Playing it out from the back – Is Rodgers doing it right for Liverpool?

Played 54 – Won 25, Drew 15, Lost 14

Brendan Rodgers’ record last season shows no significant progress than the record of Kenny Dalglish when he returned for his short stint. The current Liverpool manager has almost exactly the same net spend as Dalglish did now however. Does this show progress for Liverpool, or is Rodgers going to come up short with top 4 promises in the next two years?

There is no doubt Rodgers is definitely attempting to bring credibility back to Liverpool Football Club – after the first Luis Suarez fiasco – and it can be said that Liverpool handled Luis Suarez’s bite a lot better than the racism charge. Rodgers clearly wants the fans to be proud of the club, rather than experiencing so of the embarrassing moments in the last couple of years.

However, this needs to be done on and off the field. Rodgers’ tactics have often left the fans pulling their own hair out asking for another option rather than trying to pass the ball into the goal. It is often frustrating for a fan when they feel they can see something that the technical staff cannot.

Short, sharp passing can look fantastic, but it is not always the best option to win a game as both Bayern Munich and Brazil proved (over Barcelona and Spain respectively). Rodgers will always be looking to improve tactically as any manager would be, but Liverpool fans will feel a lot more victorious results could have been achieved if the manager would have adapted quicker in his first season.

That being said, it was only Rodgers’ first season as Liverpool manager and also at a club as big, with as much history and as much demand for success (no disrespect to Watford, Reading and Swansea). He is obviously improving as a manager having gone from the English Championship’s relegation zone to attempting to challenge for a Champions League place in just five years.

Some of Rodgers signings are debateable (Fabio Borini being the key example). They are mostly young though (except Kolo Touré) and that is the big difference between spending money on youth rather than experience – big money is not always a guarantee. But is big money ever a guarantee? Fernando Torres’ £50 million price tag may be the biggest example of this failure. Brendan Rodgers has got rid of a lot of Liverpool’s dead weight in wages, using youth more effectively than most Premier League managers.

Whether Rodgers is the right man for the job is not something that can be judged this soon. Hating the manager is never a positive, but the fans won’t always be happy if Rodgers refuses to tactically adapt to the changing of direction that the football world looks to be going in.

Luis Suarez is now the key man at Liverpool. If Rodgers can hold on to Suarez it could be one of his biggest successes as Liverpool manager – as long as he keeps him happy!

t the end of next season Liverpool Football Club will be unhappy if they are not a large distance ahead of last season but with such a strong league, they may just have to accept that top four could be the most difficult top four to break in a long time.