So far there has been only a few short clips released of the new fly on the wall documentary series about Liverpool but it is enough to confirm the impression of Brendan Rodgers as a man of presence and force of personality.
Rodgers can be seen addressing his players on the club's pre-season visit to the United States and telling the younger ones, to put it bluntly, that their attitude needs to improve. He makes his point slowly and very matter-of-factly. No shouting or flying off the handle. No swearing, just the clear sense that this is a manager who does not tolerate imperfections and delivered in a way that commands attention.
Halfway through, Rodgers juts out a finger at Raheem Sterling and the player suddenly looks what he is: a 17-year-old in a man's world. Sterling has said something that Rodgers does not like. "You say 'steady' again when I say something to you," Rodgers informs him, "you'll be on the first plane back." Sterling tries to deny it and Rodgers cuts him dead. There is going to be only one winner in this debate.
The whole thing lasts barely a minute but it is enough to tell you that Being Liverpool should be compelling viewing when Fox Soccer begins the six-part series on 16 September, with Channel 5 holding the UK rights. After that, the plan is for a Being Manchester City series, followed by Being Chelsea. Both clubs, this column has been told, are receptive to the idea and if it takes off – to be specific, if it does well in the USA – the hope is Manchester United could be tempted further down the line.
It is all about cracking America, though given the history of these documentaries it is not altogether clear whether it is a good idea, and probably won't be until the credits roll on the final episode.
Football fly on the walls have a habit of leaving their subject with burned fingers, or in some cases their entire arms on fire, and there has to be a risk attached when the official blurb talks of "unprecedented access," with cameras allowed on "the training fields, in the gyms, changing rooms and boardrooms, at team meetings and at home". All of which equates to good television, yes. Just not necessarily good sense, if we are going by the lesson of history.
HBO has a similar series, Hard Knocks, that has been going behind the scenes, warts and all, in the NFL since 2001. This year it is the Miami Dolphins who put themselves forward, which probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Except Miami have come across as a rabble and, watching it all unfold, it is clear why most teams wouldn't touch the show with a bargepole these days.
One scene recently was of three senior players turning up at the coach Joe Philbin's office to complain that he was not communicating enough with them. Then, three weeks ago, the wide receiver Chad Johnson was arrested for allegedly butting his wife, Evelyn Lozada. They had been married a grand total of 41 days and the police report says their row began with her finding a receipt for condoms in his car. Johnson is now facing a domestic battery charge and Hard Knocks was there when he reported to work the day after getting bail. It is compelling viewing, as car‑crash television so often is, culminating in Philbin sitting him down to break the news during a long and emotive conversation that he is being cut.
Nothing quite so sensational at Anfield, where they have at least had the sense to realise that a lot of things go on behind the scenes at football clubs that they would not want on television. One of the smartest moves Liverpool's owners, principally John W Henry, have made this summer is revamping the club's PR department in the wake of the Luis Suárez affair.
The new regime is switched on enough to realise the dangers of these kind of shows and understand the importance of editorial control. So don't tune in expecting to see, close-up, the sacking of Kenny Dalglish, or hear the club's least productive signings being derided in the boardroom.
All the same, the filming does take in the end of the Dalglish era, an FA Cup final defeat and what is essentially a difficult changeover period.
Liverpool's way has always been to try to keep everything in-house and if there are supporters who feel a little uneasy about what to expect, or followers of Chelsea and Manchester City who would rather their clubs don't go down this line, they only have to look back to last season – the Suárez issues, the mutiny against André Villas-Boas plus assorted Carlos Tevez and John Terry controversies – to realise the potential for embarrassment.
Leyton Orient tried something similar in the 1994-95 season and, even now, it still makes for gruesome viewing. The low point of Club for a Fiver comes at half-time of one game against Blackpool when the joint manager, John Sitton, is filmed sacking the crowd favourite, Terry Howard, before offering "a right fucking sort-out" to two other players. "And you can pair up if you like," Sitton kindly offers, "and you can fucking pick someone else to help you, and you can bring your fucking dinner. Cos by the time I've finished with you, you'll fucking need it."
Sitton might fit nicely into a Guy Ritchie film but he has not worked in professional football since, despite sending off 60-odd job applications. The last anyone heard of him he was a black-cab driver. Sitton, in a letter to the Leyton Orientear fanzine, blamed a documentary "that at best can only be described as sensationalist and, at worst, totally inaccurate and unbalanced". The film-makers, he complained, had ignored the run-of-the-mill stuff to focus on the "four or five times" he lost his rag.
Well, yes, that's the point. Scott Boggins, the executive producer of the Liverpool series, didn't win his Emmy awards in his previous venture, the 24/7 boxing documentaries on HBO, by ignoring all the juicy stuff.
Likewise, the heavy editing of The Four Year Plan wasn't enough to spare QPR's embarrassment when it was shown on BBC2 in May, including one brilliant moment when Flavio Briatore threatened to sell the club unless someone delivered him the names of every single fan who had been singing rude songs about him.
These things rarely end well and, though we lap it up at home, the clubs are always taking a calculated gamble when they sign up. Liverpool, with careful guidance, might manage to get through the series without any major casualties but the nature of these things suggests that is not necessarily what the documentary-makers want.
As for the proposed next series, City have to ask themselves the same kind of questions that Liverpool have just ticked off. Does the good outweigh the bad and who has the final say in what goes out? For now, there are probably only two certainties. The first is that Sterling will think twice about back-chatting his manager in the future. The second is that an access-all-areas documentary with Mario Balotelli at its epicentre would probably be worth the licence fee on its own.
