Very interesting interview with James Pearce. Well worth a listen.
All that transfer stuff seems like propaganda to me. Rodgers has made the point before about having the first and last pick on a player. Maybe he was toeing the line on that, but it seems like Rodgers putting a few names out there, '
look at what you could have won', to keep the fans onside.
Pearce also makes what I think is a false distinction about Rodgers' qualities as a manager. He says on the one hand its unfair to say that he's been found out as a manager because last season he was making decisions in games that worked well. On the other hand he's saying the reason the tactics aren't working this season is because there are so many more games and he's lost the two players who are in the form of their lives and bagged them 50 goals.
Well, basically that means he could do it when it was easy, but not when its difficult. Last year he had a team that picked itself, with very few key injuries, and had entire weeks between games to work on tactics. Easy enough to switch from 4-3-3 to a diamond, for example, when the personnel are the same and you have a week to study the opposition.
This year the opposite is true. He has a larger group of players all with differing characteristics, few of whom have an undisputed claim to play, many of whom are new and/or low on confidence, and he has very little time to make plans and implement them. But that's the challenge of being a manager at a top club. Your best players get injured and you have to adjust your style of play to match. You have to pick the right times to blood new player and the right time to stick with your old players. And you spend more time travelling than training. Thats when the best managers show their worth.
Rodgers, like Moyes last year, seems to be making repeated poor calls about what tactics to use and when. Not sure if they're picked from a hat, or he just has poor judgement. Against Real Madrid at home, when a point would have been admirable, they come out swinging against the best team in Europe, who, surprise-surprise, rolled with the blows then delivered a knockout combination. But then, when they need to win a game against Basle, they start with two defensive midfielders (lucas and allen) and leave Coutinho and Lallana on the bench. Wrong call.
Now Rodgers may learn from this and improve. But right now I'd say he's certainly been found out. He looks like a manager with too much going on for him to process.
