As with Gérard Houllier back in 2004, I’m sad that it ended this way but the sadness is mitigated by a vague, guilty sense of relief (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with the identity of his probable successor). That’s not to excuse the culpability of the club’s executive management for their part in Liverpool’s struggles over the past eighteen months or the shitty manner in which they allegedly notified Brendan Rodgers that his services were no longer required, nor does it diminish the work done during his 3+ years at Anfield, much of which was positive. At the same time, and regardless of how uneasy it feels to see a Liverpool manager sacked after only three and a half years in the job (particularly one who almost achieved something incredible less than two seasons ago), it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever climb out of a hole by digging and, as with Houllier in the closing weeks and months of the 2003/04 season, it had gotten to a point where even the wonderful memories of the past couldn’t adequately cover for the feeling that things were unlikely to get any better in the future.
The respective roads which led to the departures of both men were pretty similar too even if, on the face of it, they were very different in their approach. Houllier immediately made Liverpool defensively strong upon taking sole charge of the club, quickly bringing in the likes of Sami Hyypia, Markus Babbel, Stephane Henchoz, Didi Hamann and building from the back (he even once signed two goalkeepers on the same day), whereas one of Rodgers’ biggest failings was an inability (or was it unwillingness?) to make his team anything even approaching solid, much less frugal. Houllier also won trophies, although he never came as close to winning the League title as Rodgers did. All differences aside, the same three factors did for both their reigns: (1) the squad deteriorated on their watch, (2) the goals dried up and, most tellingly, (3) the pressure of the Liverpool job saw both retreat into a shell of negativity that not only suited neither them nor the club, but also rendered their teams unrecognisable from their respective peaks of a few seasons earlier.
Houllier’s best season (2000/01) saw over 120 goals scored across all competitions. Similarly, Brendan Rodgers’ best season saw over 100 goals scored, albeit at a far greater rate (2.6 per game vs. 2.0). At some point after these high points they stumbled as they attempted to replenish their squads. Misjudgements were made, the pressure heightened as a consequence. That pressure gave way to negativity, which proved to be a false economy. Houllier’s team scored a single goal or less in 21 of his last 38 League games in charge (the 2003/04 season, basically), or 55%. Last season, 2014/15, Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool achieved an eerily similar tally of 22 out of 38 League games with a single goal or less (58%), and that's with a far leakier defence. This season, that run has only worsened. In 11 games in all competitions, his side only scored more than once on one occasion, at home to an Aston Villa side that’s already beginning to look doomed. A moment of Coutinho brilliance was required at Stoke, an offside goal at home to Bournemouth, penalties to see off Carlisle.
The visit to Wolves, already on their way down, in January of 2004 summed up Houllier’s struggles. Liverpool went in front through Cheyrou just before half-time, and then slowly but surely dropped deeper and deeper for the rest of the game until the only impediment for Wolves drawing level became the final whistle. Their equaliser on 89 minutes was every bit as predictable as every equaliser, from Bordeaux to Norwich to Carlisle to Sion to Everton, became during Liverpool’s recent run of results. For Brendan Rodgers, the change to three centre-backs last season perhaps showed flexibility and a willingness to adapt to changing circumstances (brought about by an abject failure of a summer transfer window) and it probably saved his job in the short-term, but in the longer term it transformed a circumspect idealism into a suffocating pragmatism that slowly strangled the life out of both his team and his reign, in effect jettisoning what he was good at to try his hand at mid-table-style water-treading that was neither his forte nor a suitable fit for a club with Champions League ambitions.
If there was a nadir of his time in charge, a rock-bottom, most people would probably justifiably point to Stoke City 6-1 Liverpool, while others would no doubt suggest the FA Cup semi-final surrender to Aston Villa a few weeks earlier. For me it was the visit of West Ham to Anfield earlier this season, for several reasons. For one thing, it contained the moment where his baffling preference of Dejan Lovren over Mamadou Sakho finally came home to roost, for another it stripped away all the optimism that had abounded since arguably the best half of football played at the Emirates Stadium by a Liverpool team in the previous game, a performance which in the intervening weeks has now sadly taken on the aspect of a metaphorical dying man lurching one last time to his feet before finally collapsing.
Mostly, though, it was the decision taken, with Liverpool 0-2 down at half-time, to replace midfielder Emre Can with left-back Alberto Moreno that was, for me, if not the lowest moment of his reign then certainly the saddest. This was Liverpool, chasing a two-goal deficit at home to a club which had not won at Anfield since the 1960’s, looking to do so with three stoppers at centre-back, two (albeit attacking) full-backs and a defensive midfield shield on the pitch. Even with Coutinho’s red card robbing the team of its creative fulcrum, no offensive change was made until Danny Ings’ introduction on 61 minutes, and even then that was at the expense of Roberto Firmino. Two goals behind at home and struggling to create anything, Liverpool’s first sacrifice of defensive numbers to push for a goal (Jordon Ibe for Joe Gomez) didn’t come until the 78th minute.
It was clear that his switches that day were about damage limitation and job salvation. This wasn’t a back three designed to propel the team forward with Sakho’s crisp passing and Can’s forays into midfield. This was a defensive three designed to prevent a disappointing loss turning into an embarrassment, the most adventurous of whom had fallen over doing step-overs in the opposition half and gifted West Ham a goal by trying to play football on the touchline in the first-half. This was what Brendan Rodgers had come to after the assorted pressures of managing Liverpool had finally told. And it suddenly seemed like an age had passed since champions Manchester City visited for his first Premier League game at Anfield back in August 2012 when, coming off the back of a chastening 0-3 loss at West Brom the previous week, Rodgers nonetheless set out against a team bulging with world-class talent to do what his Swansea side had done at Anfield the previous season, namely attack supposedly superior opposition regardless of reputation.
That was his strength and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he returns to that approach in the future and someday leaves Anfield again with a point or three for another team. I always admired his idealism and his application, and the business-speak that often seemed to be lifted straight out of a corporate handbook never bothered me like it did others. That was just window-dressing. I never saw him as some “David Brent” type like some did simply because he always struck me as being deadly serious when it came to the job. That job, of course, was “to dedicate my life to fight for this club and defend the great principles of Liverpool Football Club on and off the field”. That’s what he said upon his arrival at Anfield. I believed him then, I still believe him now. Nobody should ever think that he lacked for effort because he didn’t.
Brendan Rodgers did, in fact, dedicate himself to the club, and the only principles he ever discarded were his own. That latter point is the main reason he failed. Personally, I’ve never really had any particular ideological position on how Liverpool should play, how the “x’s and o’s” should line up or what the football served up should look like (within reason). I generally admire both imagination and pragmatism, and the most effective mix is normally somewhere in the middle. That was certainly the case during the 2013/14 season, where his team were unafraid to cede possession to the opposition in order to create space for the likes of Luis Suárez, Daniel Sturridge, Philippe Coutinho and Raheem Sterling as he briefly presided over the most effective counter-attacking team in Europe, never more dangerous than when the other team had the ball in the Liverpool half.
That represented an acceptable compromise on his initial philosophy that “when you’ve got the ball 65, 70 per cent of the time it’s a football death for the other team…we’re not at that stage yet, but that’s what we’ll get to, it’s death by football”, acceptable in that the fruits of that compromise were incredibly sweet. Instead of trying to slowly suffocate opponents with possession of the ball, his most effective team, widely-held to be the most exciting Liverpool side since 1988, bludgeoned them with speed and movement. The results were often spectacular. Having two of the best centre-forwards in European football helped, of course, and the failure to adequately mitigate for their absence the following season set the scene for what followed, namely a bitterly disappointing campaign in 2014/15 and a complete (and, regrettably, final) abandonment of the manager’s principles by the end, publicly bemoaning his team going long to Christian Benteke, for example, but seemingly doing nothing to change it.
This isn’t a point about “defensive” football. Regardless of approach, the real trouble comes when a manager is not true to his own beliefs, whatever they may be. At Liverpool that terminal spiral of negativity that his team entered after Suárez left and Sturridge went down after three games of the 2014/15 proved to be his downfall. The signings clearly didn’t help either: he stated in May 2013 that “there is absolutely no way a player will come in here if I don't want him. I will always be the first person it comes to”. If that’s truly the case, then it’s fair to say that he left himself short-handed by the end, unable to trust the man he once dubbed “the Welsh Xavi” over Lucas Leiva, a fantastic servant to the club but one terminally past his best who looked to be on his way out of the club as recently as a few weeks ago, and the round hole left upfront by the departed Suárez beaten into a kind of distorted oblong via the square pegs of Mario Balotelli, Fabio Borini, Rickie Lambert and Raheem Sterling (Ings at least looked like he fits the style required, even if he understandably pales in comparison next to the Uruguayan).
When Houllier left in 2004, the club went out and head-hunted one of the best managers in Europe as his replacement. History appears to be repeating itself, so we can at least be grateful for that. And the new manager will not, contrary to the opinions of some, be taking over the worst Liverpool team in living memory. There is plenty of talent and youth in that squad, and Rodgers deserves plenty of credit for developing the likes of Coutinho, Jordan Henderson, Jon Flanagan, Jordon Ibe and Raheem Sterling, whose £50m transfer swelled the coffers after the manager found a way to get the best out of him in late-2013 (before that, many were willing to give up on the player). Most of all there’s that season, arguably the most fun it’s been to watch a Liverpool team in the best part of three decades. Good luck to him.
