I still don't really get why so many reds are so reluctant to give Rodger's his due, or at least a bit of credit now he's left. For me, he's an impressive manager and coach - never afraid to innovate, try something new, give one of the kids a chance. I think he had a greater understanding of the tactical aspects of the game than many give him credit for. Much of the success of THAT season can be chalked up to both Rodgers' man-management of sub-standard players (Cissokho and [to a lesser extent] Flanno for example) and his tactical flexibility. I think PoP (brilliant to see you back btw) mentioned earlier in the thread about Rodgers' seeing the game as 10 sets of 1v1s. This is a great observation and, building on this, it was his willingness to switch formation - often multiple times in a game, to differing degrees - which lead to the management of space, overloading weak areas in opposition territory.
After our attack was decimated, however, I feel that something new got mixed into his managerial process with us: fear. He became too conservative, too possession-based. He wasn't willing to take the risks, or to let a player play themselves into form. Despite all the early talk of 'tiki-taka', I see more similarities in Rodgers' early Liverpool career with Klopp's Dortmund than I do with Pep's Barcelona. The explosiveness, the focus on transitional play, the speed and urgency of an attack, the importance of a high-energy press in the final third (typified by Hendo). For me, the huge difficulty in replicating the previous season's form after such a morale-crushing finale and the impossibility of replacing a key striker like Suarez (something which only looks like we've only managed to rectify, in part, a few months ago) suffocated the expressiveness of his Liverpool team, and eventually, his own managerial style. We began to play to a poor man's 'possession football' template which was unsuited to the technical abilities of much of our players (who specialised, in the main, in explosiveness and vertical play). We began to play 'death by football', as Rodgers' had originally intended, but it was us who suffered from it.
Maybe this is because he came too soon in his career, as others have suggested. I'm not sure. I'm certainly glad he came here and he gave me the most enjoyable season of footy I've had the pleasure of experiencing. I'm not sure many other managers would have fared much better in the circumstances.
Something that does rub me up the wrong way when our fans tend to talk about Rodgers though, is this fucking 'David Brent' stuff. First off, you're doing the Mancs work for them so well in lads.
Also: does anyone else remember that interview he did with Redmen tv when he first came? It was meant to be a 10-20 minute little chat or something, but he stayed for a couple of hours and they uploaded it all on the internet. It was insightful, interesting. I learned something from it, and you could tell he enjoyed communicating his views and his knowledge. He loved talking about football, he loved expressing his thoughts on it. He liked being able to express himself well. Now, anyone who talks at any length on any subject, and attempts to do so in a coherent and intelligent way, will invariably come up with some guff from time to time (I'm sure this comment has its fair share). It's the inverse of the 'stuck clock tells the right time twice a day' truism. It's one of the reasons most English managers don't give more than a terse sentence of so in an interview - they don't want to look 'soft' for expressing themselves, or risk saying the wrong thing that one time. Rodgers had the balls to put himself out there, speak in an engaging and intelligent manner, and the fact that he could make a meal of it now and again got jumped on, unsurprisingly, by opposition fans. Our own fans too, more surprisingly. Here was a man who represented the club with class, who understood its value as an institution, and who (to my mind) helped restore some of its prestige after the nightmare of Hodgson and the sour taste left over following Kenny's treatment at the helm.
I will always have time for Rodgers, because he seems like a decent football man. I'll keep a close eye on him in Scotland, because I enjoy how his team plays. I'll keep a closer eye still when he makes his next move to one of Europe's bigger leagues. And I anticipate he'll close out his managerial career, some decades from now, being held in much higher regard than some on here might think.
