Out of all of our lack of achievements throughout the course of the season that has just finished, there does seem to be one accolade that we have won without a shadow of a doubt. Liverpool FC have won the prize for keepers of football’s worst kept secret.
This end of season review that has been promised since the beginning of May, if not earlier, has become an absolute shambles of an affair. These things should be kept under wraps and the fact that it hasn’t has made the club look an absolute embarrassment. I am not one that sees the club as a mess. Far from it. That phrase has been banded around a lot recently by fans, and it’s hard sometimes to argue against.
Yet this isn’t a mess. Our owners have been a mess, but our club isn’t. Far from it. We have previously been a mess. The club was a mess under Tom Hicks and George Gillett. An absolute mess. But not currently.
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What is happening right now is merely stupidity. Or a lack of caring. A lack of caring by John Henry, Tom Werner and a lack of caring by Mike Gordon. A man who most fans would not recognise if they were sat next to him at the game. Gordon is the man holding the end of season review we have heard so much about.
According to plenty of sources, Gordon is a clever man, a man with business acumen and an eye for challenging and improving a company’s finances. He is seen as “one of the brightest financial minds in the country” according to Mr Henry, and a lover of Baseball. Of course he is.
Another telling quote from Mr Henry is that “He understands present value”. Did I also mention he is the most senior member of the famous and currently unsuccessful transfer committee? I happen to believe our recent transfers will come good, most of them at least (this could, however, be my bias towards buying/enjoying players with great hair cuts). Yet are they successful right now, pound for pound on what they have delivered on the pitch, and not the barbers? No, they aren’t. Not at present value.
There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that he is in control of the finances when it comes down to spending on transfers. Have I been told this by “sources”? Am I privy to knowledge of the inner workings of our transfers? No, but see, he is the most senior member of a committee of people that decides who we buy to play week-in, week-out.
He also, before his position of the “eyes and ears” on Merseyside, had little-to-no knowledge of football, or soccer as he would have called it. So what other reasoning would he be on the committee? There isn’t one. He’s boss at money talk and has three years of knowledge of football, give or take. Pretty obvious now, isn’t it.
Anyway, I’m not here to dissect the transfer committee, or Mike Gordon himself. I presume he’s a pretty alright guy. But the above does have some relevance, and I’ll come on to that a little bit later. What I want to do is look at Rodgers’ position as manager of Liverpool Football Club. How certain is it, in my opinion? Well, here goes…
Brendan Rodgers has done a good job if we take his three years on average. Our league position in his second season came a year too early for him, and had we come sixth last year and second this we would not be talking about this at all. Our owners would be happy, the fans would be happy and we would generally be pretty excited for next season. Yet as it turns out they probably won’t be and we certainly aren’t.
Our results this year haven’t been good enough. Come Christmas, we saw a fantastic change in fortunes from our early season form and things looked as though they were taking a turn for the better. We didn’t lose a game in 13 matches, and it looked like it was when, not if we broke into the top four.
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Then United came to Anfield and Liverpool collapsed. We choked in emphatic fashion. Since then? It’s been absolutely awful. Losing five Premier League games and the FA Cup semi-final to a solid, yet drab Aston Villa (see Saturday’s final for an example of how to play against them) saw how our season seriously fell from semi-grace.
I am of the opinion that this isn’t just Rodgers’ fault, but the players also. I am a fan of Brendan, and I think he will be a brilliant manager in years to come. However, it is Rodgers’ job to motivate, gee-up and teach our players in the build-up to games that they may find difficult to win.
He hasn’t done this against the really top teams. Yes, we beat Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton during the pomp of our brilliant run, but the latter two are teams we should be beating and City were in a poor run of form whilst we were in our most confident moment since last season.
The way I see it as a rule of thumb is if a manager puts a competent team out at all times, it is mostly the players’ job to beat the teams below them and the managers’ job to give them instruction on how to beat the teams above them. This is a very simple way of seeing things, but something I completely believe to be the case. A team losing 2-1 to Aston Villa in the FA Cup semi-final should see most of the blame put onto themselves. No added motivation should be needed for a game of that size. Brendan Rodgers put out a team that should be beating them, so the players, in my opinion, should be beating them.
A game we lose 3-0 at Old Trafford with a very similar team out I would mainly attribute to the decisions of the manager pre-game. For example, Marouane Fellani is great at bullying and he will win his battles against most opposition players, so why do you not look at stopping their midfield getting the ball to him in the first place? This alone makes no sense to me, and this wasn’t the only problem during this game.
An issue that we do have, however, is when you lose a game 6-1 to a side much further down the league to you, whilst playing a formation and team that makes little sense to supporters and players alike. Here, the manager picked the wrong side and should take equal blame alongside the players who quite frankly gave up. This is an issue that encompasses the whole of the first team environment. The points meant very little to me. I don’t care about the points. But it is the situation that the match represents that worries me. Have we gotten to a point where the players are losing faith in the manager and vice versa? If that is the case, it should be when, not if we replace Rodgers.
Replacing Rodgers himself though does leave us with a problem. Noises coming out of Anfield suggests our managers’ position is available to anyone better than him coupled with showing an interest in coming to the club. I can’t be the only person that sees this as a massively unhealthy position to be in. Whether you like or dislike our current manager, it is the right, honest and respectful thing to do as an ownership team to decide what you want, declare it to all parties and crack on with plans.
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Rodgers has been nothing but classy and dedicated to Liverpool, on and off the field. The stick he gets from opposition fans has never publicly fazed him, and we should all be proud of the effort he puts in for us. To see him being disrespected by Fenway Sports Group makes me sick to my stomach. Do what you think is right for the club, but do it quickly and efficiently. You’re in a position of power over our brilliant football club and you’re making us look amateur. If fans, players and managers can be criticised, so can the owners.
The courting of Jürgen Klopp may, for all we know, be the media putting two incorrect pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle together. This is their job though. They wouldn’t be able to do that with any degree of success if the footballing world knew where Rodgers stood. Be this inside the doors at Melwood or outside them. Silence can only be seen as bad news left unsaid.
The Premier League has been over for a week and if Liverpool was so important (as it should be) to the owners, the season review would have taken place within days of last week’s final game. To suggest that this internal review will take place in the coming weeks can only mean one thing – buying time whilst enquiring about other managers who could be available. That isn’t fair on Rodgers. The lack of communication from the board of directors and owners throughout the club is unfathomable.
If Rodgers can be judged on this season’s failings, then surely our transfer committee should be too. Just as Rodgers seems to be taking the flack of the first team, Mike Gordon should be taking the flack for most of the committee’s dealings, as he is the most senior figure within the committee. Again, not dissimilar to Rodgers and the first team.
This brings up another question though – how can a faulty cog in our behind-the-scenes set-up be conducting a review into a season that they helped fall apart? When all parties aren’t held accountable it becomes a farce. It becomes ‘jobs for the boys’ – and our club begins to make the same stupid errors it has made before, again. Like, for example, Christian Benteke for £32 million. No present value at all. Something Gordon is supposed to be there to represent. He is supposed to implement this though without having any prior knowledge to football before a few years ago. Unless he appointed himself in this position, blame should then be elevated for this decision to the people at the top of the pile: John Henry and Tom Werner.
This isn’t doing much for my argument that the club isn’t in a mess, is it?
Being an opinion piece, I would like to end with giving you my opinion on the managerial situation. I like Rodgers. As previously stated, I think he’s done a good job. I also think he has lost the power in most parts of the club and this is a sad situation for a man who is strong-willed and has his own fantastic way of doing things.
I believe we will fail to attract players of real quality with him in charge this summer which will make next season difficult and could end up seeing him sacked next year anyway, because we need three players of Champions League quality, and a couple of back-up players as well.
If he became available I would suggest doing all we can to persuade Klopp to take over at our club and abandon his sabbatical plans. He has a record of taking over a club and reinvigorating it. He is one of the biggest draws in world football and his name will be used to positive effect when conducting negotiating for players who are in a bracket that Liverpool’s current status shouldn’t allow them to sign.
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A new manager will give an added boost throughout the club, if chosen correctly. Klopp would really help create a buzz amongst players and fans and I think he is someone that players will want to play under. I also think it could be the signal that the likes of Raheem Sterling and other players would want from the owners. I can only imagine that Sterling would want to play at least a season under Klopp’s management, even if to see what all the fuss is about. This can only be a good thing.
From outside looking in, Klopp looks like a man who emotionally invests in his team and a man who wants to be around players and wants to feel the love from fans. He would certainly get that from the off and I’m of the opinion that this alone would pique his interest if approached.
So do I want Rodgers gone? No. But would I accept Klopp? Absolutely. I would also be made up if the end of season review was conducted quickly and all-encompassing throughout Liverpool Football Club. Owners, management and everyone with a hand in footballing affairs. And that includes our faltering transfer committee.
Sort it out, Henry.
