Brendan Rodgers walks on through storm to revive Liverpool
Sacked in the morning. As Liverpool lost 3-0 at Manchester United in December, that taunt went beyond mocking supporters. Brendan Rodgers was coming under fire from all quarters after what seemed a troubling retreat from the thrilling, title-chasing campaign last season.
Liverpool limped away from Old Trafford in tenth place, ten points behind United. Rodgers talked afterwards of the massive job on his hands. “We’re looking to build a team again,” he explained. He talked of searching for solutions “to recapture the team ethos”.
Fast forward to this week and United still sit above Liverpool as the rivals meet at Anfield, but only by two points — and now it is Louis van Gaal casting around for a coherent plan.
Liverpool’s turnaround from those difficult days has been very impressive, and arguably an even more admirable indication of Rodgers’ coaching abilities than the Luis Suárez-led charge the year before. This is how he did it.
Have a vision — but do not be afraid to change it
Every senior member of the Liverpool staff has a copy of the 180-page One Vision, One Club dossier that he built up over 15 years and presented to the club’s owners at his job interview.
It contains the building blocks of a modern club, an attacking team. There are sections on behaviour, strategies, player development from nine years old to internationals. A chapter, too, on the “integrated education of the footballer — moral, intellectual, physical”.
The irony is that all the tactical drawings, covering every possible eventuality, are for 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 with diamond that were the bedrocks of Rodgers’ early career — yet it is 3-4-3 that has got him out of a hole.
That shows a willingness to adapt, because Rodgers admits that he stumbled across the solution. It took several bits to piece together and one came on one of Liverpool’s worst nights, the limp 1-0 defeat away to Basle in October.
Basle had started with 4-5-1 but when injury forced a reshuffle after nine minutes, they ended up closer to 3-4-3. As Liverpool laboured, Rodgers began to acknowledge how the opposition’s system was so difficult to counter.
It would get much worse before it got better for Liverpool, but there was a germ of an idea in Rodgers’s head.
You will make mistakes — but act on them
It always did seem too much of a risk signing Mario Balotelli, even if Liverpool were desperate. They had missed out on Alexis Sánchez who, after making positive noises about playing as a central striker for Rodgers, listened to his wife’s preference to swap Barcelona for London. A surgeon refused to approve Loïc Rémy’s transfer from Queens Park Rangers. With Daniel Sturridge injured, Rodgers urgently needed another forward.
Some at Anfield warned that Balotelli was too much trouble but Rodgers had previously shown good work with misfits and rejects. He puts great store in individual sessions with players, and psychology. At Swansea City, he employed a neurologist. At Liverpool, Dr Steve Peters visits twice a week and speaks to many players via Skype on other days.
Rodgers believes that he can get into players’ minds and he spent three and a half hours with Balotelli and his agent before the contract was signed. He gave the Italian the address that every Liverpool player knows by heart about the CORE values: Commitment, Ownership, Responsibility, Excellence.
Commitment? Rodgers tells them that motivation is not enough because it fluctuates. Would you want a heart surgeon less motivated for his fifth operation of the day than the first?
Ownership? Each player has his own plan, his targets. For Jordan Henderson, it may be becoming the best English midfielder in the country; Sturridge one of the most consistent scorers in Europe.
Responsibility? Rodgers draws a stick man with a crown on its head. You are king of your own destiny. He tells them how, injured at 20, he had to shape his way as a coach. As for Excellence, that should speak for itself.
There are those who will regard this all as a bit management-speak, but Rodgers is serious and sincere about developing people, not just footballers. He thought Balotelli had got the message. He was wrong. But a big part of effective management is acknowledging mistakes.
It all comes back to hard work
Rodgers’ style is associated with possession-based adventure but it is nothing without pressing, and that has to start from the front. Suárez and Sturridge were relentless, but Balotelli could not, or would not, do it. As the team lost their intensity, they were dropping deeper and deeper. The defence was creaking under the strain.
Sometimes you just have to admit your mistakes, and the sooner the better. Balotelli started eight Premier League games up to early November. He has not started any since. Already his camp are looking for his next move, perhaps to Turkey. But Rodgers had to work out a team without a centre forward.
There is always a solution
The 3-1 defeat away to Crystal Palace on November 23 was the nadir. To lose was bad enough, but Rodgers did not recognise his team.
It hurt a manager who prides himself on a recognisable style that, to avoid a full-blown crisis, he had to prioritise avoiding defeat, cramming his team with experience, arresting the slump.
With little time on the training ground between Champions League fixtures, Rodgers locked himself away for hours in his office and called long meetings with staff. There were sleepless nights, 3am sessions with tea, toast and a tactics board.
There was no eureka moment, but 3-4-3 kept playing in his head. Basle had used it to great effect. One experiment at Newcastle United had ended in defeat, but glimpses of encouragement.
The more Rodgers looked, it seemed the way to put his best players on the pitch. Sterling could press through the middle and, while Rodgers did not seem blessed with central defenders, he could call on Emre Can.
Rodgers had seen Can play at centre half and even full back for Bayer Leverkusen. A book on his shelf about Pep Guardiola revealed Can had dropped back for Bayern Munich’s junior teams.
The more he looked, 3-4-3 appealed. Defeat away to United with that system went down as a heavy loss but, in fact, for 70 minutes Liverpool had looked confident again in possession. Rodgers had his solution.
English footballers can be top class — they just need help with tactics
Henderson was told that he could leave for Fulham in Rodgers’ first summer if he wanted guaranteed football. The player said he would stay if Rodgers could make him a better footballer. His considerable improvement is tribute to both.
The main improvement has been tactical — the missing piece for many English players according to Rodgers.
Intriguingly, he has overhauled the entire calendar for Liverpool’s academy, the nine to 16-year-olds, to reduce work in December and January — and extend the season from May until schools break up in July — because better weather is more suitable to tactical sessions, not just running around to stay warm.
The academy matters because Rodgers has told the Liverpool board that he always wants a core of British players. Part of him enjoys confounding the belief that they are in such short supply.
He believes his pressing game — hunt and suffocate — is perfectly suited to British culture, allowing players to express physicality but in a controlled, effective, intelligent way. Henderson is not the only example — Jordan Ibe has shown huge promise, among others — but he epitomises individual improvement through coaching.
Job satisfaction
For a man once turned down by Leicester City, who preferred Gary Megson as their manager, Rodgers’ career is on a rapid, upward trajectory. But recent gains have come against a backdrop of personal tragedy and upheaval. In the last few years he has lost both his parents to cancer, been through a divorce and endured two trials at the Old Bailey where his son, Anton, was cleared of sexual assault.
He has maintained his focus and his ability to improve players and teams will lead the FA to come calling soon enough offering the England job. Rodgers will be tempted one day, but it is far too soon for him to consider an international career.
Manchester City may show interest, while Arsenal will surely have him high on their post-Arsène Wenger list. But Rodgers regards winning the title with Liverpool as the ultimate challenge of his coaching calibre. Expect him to stay — at least for as long as he believes it is possible.
Sacked in the morning. As Liverpool lost 3-0 at Manchester United in December, that taunt went beyond mocking supporters. Brendan Rodgers was coming under fire from all quarters after what seemed a troubling retreat from the thrilling, title-chasing campaign last season.
Liverpool limped away from Old Trafford in tenth place, ten points behind United. Rodgers talked afterwards of the massive job on his hands. “We’re looking to build a team again,” he explained. He talked of searching for solutions “to recapture the team ethos”.
Fast forward to this week and United still sit above Liverpool as the rivals meet at Anfield, but only by two points — and now it is Louis van Gaal casting around for a coherent plan.
Liverpool’s turnaround from those difficult days has been very impressive, and arguably an even more admirable indication of Rodgers’ coaching abilities than the Luis Suárez-led charge the year before. This is how he did it.
Have a vision — but do not be afraid to change it
Every senior member of the Liverpool staff has a copy of the 180-page One Vision, One Club dossier that he built up over 15 years and presented to the club’s owners at his job interview.
It contains the building blocks of a modern club, an attacking team. There are sections on behaviour, strategies, player development from nine years old to internationals. A chapter, too, on the “integrated education of the footballer — moral, intellectual, physical”.
The irony is that all the tactical drawings, covering every possible eventuality, are for 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 with diamond that were the bedrocks of Rodgers’ early career — yet it is 3-4-3 that has got him out of a hole.
That shows a willingness to adapt, because Rodgers admits that he stumbled across the solution. It took several bits to piece together and one came on one of Liverpool’s worst nights, the limp 1-0 defeat away to Basle in October.
Basle had started with 4-5-1 but when injury forced a reshuffle after nine minutes, they ended up closer to 3-4-3. As Liverpool laboured, Rodgers began to acknowledge how the opposition’s system was so difficult to counter.
It would get much worse before it got better for Liverpool, but there was a germ of an idea in Rodgers’s head.
You will make mistakes — but act on them
It always did seem too much of a risk signing Mario Balotelli, even if Liverpool were desperate. They had missed out on Alexis Sánchez who, after making positive noises about playing as a central striker for Rodgers, listened to his wife’s preference to swap Barcelona for London. A surgeon refused to approve Loïc Rémy’s transfer from Queens Park Rangers. With Daniel Sturridge injured, Rodgers urgently needed another forward.
Some at Anfield warned that Balotelli was too much trouble but Rodgers had previously shown good work with misfits and rejects. He puts great store in individual sessions with players, and psychology. At Swansea City, he employed a neurologist. At Liverpool, Dr Steve Peters visits twice a week and speaks to many players via Skype on other days.
Rodgers believes that he can get into players’ minds and he spent three and a half hours with Balotelli and his agent before the contract was signed. He gave the Italian the address that every Liverpool player knows by heart about the CORE values: Commitment, Ownership, Responsibility, Excellence.
Commitment? Rodgers tells them that motivation is not enough because it fluctuates. Would you want a heart surgeon less motivated for his fifth operation of the day than the first?
Ownership? Each player has his own plan, his targets. For Jordan Henderson, it may be becoming the best English midfielder in the country; Sturridge one of the most consistent scorers in Europe.
Responsibility? Rodgers draws a stick man with a crown on its head. You are king of your own destiny. He tells them how, injured at 20, he had to shape his way as a coach. As for Excellence, that should speak for itself.
There are those who will regard this all as a bit management-speak, but Rodgers is serious and sincere about developing people, not just footballers. He thought Balotelli had got the message. He was wrong. But a big part of effective management is acknowledging mistakes.
It all comes back to hard work
Rodgers’ style is associated with possession-based adventure but it is nothing without pressing, and that has to start from the front. Suárez and Sturridge were relentless, but Balotelli could not, or would not, do it. As the team lost their intensity, they were dropping deeper and deeper. The defence was creaking under the strain.
Sometimes you just have to admit your mistakes, and the sooner the better. Balotelli started eight Premier League games up to early November. He has not started any since. Already his camp are looking for his next move, perhaps to Turkey. But Rodgers had to work out a team without a centre forward.
There is always a solution
The 3-1 defeat away to Crystal Palace on November 23 was the nadir. To lose was bad enough, but Rodgers did not recognise his team.
It hurt a manager who prides himself on a recognisable style that, to avoid a full-blown crisis, he had to prioritise avoiding defeat, cramming his team with experience, arresting the slump.
With little time on the training ground between Champions League fixtures, Rodgers locked himself away for hours in his office and called long meetings with staff. There were sleepless nights, 3am sessions with tea, toast and a tactics board.
There was no eureka moment, but 3-4-3 kept playing in his head. Basle had used it to great effect. One experiment at Newcastle United had ended in defeat, but glimpses of encouragement.
The more Rodgers looked, it seemed the way to put his best players on the pitch. Sterling could press through the middle and, while Rodgers did not seem blessed with central defenders, he could call on Emre Can.
Rodgers had seen Can play at centre half and even full back for Bayer Leverkusen. A book on his shelf about Pep Guardiola revealed Can had dropped back for Bayern Munich’s junior teams.
The more he looked, 3-4-3 appealed. Defeat away to United with that system went down as a heavy loss but, in fact, for 70 minutes Liverpool had looked confident again in possession. Rodgers had his solution.
English footballers can be top class — they just need help with tactics
Henderson was told that he could leave for Fulham in Rodgers’ first summer if he wanted guaranteed football. The player said he would stay if Rodgers could make him a better footballer. His considerable improvement is tribute to both.
The main improvement has been tactical — the missing piece for many English players according to Rodgers.
Intriguingly, he has overhauled the entire calendar for Liverpool’s academy, the nine to 16-year-olds, to reduce work in December and January — and extend the season from May until schools break up in July — because better weather is more suitable to tactical sessions, not just running around to stay warm.
The academy matters because Rodgers has told the Liverpool board that he always wants a core of British players. Part of him enjoys confounding the belief that they are in such short supply.
He believes his pressing game — hunt and suffocate — is perfectly suited to British culture, allowing players to express physicality but in a controlled, effective, intelligent way. Henderson is not the only example — Jordan Ibe has shown huge promise, among others — but he epitomises individual improvement through coaching.
Job satisfaction
For a man once turned down by Leicester City, who preferred Gary Megson as their manager, Rodgers’ career is on a rapid, upward trajectory. But recent gains have come against a backdrop of personal tragedy and upheaval. In the last few years he has lost both his parents to cancer, been through a divorce and endured two trials at the Old Bailey where his son, Anton, was cleared of sexual assault.
He has maintained his focus and his ability to improve players and teams will lead the FA to come calling soon enough offering the England job. Rodgers will be tempted one day, but it is far too soon for him to consider an international career.
Manchester City may show interest, while Arsenal will surely have him high on their post-Arsène Wenger list. But Rodgers regards winning the title with Liverpool as the ultimate challenge of his coaching calibre. Expect him to stay — at least for as long as he believes it is possible.
