Been coming for a while. I've wanted so much for him to do well, but I was convinced he didn't have what it takes for the few weeks now. Problems as I see it:
Chief amongst my issues is that he's chopped & changed playing style over & over. He came in extolling the virtues of possession football - 'death by football' it was dubbed. He struggled to get us playing that way in his first season, reverting to a more standard play that saw us climb the table. In the next season, he tinkered around before being forced to play Dracula & Studge up front; it worked almost from the off and he stuck with it. The emergence of both Coutinho & Sterling meant our attack was breathtaking - but our defence was shambolic at times. He then struggled last season, with chaotic switching of play to no effect until stumbling on the 3-5-2 formation that saw us go on a run. We got taken apart by the arses, with Wenger outthinking him embarrassingly - and the 3-5-2 was dropped completely. This season saw a continuation of him being all over the place, scrabbling round for a successful formation. Unsuccessfully.
Then there are the signings. Nobody knows just how much the rightly-maligned transfer committee makes the decisions, and it's true that some signings were clearly not his. But even when he's apparently had full say, the players he's brought in have been mostly poor. He put his foot down over signing Lovren (on the back of half of a good season) for instance... abject failure for us. It's also believed he was equally vociferous about Benteke - a player the world & his dog could see was so not the type of player who'd dovetail with the way Rodgers was seeming to be setting up to play. Or was he going to rip up the blueprint & start again, again?
Finally, there's the freezing out of certain players. It's actually - IMO - indicative of which players are his picks, which are the TC's. Because the players shunted out into the cold tend to be the ones rumoured to be TC signings. They get few chances, if any, often in the wrong position, before being dropped - frequently without doing anything apparently wrong. Meanwhile, the players reported to be his own signings seem to get chance after chance, despite making mistakes, but he perseveres with them (Lovren being the most obvious case in point). I was particularly p*ssed off over Ilori. He was one of the brightest defensive prospects when we signed him, experienced for his age, and Rodgers himself labelled him the future. He goes out on loan, picks up a couple of injuries so doesn't play that much, then Rodgers ships him out on loan to Villa. Not so bad if it was to gain PL experience - but we bloody give them a buy-out clause, and all pundits agree he's as good as gone. Yet he keeps Lovren??? Not to mention Skrtel, who is almost as crap. So, doesn't sort the CB pairing at all, shutting out players who couldn't do any worse. Is it because he doesn't want TC signings to be a success...?
The most enormous thing now is that FSG bring in someone proven & top quality. Fans fear FSG will go for Rodgers 2.0, an up & coming manager who talks a great game but is unproven. The bigger fear is that they go for a flavour-of-the-month type, a Gary Monk or Eddie Howe.
My only choice (and my knowledge of European managers is admittedly very narrow) would undoubtedly be Klopp. But would he come here? I'm not sure; not that I don't think he'd relish the challenge, nor that we couldn't afford him, but because of the behind-the-scenes set-up at Liverpool. The TC should follow Rodgers out the door.
Originally Posted by: Saint Snow