Rodgers:
Notice the highlighted phrase - "they might not always be the best players but what we need in the second year of this project is to find a great level of consistency." It's interesting that Brendan makes such an emphasis on mentality and consistency now and I believe he is right to do so.
If you look at United, they didn't always have the best players in every position. But their players always believed they SHOULD win every game and knew that no possible excuses for failure would be accepted. The difference between the top teams and us is not just the squad depth or talent, it's also the attitude. Remember how every time Brendan talked about possibly challenging for a top 4 place, the team folded in the next game? Is it really Brendan's fault for mentioning that we have some kind of ambition as a club, or is it the players' fault for being afraid to take the next step?
I think (and this is backed up by modern psychology and sociology, as far as I know) winners are not born, winning is a trainable habit. Losing is, too. That's why Arsenal become more limp and pathetic by the year, despite having a very good level of talent, a good manager, and a consistent and modern playing style. Unlike them, we have actually won some trophies in the past 8 years. But those were all cup competitions, which teach a different kind of habit compared to the one Championship-winning teams acquire: namely that if you concentrate all of your will and emotion on just a few games in the season, you can get rewarded with a win. We got so well-trained in this habit that even in our rock-bottom seasons, under Hodgson and Kenny, we retained an ability to beat any of our big rivals in a single game, despite being hopelessly behind them over the course of the season.
Championship-winning teams need to form a different habit: being able to be a little bit better than your opponent every single week. It's a different mentality; more of a controlled fire that a manager adjusts up or down depending on the opponent or importance of a particular game, rather than a fire or an explosion, where all energy is spent on one game or a short run at a crucial part of the season and then it takes long time to recover. We used to be an "explosion" team under Rafa and later; we would suffer and grind through too many 0:0 and 1:1 draws in from August to February, and then try to get on a winning run in March through May, by which time the deficit was usually too big to make up (although one season we almost did it). As the team talent level and quality was gradually getting worse after the 08-09 season, we lost the ability to go on a long run, but still could beat United or Chelsea in any given game or go on a FA Cup run.
I can see that Brendan immediately started trying to instill the Championship-oriented philosophy in his players and that came at the expense of the being able to concentrate on a "big" game to ruin the afternoon for one of the top clubs. You could still kind of see the old mentality at work in the early season games against City and United (which we were unlucky not to win), but by mid-season we indeed seemingly lost our ability to beat the top teams. The press, in their incessant questioning about Liverpool not being able to beat any team in the top 8, actually stumbled on a valid point, for a change. At roughly the same time as the team stopped giving the super-effort against the top teams, they started to be more consistent about beating the teams below. In other words, they started playing every game closer to their actual level, rather than fluctuating between extremes in performance.
I think at the moment we still have too many players who have little or no experience playing in a team with a Championship-winning mentality. Sadly, this includes our captain, who is more used to heroics than a kind of consistent, confident weekly grind that wins Championships. However, I think Gerrard showed himself to be trainable; early in the season he would jump into "superhero mode" at every sign of trouble, now he is more consistent, although there is still lot of room for improvement. He allowed his level of play to drop against "lower-risk" opponents on more than one occasion this season and that's unacceptable for a captain, especially when the rest of the team is trying to find that elusive consistency. We paid for those letdowns in performance with some bad losses against bad teams. Championship-winning teams don't make such mistakes.
It's natural for young players, who don't quite know what they are capable of yet, to be inconsistent. So I am giving a pass to Coutinho, Sturridge or Henderson if their level of play fluctuates from game to game. Our squad is young overall, that's why the senior players we do have have to be really, really consistent from game to game. That's why I think Rodgers was so willing to start Downing in every game, despite clearly not being in awe of his attacking abilities - but once Stu found his form, he kept producing a solid 7 in pretty much every game. And that's why the clear lack of consistency from the likes of Johnson, Enrique, Agger, Skrtel and Reina was such a killer - you really could not predict where the next big mistake would come from.
Look at Glen Johnson's pass accuracy from game to game here (click on Avg Pass Accuracy >> Over time). How can one of the club's most senior and expensive players have his passing % jump from 90 to 60 from one game to the next? Look at the shape of his passing accuracy chart: it's all zig-zag up and down. Enrique and Gerrard are not much better in that regard. Compare their stats with Allen, whose graphic is more of a straight line rather that a crazy zig-zag. You can see why Rodgers likes him, even when his form is not the best. Same goes for Lucas. And even Henderson and Coutihno who, despite a couple of visible dips in form, generally stay at the same level from one game to the next.
OK, so what's the conclusion? I think the Championship-winning mentality has to come from the manager and the players will follow (or those who are not willing to adapt will be shipped out). I believe Rodgers has that mentality despite not actually coming close to winning a Championship as manager yet; but his Swansea team was consistent and I believe he picked up some of Mourihno's mentality from working with him. There is nothing a manager like Mourihno hates more than a player whose form is unpredictable from game to game (because it ruins his honed and detailed tactical plan). So I am not surprised that Rodgers is making an emphasis on consistency, rather than talent, "passion" or whatnot as he analyzes his first season in charge and looks for the ways to get better results. I think players who cannot achieve some basic consistency from one game to the next have to be either replaced or challenged by an incoming player - not necessarily more talented, but definitely the more consistent one. Our whole back 5 (4 defenders and Reina) should be targeted for improvement.
I think we as fans must also understand what Rodgers is trying to do; how we gradually transition from a team that plays at 150% in one game and 70% in the next to a team that keeps it consistently around 90%, from a team geared for winning Cups and taking pride in spoiling some big team's afternoon, to a team hopefully challenging for Championship themselves and maybe sometimes prone to having their afternoon spoiled by a determined opponent, but always keeping the big picture in mind. It might all sound trivial, but it's not - it's a different philosophy then what we've become used to in the past years and just like the players, we the fans will need to adjust our thinking too. We will need to learn to appreciate the quiet unspectacular workers in the team, to understand that a player who performs at "7777" is MUCH more valuable to the team than the one who gives "8695", learn not to get too high after wins or too low after unexpected dropped points, always looking at the big picture of a long season. Even when the team hopefully finds its stride for real, some of us might feel a sense of nostalgia for the more emotional and less "calculating" team of old. It's OK, there is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling that. We can always re-watch the highlights of the Istambul game or the West Ham game and share our memories with equally nostalgic-ly inclined brethren. But all teams that win Championships consistently are, at some level, frankly a bit boring. Bayern, Barca, ManU boring. Let's hope we can join this club. In our way. Because the alternative is a "delusion of grandeur" or "sweet memories" club like Newcastle (and soon, Arsenal) and I don't want us to keep going down that road.
Notice the highlighted phrase - "they might not always be the best players but what we need in the second year of this project is to find a great level of consistency." It's interesting that Brendan makes such an emphasis on mentality and consistency now and I believe he is right to do so.
If you look at United, they didn't always have the best players in every position. But their players always believed they SHOULD win every game and knew that no possible excuses for failure would be accepted. The difference between the top teams and us is not just the squad depth or talent, it's also the attitude. Remember how every time Brendan talked about possibly challenging for a top 4 place, the team folded in the next game? Is it really Brendan's fault for mentioning that we have some kind of ambition as a club, or is it the players' fault for being afraid to take the next step?
I think (and this is backed up by modern psychology and sociology, as far as I know) winners are not born, winning is a trainable habit. Losing is, too. That's why Arsenal become more limp and pathetic by the year, despite having a very good level of talent, a good manager, and a consistent and modern playing style. Unlike them, we have actually won some trophies in the past 8 years. But those were all cup competitions, which teach a different kind of habit compared to the one Championship-winning teams acquire: namely that if you concentrate all of your will and emotion on just a few games in the season, you can get rewarded with a win. We got so well-trained in this habit that even in our rock-bottom seasons, under Hodgson and Kenny, we retained an ability to beat any of our big rivals in a single game, despite being hopelessly behind them over the course of the season.
Championship-winning teams need to form a different habit: being able to be a little bit better than your opponent every single week. It's a different mentality; more of a controlled fire that a manager adjusts up or down depending on the opponent or importance of a particular game, rather than a fire or an explosion, where all energy is spent on one game or a short run at a crucial part of the season and then it takes long time to recover. We used to be an "explosion" team under Rafa and later; we would suffer and grind through too many 0:0 and 1:1 draws in from August to February, and then try to get on a winning run in March through May, by which time the deficit was usually too big to make up (although one season we almost did it). As the team talent level and quality was gradually getting worse after the 08-09 season, we lost the ability to go on a long run, but still could beat United or Chelsea in any given game or go on a FA Cup run.
I can see that Brendan immediately started trying to instill the Championship-oriented philosophy in his players and that came at the expense of the being able to concentrate on a "big" game to ruin the afternoon for one of the top clubs. You could still kind of see the old mentality at work in the early season games against City and United (which we were unlucky not to win), but by mid-season we indeed seemingly lost our ability to beat the top teams. The press, in their incessant questioning about Liverpool not being able to beat any team in the top 8, actually stumbled on a valid point, for a change. At roughly the same time as the team stopped giving the super-effort against the top teams, they started to be more consistent about beating the teams below. In other words, they started playing every game closer to their actual level, rather than fluctuating between extremes in performance.
I think at the moment we still have too many players who have little or no experience playing in a team with a Championship-winning mentality. Sadly, this includes our captain, who is more used to heroics than a kind of consistent, confident weekly grind that wins Championships. However, I think Gerrard showed himself to be trainable; early in the season he would jump into "superhero mode" at every sign of trouble, now he is more consistent, although there is still lot of room for improvement. He allowed his level of play to drop against "lower-risk" opponents on more than one occasion this season and that's unacceptable for a captain, especially when the rest of the team is trying to find that elusive consistency. We paid for those letdowns in performance with some bad losses against bad teams. Championship-winning teams don't make such mistakes.
It's natural for young players, who don't quite know what they are capable of yet, to be inconsistent. So I am giving a pass to Coutinho, Sturridge or Henderson if their level of play fluctuates from game to game. Our squad is young overall, that's why the senior players we do have have to be really, really consistent from game to game. That's why I think Rodgers was so willing to start Downing in every game, despite clearly not being in awe of his attacking abilities - but once Stu found his form, he kept producing a solid 7 in pretty much every game. And that's why the clear lack of consistency from the likes of Johnson, Enrique, Agger, Skrtel and Reina was such a killer - you really could not predict where the next big mistake would come from.
Look at Glen Johnson's pass accuracy from game to game here (click on Avg Pass Accuracy >> Over time). How can one of the club's most senior and expensive players have his passing % jump from 90 to 60 from one game to the next? Look at the shape of his passing accuracy chart: it's all zig-zag up and down. Enrique and Gerrard are not much better in that regard. Compare their stats with Allen, whose graphic is more of a straight line rather that a crazy zig-zag. You can see why Rodgers likes him, even when his form is not the best. Same goes for Lucas. And even Henderson and Coutihno who, despite a couple of visible dips in form, generally stay at the same level from one game to the next.
OK, so what's the conclusion? I think the Championship-winning mentality has to come from the manager and the players will follow (or those who are not willing to adapt will be shipped out). I believe Rodgers has that mentality despite not actually coming close to winning a Championship as manager yet; but his Swansea team was consistent and I believe he picked up some of Mourihno's mentality from working with him. There is nothing a manager like Mourihno hates more than a player whose form is unpredictable from game to game (because it ruins his honed and detailed tactical plan). So I am not surprised that Rodgers is making an emphasis on consistency, rather than talent, "passion" or whatnot as he analyzes his first season in charge and looks for the ways to get better results. I think players who cannot achieve some basic consistency from one game to the next have to be either replaced or challenged by an incoming player - not necessarily more talented, but definitely the more consistent one. Our whole back 5 (4 defenders and Reina) should be targeted for improvement.
I think we as fans must also understand what Rodgers is trying to do; how we gradually transition from a team that plays at 150% in one game and 70% in the next to a team that keeps it consistently around 90%, from a team geared for winning Cups and taking pride in spoiling some big team's afternoon, to a team hopefully challenging for Championship themselves and maybe sometimes prone to having their afternoon spoiled by a determined opponent, but always keeping the big picture in mind. It might all sound trivial, but it's not - it's a different philosophy then what we've become used to in the past years and just like the players, we the fans will need to adjust our thinking too. We will need to learn to appreciate the quiet unspectacular workers in the team, to understand that a player who performs at "7777" is MUCH more valuable to the team than the one who gives "8695", learn not to get too high after wins or too low after unexpected dropped points, always looking at the big picture of a long season. Even when the team hopefully finds its stride for real, some of us might feel a sense of nostalgia for the more emotional and less "calculating" team of old. It's OK, there is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling that. We can always re-watch the highlights of the Istambul game or the West Ham game and share our memories with equally nostalgic-ly inclined brethren. But all teams that win Championships consistently are, at some level, frankly a bit boring. Bayern, Barca, ManU boring. Let's hope we can join this club. In our way. Because the alternative is a "delusion of grandeur" or "sweet memories" club like Newcastle (and soon, Arsenal) and I don't want us to keep going down that road.
