea on Monday night. Half the clubs in the Championship Rodgers has left behind will be operating on bigger budgets than his Premier League novices.

‘We know we are a million miles away from clubs like City in terms of finance,’ he says. ‘But it won’t stop us competing.’

Rodgers is an immensely likeable Northern Irishman — thoughtful, urbane and seemingly blessed with reserves of patience and understanding.

He admits he is touched Mourinho still looks out for him four years on from his spell at Chelsea as one of the charismatic manager’s trusted lieutenants, but they couldn’t be more different.

Rodgers’ modesty marks him out as the antithesis of the Mourinho public persona, but the two share other qualities, particularly a love of learning and a burning desire to make their mark as coaches after less than glorious playing careers.

‘Yes, there is a mutual respect,’ says Rodgers. ‘We just got on as people. We have lots of similar interests and we even have the same birthday. It’s the aspects of normal life that bind people together.

‘But when it comes to football management and our teams, I work differently to Jose and I wouldn’t copy anything he did.

‘He has obviously been fantastic for my career and I’m grateful. But many other people have influenced me too and managing is about what you are and your own identity.’

Rodgers is only 38, but smart beyond his years, thanks to an intensive education in the game. He is the eldest of five boys, a son of Antrim, schooled at the Catholic St Patrick’s College in Ballymena.

Last month I spent 10 days with Rodgers on a cancer charity trek up Kilimanjaro. At one evening meal, a 23-year-old African guide asked what I thought of the Barcelona side. I pointed out Rodgers was infinitely more qualified to give a view. The two continued the conversation in fluent Spanish.

Rodgers just absorbs learning, from coaches, managers, teachers and experiences. Having grasped Spanish, the impressive young boss is now learning Italian.

‘When I arrived here in England my ambition was to be a footballer and play at the highest possible level I could,’ he says. ‘I knew very early in my career that was not going to happen. So the second best thing to playing was to be a coach and I started on my journey. I was maybe 20 years of age and I took my time finding out what makes top coaches and top managers. That was my destiny.’

He has now been on the touchline for 18 years, having defined his principles from a very early stage.

‘I was brought up playing for Northern Ireland schoolboys and youth international games. We would play against the likes of France and Spain and Germany and always on the defensive. It was all about stopping them, not what we could do. I wanted to be in control. That was when the seed for my ideas was planted.’

Rodgers’ apprenticeship as Reading’s head of development, then Chelsea’s youth- and reserve-team manager, led him to the Watford job and a controversially brief stint in charge at Reading.

Ironically, he realised his true potential with Swansea’s Wembley play-off triumph over the same club that had sacked him after a mere 31 games.

He certainly has the sense to know what lies ahead. The bookmakers already have his side as firm favourites to be relegated. Add that Rodgers resolutely plays a passing game, come what may, and it is clear it won’t take long before the headlines branding him ‘too naive’ are dusted off.

‘When you’re in trouble, command is lonely,’ he says. ‘As your status grows and you are more in the public eye, your world becomes smaller. But that’s the job.

‘There are going to be results this season that go against us; there are going to be some heavy defeats too. But that will be a part of the learning curve for the players, as most of them will be here in the Premier League for the first time.

‘One thing I know is these players deserve the opportunity to show what they can do.’

Dorus de Vries and Darren Pratley left to join Wolves and Bolton on free transfers, but Rodgers has recruited the free-scoring Danny Graham from Watford.

‘When you look at some of the prices going around, I think signing the Championship’s top scorer for £3.5million is good business.

‘We are underdogs. It’s the reality. Frankly, we were underdogs in the Championship last year, so I don’t know what we are now. Is there such a thing as an under-underdog?’ But he does not intend to allow Swansea to be brushed aside.

‘We need style and steel. We must pass the ball with arrogance and back it up with a willingness to defend. Our template will be the same since I arrived last year.

Organisation, being defensively strong and aggression.

‘We kept 23 clean sheets last season — that’s nearly 50 per cent of games where we didn’t concede. That’s going to be tested to the limit this year. Whatever happens I’d always adhere to my principles. I would not abandon my methods because of results. It’s how I coach.

‘Even so, I am under no illusions. To finish outside the bottom three would be an outstanding, magical season. But I will aim as high as we can. I’m aiming for the Moon and if we fall short we’ll still be among the stars.’

So HOW do Swansea compare with the likes of Blackpool, who rose last season and were relegated at the first time of asking, or Queens Park Rangers or Norwich City now?

‘There are leagues within the Premier League. My message to the board and to the chairman was having reached the Premier League for the first time in three decades, we must fight like hell to stay there.

‘We’re not passing through, or visiting. We don’t want to get a round of applause and then go back down. The trick is to do all of that while balancing the books.’

Rodgers already has a timeline mapped; targets given extra urgency by the loss of his mother Christina to a heart attack at 53 last year and the fact that his father Malachy is in the latter stages of throat cancer. Those personal ordeals have cast a shadow over the proudest moments of his professional career.

‘My Dad has battled but he is struggling now,’ he says. ‘It was his 59th birthday on Thursday and I have to accept it is the last one he will ever see. It’s just a matter of weeks. But he’ll see me manage in the Premier League, which I’m thankful for. We cried about that the other day.’

It is a heavy load to bear at a time when the demands on Rodgers will be greater than ever. But his ambition burns brightly. He refuses to get ahead of himself, but one day he plans to manage a Champions League club.

‘That is a target,’ says Rodgers. ‘There is a job to be done at Swansea and that is where my full attention is now. But if you ask any coach what they would like to ultimately do, then that would be the aim.’

Rodgers relies on wit, not rage. He has never thrown a teacup or a boot. ‘I’m not that type,’ he says. ‘At one game something really annoyed me and I nearly broke my foot kicking the skip that the kit is kept in. That was enough. I try to keep control.

‘The modern player is different, so you have to contain the emotion. But I sometimes think it’s fine to let them see you are unhappy.’

So is there anyone he will call for advice before the season starts?

‘I’ve many friends in football — Alex McLeish, Steve Clarke, and I speak to Jose, but I’m very much my own man. Besides, I don’t like to burden people with a problem I may have. I like to carry it myself and rectify it that way. ’

So would Rodgers ever call himself the Special One?

‘No,’ he says. ‘Well, not until I win the Champions League, anyway,’ he adds with a smile.

And the funny thing is, whatever happens at Swansea, the idea doesn’t seem all that outlandish.

 

[King Binny]

Dated Sep 2011:

Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins has described manager Brendan Rodgers as 'special' as the Northern Irishman prepares to return to work following the death of his father.

Rodgers missed the 1-0 defeat to Arsenal after his dad Malachy passed away at the age of 59 in the early hours of Saturday morning following a battle with cancer - a loss that came barely 18 months after the 38-year-old's mum Christina died of a heart attack.

But Rodgers is expected to return to Swansea on Wednesday following Monday's funeral, despite the club telling him to take as much time off as he needs.

Jenkins said: 'Brendan has had a tough time personally over the last 18 months. But he is a special person who provides real strength for his family.

'He is a young man and things like this are a massive weight on anyone's shoulders. But he has coped with things remarkably well.

'He has something special about him and I think he's shown that with everything that has happened.

'Everyone within the club, together with our supporters, felt for Brendan on Saturday and our thoughts have remained with him and his family at this sad time.

'It puts football into perspective and we've told him he can take as much time as he requires.

'But knowing Brendan he will be back soon chomping at the bit. I spoke to Brendan on Sunday night and his last words to me were that he will return refocused and planning our success over the next nine or 10 months.'

 

[eecheerow]

Someone on twitter said he's met with the club today...

it won't be long now then before someone else comes along to say he hasn't.

 

[King Binny]

Dated November 2011:

On Saturday evening, Brendan Rodgers and his Swansea team will be preparing for the match of their lives. Manchester United will be in town, not for a romantic Cup tie or a benign friendly, but as Premier League opponents.

While it would be incongruous to describe them as equals - Manchester United's turnover last year was £286million, Swansea's just £10m - next weekend they compete as such. Squeezed into his tiny cupboard of an office, provided for him by the health club where Swansea train, Rodgers is relishing the challenge.

'This club and this city have been waiting years to host such a great team, a great club and a genius of a manager,' says the man who took Swansea into the Premier League via last season's play-offs. 'It will be a brilliant occasion and for me there's real excitement.'

Excitement and deep regret, too. Rodgers does not say it but he will surely feel it next Saturday evening, as the dusk descends on the Liberty Stadium before kick-off.

For the visit of United is the kind of occasion his mother and father would have relished. But while their son has enjoyed phenomenal success in the past 18 months, forging a reputation as one of the game's brightest young managers, 38-year-old Rodgers has also been a man in mourning, having lost both his parents at relatively young ages and at a time that has been the most successful and fulfilling period of his professional life.

The cruel irony of his loss is an obvious source of pain. 'My mum and dad had worked so hard all their lives,' he says. 'They had arrived at a good moment, seen their son develop his life and could get over to watch games and come and share in what you've done.

'Then, all of a sudden, they're gone. There's a real empty feeling, you know. I spoke to them every day, sometimes you get into the habit to phone, in the car, away to a game…' His words tail off. But there is no self-pity, just grief.

Two months ago, as Swansea struggled to find their feet in the Premier League and were being defeated by Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium, their manager was 400 miles away in Carnlough, a picturesque village of just 1,500 inhabitants perched on the County Antrim coast where, on a good, clear day, you can look across the Irish Sea to the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland.

In ordinary circumstances, the beaches, the pretty harbour and the glens would have made for a serene location. But in the early hours of that morning, Rodgers's father, Malachy, had died, aged 59. 'To be with him when he took his final breaths, that was important to me,' says Rodgers.

'He died on the day of the Arsenal game. I had been with him as much as I could. I was flying back to Northern Ireland every chance I had to spend time with him. Then, whenever it looked like he wasn't going to pull through, as much as I loved Swansea and as much as I love football, I needed to be with my father.'

The grief was so acute for Rodgers because only a few months before his father had been diagnosed with lung cancer, his mother, Christina, had died of a heart attack. She was aged just 53.

'She went out one morning to get her hair done, eyebrows done, all that stuff that women do,' says Rodgers. 'She came back in at a quarter to 11 and my dad went out.

'He said he was going to get a plug and he was on his way home when this ambulance came flying past him. Unbelievable. He thought, "Where's that going?" 'When he arrived down at our village, and our house is just on the edge, the ambulance was outside our house. My mum had collapsed and died.'

His was a tight family where his brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles grew up alongside each other, helping each other through tough times in the Seventies and Eighties.

'They had no fancy jobs,' says Rodgers. In fact, his father was a painter and decorator but his mother raised millions of pounds and ended up travelling the world as a volunteer for the Irish Catholic charity, Trocaire.

When she died, Rodgers had only recently been sacked by Reading and was yet to be appointed at Swansea.

Now, amid his grief, he has rebuilt his career and is reviving the reputation of the club whose Premier League credentials many might have questioned.

'The time when I think is when I'm on my own in the car,' says Rodgers. 'To be at this level as a football manager, you have to be strong-willed. On my own I'll have my moments, of course, but the focus is very much on the job of turning our good performances into results.'

Swansea were on the verge of financial extinction and bottom of League Two just eight years ago. They were saved by their fans to rise into the Premier League. Even now, though, they hardly bear comparison to the men who will be their opponents on Saturday. While United have at their disposal the huge Carrington training complex, where a small army of security men prevent anyone bothering the players, Swansea's finest must mingle with young mums relaxing in the health club bar after their morning gym sessions.

But with more than a quarter of the season gone, Rodgers's players now sit 10th in the table. Since that Arsenal game they have not only achieved results but in some style. Last weekend they were applauded off the pitch at Anfield by Liverpool's own fans, impressed by the way Swansea had gained a 0-0 draw while, by some observers' reckoning, out-passing their more illustrious opponents.

'I said to the players afterwards, "Write that down in your diary. November 5, 2011: You got a standing ovation from the Anfield crowd. That doesn't happen often. I think it was a measure of our performance and the respect they had for our game.The figures show that Swansea consistently out-pass their Premier League rivals, have more touches on the ball and pass more accurately. Nor are they a soft touch; Swansea have achieved five clean sheets in 11 games and all from a squad of desperados and rejects culled from the lower leagues.

Their 'Swanselona' nickname is well earned, for Rodgers likes Spain and its football so much that he learned the language in his spare time. 'My biggest influence has been Spanish and Dutch football, that Total Football idea,' he says. 'Barcelona have been doing it for years, since Johan Cruyff was coach.'

Perhaps inevitably, the tale returns to his father. 'He loved Brazilian sides. He loved gifted players and I suppose when you're brought up in that environment, you swing more towards that type. He was always keen for me to be a creator and a technician, so that was the influence for me.

'The British type of football never suited me as a player. It was very much smash it up the pitch and play the percentages. The only percentage I was interested in was possession and I didn't think it was rocket science. If we have the ball, you can't score, no matter how big or strong you are. I've always worked off that.'

At Reading, he had grown up as a youth team player but never made it to the first team. He rose to head the club's academy but they never quite absorbed his ideas. He implemented them so well at junior level, though, that he was poached by Jose Mourinho to join Chelsea. When he returned to Reading as manager, he lasted just six months before being sacked.

Swansea, whose chairman, Huw Jenkins, knew and liked his style, gave him a second chance. And the fans, as Rodgers points out, had been well schooled under the management of Roberto Martinez and Paulo Sousa before him.

'They understand what we're trying to achieve,' he said. 'But I could take this group of players to play the same football at other clubs and we wouldn't get the reaction we get from these fans.'

At present, it is a mutual appreciation society. Club and fans have embraced a manager who reciprocates. 'From the age of 16, I was living in Reading, dominated by the city of London, which I loved but when I came here it was like home, really. I was back on the sea again having lived on the coast all my life as a child. What makes it is the people: they're real. It's the real world. There are areas that are deprived, areas that are really modern and improving. But they love life.'

On his desk is a commemorative plaque, made by a fan, which records the date, result and scorers of the club's first ever Premier League win: 3-0 against West Bromwich on September 17. It was a week after the death of his father and came in the week when four miners were killed at the Gleision Colliery in the Swansea Valley.

'That was a sort of monumental game,' says Rodgers. 'The disaster had happened, a young kid had also lost his life here, so it was an emotional time. I was fully aware that football can provide a beacon of hope. And we were very determined to get our season up and running.

'We're in the business of winning, irrespective of style. We understand that we're a million miles away from other people in terms of budget, the size of the club and our resources. But we're here to compete.'

That they are and, with no small thanks to Rodgers, they are doing so in style.

 

[Oncy]

He's managed 150 games total. Thats it!
In addition he has lost almost as many as he has won.
I dont get this at all.

 

[Woland]

His mum died a few months ago aged 53 when he was 38.

Oh.

 

[Oncy]

Carnlough girls love the ride.

 

[Gary25]

His mum died a few months ago aged 53 when he was 38.

Oh.

His Dad died last September as well. Pre Arsenal game(which he obviously missed).

 

[Oncy]

His Dad died last September as well. Pre Arsenal game(which he obviously missed).

His dad was 48 the fucking legend.

 

[Hansern]

And he's already a grandfather.. I shit you not.

 

[Woland]

Dad, why are there hairs on my bal.....

QUICK - PROCREATE

 

[Buddha]

13 Jan 2012 - Two days before playing Arsenal:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/swansea-city/9013702/Swansea-manager-Brendan-Rodgers-aims-to-convert-long-ball-believers.html

Swansea manager Brendan Rodgers aims to convert long-ball believers

“This is the crusade,” says Brendan Rodgers. He is out to convert you — yes, you — to the enlightened path, preaching the gospel of tiki-taka in the South Wales valleys.

By Duncan White

His pulpit is a training ground by a health club with one AstroTurf pitch, his church the Liberty Stadium, his flock Swansea City Football Club. Rodgers is the evangelist for the beautiful game. Or, more correctly, the beautiful British game. And his congregation is growing.

On Sunday, Arsenal come to Swansea. Arsène Wenger’s side have long held a monopoly on doing things stylishly in the Premier League. Yet this technical game was thought the preserve of an imported elite.

The lack of British players in the Arsenal side for the past decade was evidence, it was claimed, that these foreign ways were beyond the ken of our honest boys.

Now smaller teams have played good football in the Premier League in the past, but none have done it like Swansea. Despite a modest wage bill, Rodgers has built a side who have impudently dominated possession against their supposed superiors.

“This is our philosophy,” Rodgers said. “I like to control games. I like to be responsible for our own destiny. If you are better than your opponent with the ball you have a 79 per cent chance of winning the game.

"For me it is quite logical. It doesn’t matter how big or small you are, if you don’t have the ball you can’t score.”

Rodgers says he comes “from a different bottle” to the majority of British coaches. Growing up in a village in Antrim, he grew to share his father’s enthusiasm for the great Brazilian and Dutch teams of the Seventies.

When he played for the Northern Ireland youth sides he barely got a touch of the ball — it was always being punted back to the opposition over his head. He had trials with various clubs, including Manchester United shortly after Mr. Ferguson took over, but ended up at Reading.

At 20 he quit the game, realising he was not good enough to play at the top level. He did, though, think he could coach there.

“I wanted to make a difference. I went to Spain. I was a big lover of Spanish football and spoke the language. I spent a lot of time at Barcelona, talking and working with coaches, finding out about the model and the philosophy of the club. I’d been to Sevilla, Valencia and Betis.

I also spent time in Holland. It was a sacrifice because I had a young family at the time but I had a real thirst for knowledge. I wanted to be the best I possibly could.”

After coaching in the Reading academy he got his big break in 2004 when Jose Mourinho took him on in his backroom staff at Chelsea.

“I always say that working with Jose was like going to Harvard University,” he said.

While Mourinho’s integrated approach to management was a great influence, Rodgers has his distinctive methods. Pep Guardiola is another who has inspired him and his Swansea team are modelled, in their tactical system, on Barcelona. He even sketches out the tactical system on my notepad.

“My template for everything is organisation. With the ball you have to know the movement patterns, the rotation, the fluidity and positioning of the team. Then there’s our defensive organisation.

"So if it is not going well we have a default mechanism which makes us hard to beat and we can pass our way into the game again. Rest with the ball. Then we’ll build again.

“When we have the football everybody’s a player. The difference with us is that when we have the ball we play with 11 men, other teams play with 10 and a goalkeeper.”

Rodgers was cut up to lose his sweeper-keeper, Dorus de Vries, to Wolves in the summer and he realised he was going to need a very specific replacement. He found Michel Vorm.

“British people had said to me he was too small, which was good for me because it probably meant he was good with his feet. When we got the chance to see him I realised he was perfect. He was 27, humble, and makes saves that a 6ft 5in keeper won’t make because he’s so fast. But, importantly, he can build a game from behind. He understands the lines of pass.”

Rodgers’s claims are supported by the statistics.

Swansea’s passing percentages are behind only Arsenal and Manchester City. They do play a greater percentage of passes in their own half than any other side in the Premier League but it is all about being patient. To those raised on the orthodoxy of direct football this is baffling stuff.

“People will jump on us whenever we make a mistake. We had it against Manchester United. Angel Rangel had the ball at his feet and the commentary after the game is that he’s got to kick it into row Z.

"He had time on the ball, why would he smash it up the pitch? He just made a mistake. We need to give our players confidence in their ability. To play this way you can have no fear. The players respect that if there are any goals conceded through playing football I take the blame.

“Here’s another example. We were 2-0 up away at Wolves with six minutes to go but we failed to manage the pressure. We stopped playing it out from the back. We kicked the ball long and they got it and just smashed straight back into our box. Eventually we drew 2-2 and the players were devastated.

"I told them we needed to learn the six-minute game.

“The following week we worked on managing the pressure. But with the ball. Lo and behold the next game we are at Bolton. We are 2-0 up. With 17 minutes to go they go 2-1. You could sense the nerves in the crowd.

"How were we going to deal with it? For 10 minutes Bolton did not get a kick of the ball and, eventually, we got the goal to win 3-1.

"Afterwards in the dressing room it was fantastic — that was how to manage pressure. When they had the momentum we sucked the life out of them.

“Our idea is to pass teams to a standstill so they can no longer come after you. Eventually you wear them down. We did that against one of the greatest teams in Tottenham. We did it against Manchester United in the second half. In the first half we were playing the history.

"What I said to them is 'now that you know what shirt you are getting, now can you play our game my friends?’ And they did.”

Yet for all the focus on Swansea’s passing, Rodgers is keen to stress that there is a lot more going on.

“People don’t notice it with us because they always talk about our possession but the intensity of our pressure off the ball is great. If we have one moment of not pressing in the right way at the right time we are dead because we don’t have the best players. What we have is one of the best teams.

“The strength of us is the team. Leo Messi has made it very difficult for players who think they are good players. He’s a real team player. He is ultimately the best player in the world and may go on to become the best ever. But he’s also a team player.

"If you have someone like Messi doing it then I’m sure my friend Nathan Dyer can do it. It is an easy sell.”

Sold? You can make your own mind up on Sunday afternoon whether you want to join the flock.

 

[Buddha]

11 May 2012 - Two days before playing Liverpool on the last day of the season

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/11/brendan-rodgers-swansea-city

Brendan Rodgers: Spain have been a great model for me over many years

Swansea's young manager is about to complete an impressive first Premier League season and he is heading to join Vincente del Bosque's Euro 2012 training camp for four days

Stuart James

It is 9am on Wednesday at Glamorgan Health and Racquets club and the cafe is a busy place to be. Fitness fanatics are strutting in and out, a few toddlers are testing the patience of their mothers and those a little longer in the tooth are sipping coffee while flicking through the papers. It is not a particularly unusual scene, apart from the fact that on one table, seemingly oblivious to everything going on around him, a Premier League manager is holding the morning meeting with his backroom staff.

Brendan Rodgers, whose Swansea City side have been such a revelation in the Premier League this season, must feel as if he works in a goldfish bowl. Without a training ground of their own, Swansea make do with what is effectively an upmarket leisure centre, where the public mingle with the players in an environment that feels a million miles from the state-of-the-art facilities and acres of land most Premier League managers take for granted.

Not that Rodgers seems fazed. The only request the Northern Irishman made when he took charge a couple of years ago was to have his own office, which is not much bigger than a broom cupboard and located in a corridor that everyone walks past to get to and from the changing rooms. "This was a physiotherapy room," Rodgers says from behind his desk. "When I came here there was no office. But I needed some sort of privacy. It's not what Arsène Wenger or Mr. Ferguson has but, listen, it's raw and it allows me to work."

Rodgers loves to work, especially on the training field, which has been his "natural environment" ever since he took up coaching at Reading in his early 20s. This week he invited the Guardian to spend a morning with him to talk tactics and to see the training sessions that have helped to produce a Swansea team who have made more passes this season than any other Premier League club. It is a remarkable statistic, although what is often overlooked is how hard Swansea work without the ball. Their pressing game, where they close people down in zones and at speed, is fundamental to the way they play.

"I like teams to control and dominate the ball, so the players are hungry for the ball," Rodgers says. "You'll see in some of our exercises this morning, a lot of our work is around the transition and getting the ball back very quickly. Because I believe if you give a bad player time, he can play. If you give a good player time, he can kill you. So our emphasis is based around our positioning both with and without the ball. And for us, when we press well, we pass well."

Winning the ball back quickly and high up the pitch was a key feature of Barcelona's approach under Pep Guardiola and, as Rodgers explains, is much more sophisticated than it may appear. "You cannot go on your own," he says. "You work on zonal pressure, so that when it is in your zone, you have the capacity to press. That ability to press immediately, within five or six seconds to get the ball, is important. But you also have to understand when you can't and what the triggers are then to go for it again because you can't run about like a madman.

"It's decision-making and intelligence. And this was always the thing with the British player, they were always deemed never to be intelligent, not to have good decision-making skills but could fight like hell for the ball. I believe they have all of the [attributes] and, if you can structure that, then you can have real, effective results."

Swansea are living proof. They go into the final game of the season, at home against Liverpool on Sunday with a chance of finishing in the top 10. Whatever happens, though, it has been a remarkable campaign. They have not only won matches but won them in style, includingmemorable victories against Arsenal and Manchester City. There was also the goalless draw at Anfield in November, when Swansea were applauded off the pitch by Liverpool fans.

"That was really touching because that is such an historic ground," Rodgers says. "But I suppose in terms of performance the highlight has to be beating what could be the champions, Man City. To actually dominate the game as well — we controlled possession, kept passing and kept the confidence and then, eventually, we were able to get the breakthrough. So in terms of where they're at and where we're at it was a defining moment."

It is close to 10.30am and Rodgers is looking at his watch, the cue to dash to the training pitch, which is artificial and belongs to the Llandarcy Academy of Sport and Learning. The grass pitches that Swansea used earlier in the season were dug up and relaid a couple of months ago, leaving them with little option but to train on an all-weather surface. Not that the facilities appear to have any effect on the standard of a training session that is fascinating to watch.

At one stage nine players are working in small teams of three in an area that seems so confined that it is difficult to believe they will be able to run around freely, let alone pass to a team-mate without an opponent intercepting. Yet they manage to do so time and again, often taking no more than one touch before quickly moving to create an angle to receive the next ball. All the while those without the ball are snapping at their heels, pressing with the sort of intensity that Rodgers demands in matches. It is, in short, easy to see why they are so good at keeping and retrieving the ball.

"When I first came in I said to the players, we will push ourselves in every element of training, so it's reflective of the real game, so I don't have to go on about intensity all the time because that is an obligation," says Rodgers, who closely watches training all of the time. "This morning's session is based around football strength, small-space work, lots of options on the ball and covering the principles of our game, which are possession, transition, pass-think, pass-think, pass-think and the core ingredient of hard work."

It goes without saying that Rodgers would like better facilities but the players seem to buy into the idea that Swansea are offering something more valuable than plush locker rooms and rows of immaculate training pitches. "There is only a certain type of player that will come here, a player that is hungry and a player that wants to develop his talent," says Rodgers. "You get the raw materials here in this moment but they're arguably the most important materials, which are time and quality on the training field."

They also get to perform for a manager who has a clear philosophy on how his team should play. Rodgers talks about four phases that underpin Swansea's approach when they have the ball. "There is the building and constructing from behind, the preparation through midfield, the creativity to arrive in the areas and then the taking of the goals. These are all areas that we have to continually improve on but that is the basis of our game and it doesn't change."

One of the few criticisms levelled at Swansea this season is that they often keep the ball in their own half or in areas where they are not hurting the opposition, although that argument is flawed in several respects. Rodgers points out that, while the primary reason for possession will always be to penetrate, the simple fact is that, while Swansea have the ball, the opposition are unable to score. He also says that by "recycling" the ball for long periods his team are able to recover. "The only time we rest is when we have the ball," the 39-year-old says. "When we haven't got the ball is the moment for intense pressure to get the ball back. But you can't go for 90 minutes, so in order to recuperate and conserve energy, we'll do that sometimes by building our way through the game — our tiki-taka football, our small lending games to keep the ball.

"When we're stuck in the game, we go back to our default system, which is possession."

Always open to fresh ideas, Rodgers has been exploring an alternative system, which he tested in the 4-4 draw against Wolves last month, when Swansea changed from 4-3-3 to 3-4-3. He also hopes to have a few more tricks up his sleeve after spending four days with Spain at their Euro 2012 training camp in Austria later this month, as a guest of their manager, Vicente del Bosque. "Spain have been a great model for me over many years, so I always take the chance where I can to travel and understand new methods," Rodgers says.

Before then, however, Swansea aim to finish off their season in style. Rodgers, back in his office after training, points to four words scribbled on a whiteboard. "Our motto was that there, Per Ardua Ad Astra, which means through adversity to the stars. Because this is what we're in, a real adverse situation," he says. "So this weekend is about celebrating success. For us to stay at this level, for the players, my staff, the club and the supporters, it is an incredible achievement."

What's in a day: Swansea's training routine

10am, Warm-up The players begin their warm-up on the tennis courts in the fitness centre, where they do some core work. Then they have agility work and relay races on the training pitch

10.45am, Keep-ball The players are split into two groups and those on the outside, who are allowed only one touch, try to keep the ball off the two in the middle

11am, Six v three Remaining in two groups of nine, the players are split into three teams of three within each group. In a confined area, 10 yards by five yards, each team of three takes it in turns to try and get the ball off the other six players with the aim of scoring in the small goal sat either end

11.15am, Twelve v six The players move to a bigger area, 40 yards by 30 yards, and this time it is six versus six in the middle, with full-size goals and goalkeepers at either end. The other six players are located on the outside and are on the side of the team that has the ball, effectively making it 12 v six

11.45am, Shooting Midfielders and forwards stay behind for a shooting session

Midday, Finish The sessions are 25 minutes shorter than normal at this stage of the season

 

[Woland]

This guy would be loads better than the other guy

 

[King Binny]

Dated Apr 2012:

The former Chelsea coach is keen to test himself at the highest level and wants to work with a Champions League team in the future. He intends to broaden his football education this summer by spending time studying teams preparing for Euro 2012.

Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins accepts he faces a huge battle to keep Rodgers, who has a £2.5m compensation clause in his new contract.

'I didn't put any clause in my contract to say if a top-four club comes in then I can speak to them. Not at all,' he said.

'The only item that was in the contract was if a big club came in and wanted me, and the chairman and I felt it was right for us to move on, then I wanted the club to benefit from it.

'That was very important for me that if I left the club would get rewarded.

'Other than that, I didn't want to instigate anything in the contract because I wanted to show I was happy here and continue to work.'

 

[King Binny]

Dated May 2011:

Swansea manager Brendan Rodgers plans to 'keep on top of the game' when he spends four days with world and European champions Spain at their pre-Euro 2012 training camp.

The 39-year-old will link up with Vicente del Bosque's side at their pre-tournament training camp in Schruns, Austria the week after next.

The Northern Irishman has brilliantly led the Swans to Barclays Premier League survival ahead of Sunday's final game of the season, and they can still claim a top-10 finish with victory over Liverpool at the Liberty Stadium.

Swansea's acclaimed passing style has brought comparisons to the manner in which Barcelona and Spain have achieved their recent successes.

Rodgers hopes that his trip, organised with the help of respected Spanish football pundit Guillem Balague to observe the likes of Del Bosque, Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Gerard Pique, will come in handy when the next Premier League season rolls around.

He said: 'I am going there for a few days to watch training and mix with the staff and people there and just exchange ideas.

'I am always one who believes it is too difficult in-season to do that, as you are so busy and so tied up on a daily and weekly basis.

'I have done it all my life at the end of seasons, I have looked to go away and keep on top of the game at the leading edge.

'It's a commitment to learning and development which has been a part of my cycle as a person and a coach.

'They are the world champions, they are the European champions, I am fortunate enough to speak a bit of the language so it will be great to be in their company and see their preparations.

'Then I come back and travel to New York to see Wales play so I will be interested to see how my players feature out there against a very good Mexican team.'

 

[King Binny]

And he's already a grandfather.. I shit you not.

With his 19 yr old son, Anton

 

[King Binny]

Dated Mar 2012:

The Swansea manager, Brendan Rodgers, has won high praise in a survey of Premier League managers by being voted the most impressive so far this season by his peers. Rodgers, who won 47% of the vote, has guided the Premier League debutants to 11th in the league after 28 matches by encouraging expansive football at all times and shunning the safety-first approach usually favoured by newly-promoted sides.

Norwich City's manager, Paul Lambert, polled second with 40%. His side are just one place below Swansea in 12th, having entertained with a no-fear approach while making household names of players with little to no previous Premier League experience: Grant Holt, Steve Morrison, Anthony Pilkington, Wes Hoolahan.

The phrasing of the question – "which manager has most impressed you" – may explain why Sir Alex Ferguson did not poll, and perhaps hints at a lack of popularity among his fellow managers. The only other two managers to attract any votes were Roberto Mancini and Steve Kean, who both polled at 6%. Kean's ability to avoid a public meltdown despite being subjected to ferocious criticism from Blackburn's disgruntled fans (who see him as being synonymous with Venky's amateurish ownership) has not been ignored.

Dated Jan 2012:

It is fitting that Thierry Henry's return to the Premier League should coincide with Arsenal's trip to the Liberty Stadium on Saturday to play Swansea City. Henry himself described Swansea as "an amazing team" earlier this week. "They play football the right way," was his conclusion, albeit this is a rather boomerang-shaped compliment. Watching his team-mates pit the more functional style of this current Arsenal against Brendan Rodgers's short-passing South Wales ball-hogs, Henry will perhaps feel a flush of twin-headed familiarity, a sense at times that it is in fact the newcomers in the white shirts who are playing a bit more like Arsenal than Arsenal are.

It has become commonplace in recent Premier League seasons to applaud the progressive attacking style of at least one plucky (and usually doomed) promoted team. This season it is the turn of Swansea to take the garlands for an encouraging start, albeit with some significant caveats. This is not Ian Holloway's fun but brittle Blackpool. Instead Swansea look like something new: Plucky Promoted Club 2.0, an even-keeled, vibrant but far from giddy insurgent power who, in a break with tradition, look as if they are here for a long time and not just a good time; and who also appear to have modelled their approach to some degree on today's visitors. If so, the appreciation is definitely mutual.

"They [Swansea] have the quality to play in the Premier League because they play positive football," Wenger said on Friday. "They keep possession and master possession in many games, and have the technical quality to be where they are. Over 38 games, that pays off.

"They play without fear everywhere. I think they are a team who look completely in place in the Premier League. It's very nice and very good news for England to have a manager like Brendan Rodgers adopting that style."

Rodgers is the most obvious governing factor in Swansea's recent ascent, notable this season in the home form that has brought 17 points and only one defeat from 10 games. Like Wenger, Swansea's manager is a man with a broad, sweeping plan, not just for first team but for everything beneath it: recruitment, training, team selection and the kind of spectacle he wants to serve up to the full houses of the Liberty Stadium.

With all appropriate reservations and disclaimers it is worth making the comparison with club football's current ideal, Barcelona, if only for the sense of good footballing habits being bred throughout a club and of a playing style – possession football combined with high-intensity pressing – that can, it seems, be implemented even among worthy but undeniably lesser players. Casting around as ever for a workable methodology, British football may really have something to learn from the rising power in South Wales.

The essence of Rodgers's tactical approach is illustrated by Swansea's most recent Premier League matches. Against Tottenham Hotspur on New Year's Eve a first point against a top-five team was earned largely on the back of the suffocating high energy midfield play that has served Swansea so well, the dual defensive midfielders Mark Gower and Joe Allen relentlessly pressing high up the field and forcing Luka Modric to manipulate the ball rather desperately at times in his own half. There was also evidence of the sudden shift of tempo that marks Swansea's attacking play: patient spells of deep possession spiced with precise thrusts often down the flanks. They are currently No1 by an absolute street when it comes to Premier League teams making passes in their own half. Swansea have made 2,474, practically lapping the team currently in second (yes, Arsenal) and making more than three times as many defensive passes as their tactical opposite, the get-it-forwards merchants of Stoke City.

Against Aston Villa two days later Swansea's first away win of the season had its roots in the team's ability to keep possession and control the tempo of a match, which they did so adeptly at times it was Villa who looked the ingénus. This facility on the ball is Swansea's most striking feature. As a team they are second behind only Manchester City in terms of completed passes this season, while the midfielder Leon Britton currently tops the table for Premier League passing accuracy with a 93.8% hit rate. Such comfort in possession is a rebuke to those who suggest British players are incapable of playing this way. Some can: and they should be encouraged, just as Rodgers has encouraged the pint-sized Britton – a fish out of water at Kevin Blackwell's concussive Sheffield United – to play to his technical strengths, transforming him in the process into a kind of Mumbles Xavi.

There is more to Swansea, though, than simply a fine manager and a pretty way with a football. Beyond this season's promising start there is an alluring sense of depth to the revival of this club, a coherence that has its roots in the dark times almost exactly 10 years ago when City were sold for £1 to a club director and then on to an inappropriate Australian consortium. Out of this stony rubble sprang the Swansea City Supporters Society Ltd, which now in another form owns 20% of the club. With the move to the Liberty Stadium in 2005 – built in conjunction with the local council – this suggestion of part-ownership by the people adds to a Barça-ish sense of a club fired by the regional pride that is so evident within the celebratory matchday funk of the Liberty's low-slung concrete bowl.

Beyond this it is Rodgers – a self-effacing managerial eminence, once head-hunted by José Mourinho to run Chelsea's academy, now in the business of outwitting more powerfully resourced Premier League managers – who is the power behind Swansea's most recent upturn. The policy of squad rotation within a well-grooved tactical system bore fruit over a festive period that saw Swansea make at least five changes between matches but still take five points. With an away win finally registered and the acknowledged failings – lack of both a quality striker and a set-piece specialist – addressed in part by the loan singing of the hotly tipped Gylfi Sigurdsson from Hoffenheim, these are hopeful times indeed at the Liberty.

 

[kingjulian]

So long as he doesn't bring his son with him to the club...

 

[dmishra]

He fathered a kid at 20, who then fathered a kid at 19?

 

[Hansern]

Pretty much..

 

[King Binny]

He fathered a kid at 20, who then fathered a kid at 19?

His parents were 21 and 15 when he was born.

 

[peterhague]

His mother couldn't have been 15. I think she died around 18 months before his father, so over 2 years ago, when he'd have been 36 or 37. She was 53, so would have been 16 or 17 when he was born.

Anyway, I've got a good feeling about him. I like the guy, and I think he's worth the risk. Hopefully we go for him over Martinez.

 

[dmishra]

Three generations of a family procreating in their teens? Are they a bit thick or what?

 

[King Binny]

His mother couldn't have been 15. I think she died around 18 months before his father, so over 2 years ago, when he'd have been 36 or 37. She was 53, so would have been 16 or 17 when he was born.

Anyway, I've got a good feeling about him. I like the guy, and I think he's worth the risk. Hopefully we go for him over Martinez.

Ah I just took 53 and minus 38.

His mum passed away on Feb 3 2010 at age of 53 and he was 37.

Should be 16 years old then.