Would you take Rodgers at United?
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You can literally tell what's going to happen as soon as we hit a bad patch under him.
Lose/draw a game unexpectedly and top 4 challenges at Leicester and Pool season would be brought up to reinforce the point that he is a "bottler" even though he overachieved in both the seasons. Add to that, his 1st task would be convincing the fan base that he's the right man, which is never good. As in at the time of appointment the fans need to be onboard with the change instead because things can go south really quickly - like in the case of Moyes, where people had turned against him after the defeat to City, which was 5th(?) game that season.
I believe he's a good manager and I rate him, but I doubt he's the one who can make us champions of England and Europe - and that's what the next manager should do. Under Ole, we've consolidated our position as a top 4 team, and unless the next manager can't take us to the next level, then it's a wrong appointment. And in Rodgers case, I think we know what his ceiling is and I hope we stay clear
Lose/draw a game unexpectedly and top 4 challenges at Leicester and Pool season would be brought up to reinforce the point that he is a "bottler" even though he overachieved in both the seasons. Add to that, his 1st task would be convincing the fan base that he's the right man, which is never good. As in at the time of appointment the fans need to be onboard with the change instead because things can go south really quickly - like in the case of Moyes, where people had turned against him after the defeat to City, which was 5th(?) game that season.
I believe he's a good manager and I rate him, but I doubt he's the one who can make us champions of England and Europe - and that's what the next manager should do. Under Ole, we've consolidated our position as a top 4 team, and unless the next manager can't take us to the next level, then it's a wrong appointment. And in Rodgers case, I think we know what his ceiling is and I hope we stay clear
If that ceiling is comprehensively outperforming expectations, as he has done with Swansea, Liverpool (before his best players were sold - Suarez in ‘14 and Sterling in ‘15 - and other prominent members of the attack were chronically injured - Sturridge) and currently at Leicester, then sign me up.
If that ceiling is establishing his team as the dominant one in the league playing fabulous football when he gets to work with the best players in the league, ala his time at Celtic (and something close to like he’d have at United), then, again, sign me up.
Throwing the ‘bottler’ tag at a manager who had a Liverpool team whose defence contained any variation of Mignolet, Glen Johnson, a 34-year-old Kolo Toure, Skrtel, Agger and John Flanagan within a whisker of a league title is deeply disingenuous. Similarly, using Leicester’s over-achievements these past two full seasons against clubs with multiples-more resources than them is also quite duplicitous. Leicester are probably a top 8-10 team on wage bill, transfer fees paid and squad profile overall yet there are posters here commenting with glee that they fell outside the top 4 on the final gameweek two seasons running. It’s unfair and weird in equal measure.
Rodgers may not bring the title back to Old Trafford but I’d hazard a confident guess that he’d get us much closer than Solskjaer ever has - and ever will - all the while playing modern, well-coached, progressive football. Everything else regarding Rodgers (his Liverpool connection, his ‘personality’ etc.) are moot points for me.
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I don’t really rate him or think he’s the right choice but he does seem to be the only one of potential candidates who actually wants the job now. Granted that could change if we actually sack Ole but with the amount of rumours going around and Ole going on holiday does feel like a change is coming soon. If it is him I’ll back him and give him time but I doubt a lot of the fan base will give him more than a year but I’m sure he’s well aware he’ll have to deliver from the off.
Be interesting to see how he sets us up and how he utilises our attacking players and more importantly how the players react to him
Be interesting to see how he sets us up and how he utilises our attacking players and more importantly how the players react to him
What are the Liverpool fans opinion on this if it materialises? (minimal WUMming please…)
I don’t think so. Some friends of mine who support Liverpool thinks that he might be able to take us back on the right path again. Obviously his not as good as Klopp, but they rate him. Also got more experience after his Liverpool spell.
Common sense say that our first team coaches are better then our youth coaches and our youth coaches are better then no coaching at all. However that's not really the point. By giving players such long holiday we are
A- Rewarding mediocrity. We're basically saying is that if players want a holiday mid way through the season all they have to do is to play shit so they ensure that they won't be picked with the national team, get the manager in trouble and when asked if they want to get a holiday they simply have to say yes.
B- We've got a small core of winners in the team. How would the likes of Varane and Ronaldo interpret the manager's decision to go on holiday during the middle of the crisis? Surely Ole had lost the last shred of reputation he had with these players
C- If we get a new manager then he'll be facing a mess were a group of players are tired (International duty), a group of players had been training at reduced tempo (youth training) and another group of players had not been training at all. That's silly especially considering how crucial these next few games are.
What top managers tend to do in such circumstances is to take players in a 'ritiro'. That means high intensity training away from their loved ones were they basically regret being in that situation in the first place.
And yet most of his current Leicester starting side was built before he arrived and got a hand in recruitment, while Liverpool's recruitment got better after he left with numerous articles (even recent ones in the wake of Edwards' departure) pointing to Rodgers as an active obstacle to occurring. It's not like their budgets massively changed during those periods, recruitment was just worse while he was there and having some say.
Because the football he implements is tactically void, and is far out of date.
Cheers mate - I think we’re pretty aligned there. I think that’s a bit symptomatic of a lot of Rodgers’ tenure, no? He comes in, improves a lot of what’s already at the club, but then slowly starts to chip away at his own successes with overplaying/poor signings.
So Brendan Rodgers doesn't play good football on the basis of the end of his Liverpool tenure?
It’s been stated many times that Salah was Klopp’s third or fourth choice when he was looking for a right-sided attacker.
Weirdly, Rodgers is rarely given credit for signing Coutinho for a pittance, developing his game (including playing him ‘out of position’ as a central midfielder at times) and the club making almost twenty times the fee they paid when selling him to Barcelona.
Transfers are hit and miss for the very best. Rodgers is no different than any manager in that regard.
I do think he will bring us closer to the title and with luck, we might nick it. We will probably play better as a team. I think he has over achieve with Liverpool and Leicester with those talent. Our squad definitely has more talent than his current Leicester team. Hopefully he can bring the best out of these players. If you give me a choice between Ole and Rodgers now then I will take Rodgers without question.
Oh I agree optics of all this are real bad and I don't think all of our coaches are lost causes either sooner we let go Solskjaer better it would then rather than imposing our current coaches on new manager let him make the call if he finds either of them to be useful for new setup keep them otherwise let them go with Solskjaer .
I'm acknowledging the bottler bit though. I agree that those can't be termed jobs as he wasn't expected to be that high then. But the point is if you're signing a manager who'll probably have an approval rating of 50% at the start, with Pool history, a reputation of bottlejobs among general fan base (I dont care about his Pool history, and dont consider them bottlejobs, but I'm referring to the general fan base here), things can go south really quick. The rope afforded to him is going to be really small, and he won't be getting the sort of patience from fans as Ole or Mou got.
The last line is what the concern should be, no? The question that needs to be answered at the time of appointment isn't "Is he an upgrade on Ole?" but instead it is "Can he win the league?" We've consolidated our position as a top 4 team under Ole. The next step has to be winning the league and that's what the manager should accomplish. If he can't then, I don't think we should be signing them
And as far as overachieving is concerned, I agree he's overachieved with Swansea, Leicester and Pool. However, taking a top half side to EL or an EL team to CL is much easier than taking the final step, because the competition at the very top is a lot more than other positions.
I dont remember it that way. In fact, Klopp was heavily criticized for trying to implement a high press to quickly with the players he took over for Rodgers. Several pundits felt he was trying to do it too quickly and that the transition from Rodgers were to hard.
https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/fo...ods-believes-graeme-souness-a3149561.html?amp
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/spo...ool-boss-jurgen-klopp-criticised-11021235.amp
In simple terms no I would not. Would he be better than Ole absolutely yes! But that is not the point.
Let's be real here, every manager goes through difficult periods. Just think of what will happen when we go though our first and subsequent difficult periods under Rogers. This man will be subject to dog's abuse. Even by objective standards it will be the targeted and vile. His Liverpool connections will be revisited and sued against him. Rogers will be treated as Benitez at Chelsea, to be tolerated in the short term, but never accepted in the longer term. Ultimately it will all end in tears.
Let's be real here, every manager goes through difficult periods. Just think of what will happen when we go though our first and subsequent difficult periods under Rogers. This man will be subject to dog's abuse. Even by objective standards it will be the targeted and vile. His Liverpool connections will be revisited and sued against him. Rogers will be treated as Benitez at Chelsea, to be tolerated in the short term, but never accepted in the longer term. Ultimately it will all end in tears.
I would argue that on the basis of every other season than 13/14 he does not play good football. He plays a type of football that would work 15 years ago, but looking at the best sides today (Liverpool, Man City, Bayern and even Chelsea), they play what I think is proactive and good football.
The defend well, both in a lowblock and in a high block (pressing high). They have a great build-up, and there transition from defence to attack is quick. I’ve never seen a Rodger-team play like that. Ever. I’ve never even seen him try to play like that.
This is what Klopp, Pep and Tuchel have in common. Even Conte and Pochettino (struggles a bit more at PSG as few of the players suit his football). They play different types of football, but all of them coach their team to defend with a well-organized block (some with a high block, other with a lower block), all of them have a well-drilled build up and transition well from defence to attack.
Rodgers dont. He takes more risk than Moyes, Benitez or Mourinho, but the style of his teams is closer to them than to the teams of the best coaches in the world today. He is reactive, rather than proactive.
God, I'd feckin hate it if he was managing us.
If it is either Ole or Brendan, my pick would be Rodgers. as he is a much better manager than Solskjaer. If it is the best candidate to replace Ole, then Brendan would never be my first choice.
Quite a few used Mourinhos 11/12 season at Real Madrid, where they scored 121 goals in La Liga, to argue that Mourinho was an attacking coach, failing to understand that it was an outlier in his carrier. The same is happening now with Rodgers.
Thats exactly what is going to happen. It won't take long for the fans to turn on Rodgers and it will be a lot worse than with ole.
Yeah that's the impression I've got from watching Leicester now and again. He's switched the style a bit. Was it after Liverpool you started playing a back 5?
The Rodgers from three years ago I think would have been great. This more conservative version I'm not sure about.
I disagree. I think this squad is very very good.
It’s not been fine tuned enough for me.. and telling players to go out and enjoy themselves and show more passion and want it more just doesn’t cut it at this level.
this squad should be competitive and there’s no excuses.
Well this is the point.
Salah may well have been Klopp's third or fourth choice. But he was a longstanding target of their excellent recruitment team, with them having first attempted to sign him when he went to Chelsea while Rodgers (who was also lukewarm on him) was the manager.
In this case (and in terms of their track-record generally) the recruitment team was correct. But where Klopp was someone who worked well with them (and benefitted as a result), Rodgers was actively in conflict with them and the more analytics-heavy direction the club was going in. From when he arrived at Liverpool and openly stated he didn't believe in working under a DOF straight through to his departure, when Rodgers-friendly journalists were dismissing Edwards (now hailed as one of the most influential figures in Liverpool's turnaround) as a "laptop guru" who had "done a number" on Rodgers.
Because while they were doing their job to a high level and indentifying the likes of Salah and Firmino (another player Rodgers was lukewarm on), Rodgers was targeting players like Lallana, Lambert, Dempsey and Ashley Williams. Rodgers also turned down Sturridge (who would be key to his title run when they later signed him anyway) and tried to sell Henderson (who went on to captain the club to whatever many trophies).
That's not to say the recruitment team's picks were all winners (they also foisted the likes Balotelli on him after all) but they did drive much of what has happened at the club over recent years and it's a black mark on Rodgers that he needed to be removed for that to happen.
It also makes him an odd choice for us at this point given we have only recently appointed our first ever DOF and our first ever Director of Data Science. And it's not like Rodgers has changed since then given he insisted his own man was installed as Head of Recruitment at Leicester.
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he will 100% get us playing more coercive as a team unit and atleast have a style and direction we can actually talk about...
It wasn’t directly after that game, but it wasn’t much longer
Due to a lot of injuries, especially defensive wise his hand has been kinda of forced, he's toyed with different formations, 3 at the back at the moment as our defence has been terrible, with Ndidi fit again( we do miss him when he doesn’t play)add Justin and Fofana, when they are back, I can see us going with a team like this
1. Kasper
2. Ricardo/Castagne ( Hard to separate them)
3.Fofana
4.Evans
5.Justin
6.Ndidi
7.Soumare
8. Tielemans
9. Barnes
10. lookman
11. Vardy
More like a 4/3/3 or 4/5/1
That’s probably our best team even without the likes of Iheanacho, Maddison, Soyuncu and Daka, and it with the pace in that side there’s no reason for him to be conservative.
If Rodgers did go to you, I think he would do alright, it’s just whether he could sustain it is my nagging doubt.
I don't like this, but if he does come I hope he's allowed to bring his coaches and we bin the rest of Ole's amateur coaching staff. I don't want to see Carrick looking gormless in the dugout with his airpods on, and McKenna doing under10 drills with Ronaldo and Varane.
So apparently Rodgers is house hunting in an around the Manchester area and that can only mean one thing, he IS going to be our next manager. I would take him at present over what we currently have, it has not worked out for Ole, simple as that. Rodgers is a far better manager than the one who left Liverpool a few years back so people should not judge him because of his time there. He has great success in the Scottish league and in my opinion has done very well with Leicester and is pretty much getting the very best out of them, I mean finishing back to back seasons in 5th place with that squad in this league is where you would expect them to finish, maybe even lower, because there are better teams out there who should in fairness be finishing above them, I do think with our squad and our financial clout, he will be a great success, I am more than willing to give him a go, plus he has a score to settle with Liverpool, lets give him a chance and our full backing.
You sound like a child trying to convince their parents to buy a christmas or birthday gift. You only see and talk about the positive spin, it's quite amusing.
I blame first and foremost the board and the so called football men who should have advised these money men not to go with such ridiculous plan. If Murtough and Fletcher are there to rubber stamp Woodward's or the manager's brilliant ideas then we might as well not have any football people at board level at all. Ole should be blamed as well. He was a United legend long before he became United's manager. Going on holiday now makes him look like a captain abandoning a sinking ship. The players get the tiniest slice of blame. However the likes of Martial would still look bad to go on a holiday now especially since he had hardly broke sweat when he was called upon.
I feel sorry for those who were left behind. Youth players are on a different tempo to first teamers so they would probably be scratching their heads on how to adapt to all that. Meanwhile they'll have to motivate the likes of Rashford whose basically been sent to train with the reserves while his team mate is enjoying skiing and his manager had gone fishing. Not to forget these coaches jobs might be on the line
With this move United had rewarded mediocrity. They had indirectly punished those who either were good enough to get called for their respective national team or who have still some integrity left to opt for training instead of holidaying.
We were second the season before ole came and I don't see this team under ole finishing top4
I am no ITK but I got friends whose got very close connections with Manchester United. From what I heard the only decent coach we've got is Mckenna. With few exceptions the rest are there merely because they are either Ole's friends or because they were former players. That took me by surprise TBH as these people are very very very close to SAF, the class of 92, Ole and co.
Irrespective on that it would be wise for any new manager to at least keep 1 of Ole's men in the job. In that way he'd have a decent handover given to him regarding what sort of coaching they were doing, the player's morale, who tend to give his 100% and who tend to take a back seat when shit hits fan.
I get you but all in all. I think they have probably tried to get a manager in whilst Ole has been fishing… but they are failing to get the job done
. I’m giving the club credit here as I don’t see how thinking giving the manager a holiday whilst telling him his next couple of games are again going to put him under Scrutiny. Then a week of no training makes this situation even worse.I'm slightly warming to the idea of him taking over from Ole immediately. I don't want us waiting until the summer (which means another season wasted assuming Ole stays), and I don't trust the club to hire a competent interim (I don't want Fletcher or Carrick).
It does seem like he could do quite well with our squad. The 4-3-3 he plays at Leicester is pretty much what we were hoping Ole would go with this season. Fred would play the DM role (until we sign a DM that is) and who knows, with proper coaching there might be a player there resembling the player we thought we were buying for £50million. Bruno would essentially play the Maddison role, and Scott or VDB would play the remaining number 8 role in that three. I'd trust he'd also coach our players to press effectively, while getting the best out of technical players like Sancho and VDB.
Feck it sign me up.
It does seem like he could do quite well with our squad. The 4-3-3 he plays at Leicester is pretty much what we were hoping Ole would go with this season. Fred would play the DM role (until we sign a DM that is) and who knows, with proper coaching there might be a player there resembling the player we thought we were buying for £50million. Bruno would essentially play the Maddison role, and Scott or VDB would play the remaining number 8 role in that three. I'd trust he'd also coach our players to press effectively, while getting the best out of technical players like Sancho and VDB.
Feck it sign me up.
Interesting video, thanks for posting.
I like how he sets his team up, a couple of points stand out. Ndidi is fantastic in that lone DM role, not sure we have anyone in our team who can do that. Fred isn't a natural DM nor is he strong enough, I think Matic could be an option but doesn't have the legs.
The other crucial element of this system is when he talking about the pressing, "Jamie sets the press up at the top end of the pitch". Ronaldo quite cleary won't do that, so Cavani would be preferred. The trouble is Cavani is injured a lot, but more importantly, can Rogers really drop Ronaldo?
Even taking Fletcher till May and then a new manager in the summer would be better for the club long term than hiring Rodgers now.
Any chance he’ll bring some of Leicester’s better players with him?
Fred would be a concern in that DM role for sure, but I suspect he'd persist with him, with a DM in January being an absolute priority. Otherwise he might opt for Matic as you say.
As for the concerns about Ronaldo's pressing - he also did say that that Vardy no longer presses the entire back 4 as he'd done in the past, but now opts to press more 'intelligently' and selectively to preserve energy. While he'd certainly prefer Cavani for that role, I don't see Ronaldo being completely reluctant to press partially.
Ndidi would be the ideal one to bring with him since he can then comfortably set our team up similar to theirs, albeit with more talented players. But he won't come cheap, and something tells me the board would rather spend big money on someone like Rice as opposed to him (which would be a shame). He could also bring Tieleman's but I don't see him fixing our midfield problems the same way Ndidi would.
Any other player I wouldn't even contemplate. Maybe Pereira at a stretch but otherwise nothing that would improve us.
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