Rodgers on FSG's youth policy

[gkmacca]

The Times
Rory Smith


The vision of Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the club’s owner, to create a young team in the pursuit of long-term success rather than signing established winners remains intact and Rodgers is determined to prevent Liverpool from becoming a club who merely develop players for the benefit of others.

“That’s right, otherwise you just have to keep rebuilding or restocking your squad,” Rodgers said. “It is the model of the club. Whether I like it or not, it is how the model is set up. I do the best with the players available. Yes, I think the most successful teams will average 28/29 and ours will be below that. You will see that in the recent game against Manchester United, where a lack of experience shows. That is why they are here — to learn.

“You can only do your best and the challenges Liverpool face now are far greater than they were 20 years ago. It does not affect the status of the club. It is still an incredibly huge club around the world, but the modern player is different. It is a different feeling. You want to be successful, but for a young player there is no greater place to develop. We want that youthfulness, you do not just want it for another team to come and take it. My focus is to keep this group together and add to it and compete for trophies.”






This was an odd little section of yesterday's presser. I get the bit about not wanting to lose young players, but he appears to be frustrated with broader aspects of the youth issue. Rodgers seems to imply he's not entirely happy with FSG's policy, but I'm not sure why he makes a point about the current average age of title winning teams. You can surely adopt FSG's policy and then, if you do keep the players together, they'll become an experienced team that can challenge for a title. And we came close enough last season with a fairly young team. So I don't quite see why he suggested there's a bit of tension there. It was certainly deliberate - so he wanted it to be noticed.

 

[Best Believe It]

I guess this is him starting to apply pressure on FSG to enable him to bring in 2-3 top class players this summer.

 

[gkmacca]

That's plausible. I just find that line 'whether I like it or not' quite jarring. As I said in a different thread, FSG's policy really isn't that different to Shanks' or Paisley's - neither of them tended to buy players aged over 25 (Dalglish, at 26, was thus quite an 'old' signing by LFC's standards). They won titles mainly with players who'd been in the team for several years and reached their peak together, and then several more younger players were already being introduced to freshen things up. And I would've thought that's Rodgers' philosophy, too. Maybe the pressure to win something now is the issue - maybe he feels FSG need to switch to short term signings if they want a short term triumph.

 

[jexykrodic]

I can't understand why a football club would adopt a policy that is self limiting. Being ageist about recruitment as FSG appear to be seems just such a policy.

 

[gkmacca]

I think it's fine so long as there's a degree of flexibility. Clubs need to be pragmatic at times. If Henry and Werner really do study football as much as they claim they'll know that some title challenges turned on short term, shrewd buys of experienced players who made a difference. We could do with a strong, experienced midfielder to bring along the likes of Hendo and Can, and frankly any top goalscorer, regardless of age (not Rushie, of course, before you say it).

 

[Rosco]

Needless to say, but he's wrong about the average age being 28/29. It's 26 for Chelsea and our average age is 1 year younger than Chelsea's.

I suppose he's getting the excuses in early and we'd have been much better off if he'd been allowed to sign Clint Dempsey et al

 

[juniormember]

but he's signed Toure and lambert, plus a not so young Lallana, and the club would have been happy to have kept Carra had he decided not to retire (reckon we would have won the league had he stayed, considering the difference he made after getting back in the team post christmas).

 

[MaBigTip]

I documented on here when I lost faith in Rodgers. Nothing has made me change my mind back. And the more he speaks the more I want him out. However, unless we can get a quality manager, I'd give him another year or two as part of FSG's youth policy. But there is no doubt in my mind that the reason we didn't get fourth this year is Rodgers. We were probably a 5 mil outlay on a young mobile striker away. Or dropping Gerrard earlier, or spending Lazar and Lallana money on one great forward. Instead Ibe makes 40 mill in outlay redundant. Oh and what if we hadn't let one of our best attackers go to derby for 6 months. Maybe, if we had a manager who had an eye for a player he wouldn't have. That's still the most damning thing about the man. The man wanted to pay Moses before Sterling.

 

[gkmacca]

Well I was strongly against him sending Ibe out on loan but I think I was wrong. While I thought Ibe could've been a good impact player for us from the start, he DID benefit hugely from his loan spell - he got the time and experience he needed, McLaren coached him well and it's accelerated his progress, for our benefit now.

But to be honest I can't see who'd WANT to come in and manage us, who'd improve us. As for Rodgers, he's an enigma. The players rave about him, but don't seem to play for him - unless they do try and they're just spectacularly weak, dim and cowardly. And Brendan's spent the season taking two steps back and one step forward. It's almost as if he needs about a month of self-congratulation after a successful tactical move, during which time even quite thick coaches manage to work out how to frustrate his new system. Wednesday's game is important, amongst other reasons, for this: can he actually outwit someone like Gary Bowyer? Can he show us he really is so far ahead of such a manager? Because that's the standard of manager who's outwitted him too many times this season, and, for all his talk, that's worrying.

 

[darkstarexodus]

Today showed there is still a considerable gap between us and the frontrunners. A poor summer didn't help. But Rodgers is the solution, not the problem. He is the perfect manager for a young squad in need of a good coach and a charismatic leader. He is also flexible and adaptive in his approach. Getting rid would be a massive mistake. He has some growing to do but I've seen nothing to suggest he isn't capable of it.

 

[gkmacca]

Well part of my concern when he was appointed was that he still had a hell of a lot of learning to do, and LFC simply isn't the kind of club that can afford the time for a manager to learn all those lessons. It's too big a club, the stakes are too high, the pressure too intense. You appoint proven, experienced, winners to manage LFC, or at least insiders who've been through it all and contributed to past triumphs. So far the club has given more to the manager than the manager has given to the club; he's now a more mature and experienced manager, but the club looks just as shaky as it did when he arrived, no matter how much he continues to rewrite history in a Dickensian vein. Look at Europe this season: he was way out of his depth. It was such an awful campaign I'm not even sure you can say he learnt anything from it. Would he cope any better next time? God knows. I really just don't know what to think of him these days. He's done some great things. Some poor things. Some confusing things. To rate him you might as well cut it all up like a William Burroughs word experiment, throw all the bits in the air and see if they make sense when they land.

 

[peekay]

Lallana, Lovren, Balotelli - all big money signings. It is not like we are focusing exclusively on 18 -20 years are we?

 

[gkmacca]

The policy is supposed to be under 25s, which, as I said, is pretty much what we've always done.

 

[darkstarexodus]

@gkmacca I would agree with that but when he was appointed, the options included Martinez (who was perhaps comparable), Van Gaal (past his prime), and perhaps de Boer. I don't recall any other prime contenders linked with the job at that time. I would have loved Klopp and, perhaps in retrospect Simone, but they weren't in play for us. A couple years down the line yes, we have given more to him than he to us, but to release him now would be to fail to reap the rewards of that investment. And again, who do we replace him with?

 

[gkmacca]

I don't think one can justify an appointment by saying it was the least worst of what was on offer. That's more of a criticism of the execution of the decision to change manager. You don't put the club in that position. Peter Robinson spent about three years planning to bring Houllier in. Benitez had been monitored for a long time. But it's just history now. Hopefully Rodgers will finally settle down once and for all next season, but that'll surely be his last chance.

 

[darkstarexodus]

I thought at the time and still maintain that it was a good appointment given our relative competitive decline. He (and the squad) is not the finished article and expectations were perhaps unfairly raised by last season's unexpected title push. I agree with you that next year will be his true reckoning. We need to be real contenders and a nearly completed "project" in the next 12 months. I fear how far we have to go though.

 

[gkmacca]

Rodgers could do with a relative decline if it means winning something.

 

[Frogfish]

Needless to say, but he's wrong about the average age being 28/29. It's 26 for Chelsea and our average age is 1 year younger than Chelsea's

Using the average can be very misleading considering how just a handful of much older players can distort that figure (esp. in a squad where they may not actually play that often, e.g. Lambert (32), Gerrard (34), Jones (32), Johnson (30), Toure (33) and even Enrique (28) for us this season).
Using the Median is a better assessment of the number of 'young' players in a squad. Or simply take out the likely retirement / transfers of older players in the Summer and calculate the Mean from the remainder.

The current ave. age of all our players in the 1st team squad is 25.42, deduct those listed above and it's 23.28. For Chelsea it's 28.47 (excluding those 4 youngsters listed but who haven't played a game but I have included Cuadrado, 26, with 2 starts) and United it's 25.23 (exc. non-starters) and Arsenal (exc. non-starters).

The ave. age of our 'core' for most of this season (players with 5 PL starts or more) has been 24.94.

Chelsea's ave. age won't change much for next season since Terry is going to sign a new 1 yr contract though Cech (32) and probably Drogba (37) will leave of course. Since the bulk of Chelsea's players are in the 26-29 age range and having 4 over-30's, but unlike where we will likely be shedding all of those this Summer Chelsea will probably only have 2 leave, it's more than likely (with those listed above leaving and Ibe certain to become a member of the 1st team squad) that the ave. age of our 1st team squad next season will be under 25 and Chelsea's 28-29 again.

 

[Rafiagra]

Rodgers is talking shite. His two biggest signings last summer were Lallana and Lovren, both at their peak, but duds.

The problem with our transfer policy is buying players who aren't good enough, and Rodgers prevalence for them.

 

[Judge Jules]

It doesn't make sense to load all the blame on Rodgers, any more than it would to put none of it on him. As others have said, it's the system within the club overall which needs looking at.

 

[gkmacca]

It looks as though we'll have to bring in another set of new players in the summer, and I think Rodgers needs to be banned from saying 'They'll need more time to understand our system'. Put them in the reserves, Brendan, and teach them the 'system,' and don't play them in the first team until they can play the 'system' right from the off.