At the start of the season, when we had a tough start, the pundits said we should all start to judge Rodgers after 10 games. We are now 12 games in to the PL season. So, by the pundits view, its time to begin making judgments on our new manager. Personally, I feel judgement should be reserved for the end of the season. But lets have a look at how he is doing so far. ------------------------------------ Currently we sit in 12th place in the League with 15 points. We are 7 points off 4th place, 4 points off 6th place, and two points off of 8th place. We currently have: 3 Wins, 6 Draws and 3 defeats. Meaning we have drawn half of our games. We have already played the three main title contenders, Man City, Man United and Chelsea, gaining 2 points from those games. Out of our main rivals, we have played Everton (draw), Newcastle (draw), Arsenal (defeat), gaining 2 points, and play Spurs in two weeks. We are yet to play any of the bottom three. We have a goal difference of plus 1. Rodgers faced a very tricky run of opening fixtures. This means we have a lot of the toughest games out of the way until the repeat fixtures begin. ---------- At this stage last season we had 19 points. We had beaten Chelsea, Arsenal, West Brom and Everton, and drawn with United (all better than this seasons results in these games). But we had draws with Sunderland and Norwich, and lost to Stoke (these results are either worse or the same as this season). We had also been thrashed by Spurs and Beaten Bolton. But last season things turned to disaster near the end. So a better start doesnt mean it was a better season than what this will be. Our transfers cost us a lot less this summer. ---------- My view is that our style of play has improved. We pass and move much better and are able to dominate the position. But we have suffered from a lack of natural goal scorers. We have also struggled at times to cover injuries to Lucas. So squad problems have made things very challenging for Rodgers. Over all I am very pleased with Rodgers work so far. We only knew it wouldn't be instant success, but improvement is clear to see. Build on the squad, and we could go far. Rodger has the players respect, and he has a style of play that they enjoy. I have also respected Rodgers ambition to try young players and it has paid off very well for him. He is also not to scared to make changes at any time when the game is not going our way. An attribute he shares with Jose Mouriniho. I do not think we are out of the woods yet in terms of this hard period in the clubs story. But the future is looking brighter.
Overall, not happy with the results but it is hard to criticize the style of play we have seen (most of the time) and its hard not to be optimistic that our results will improve.
Plus our results are improving. Our three defeats were all in our first 5 games. Those 5 games also contained 2 draws. Since then we have seen 4 draws and three victories.
My personal opinion is that he's learned some lessons from the first few matches and is moving in the right direction. He's doing the best he can with a fragile squad that can be severly weakened by just a couple of injuries
He has also found new possible roles for players like Enrique (LW) and Downing (LB) to fill some holes.
After 10 games I would've said "Must try harder". After seeing what Ian Ayre has done to him by letting AC out on loan and getting no-one in I will say "Unlucky".
Must try harder? I find that thought interesting. One thing Rodgers doesnt lack his a great work ethic.
If I'm honest, I'm still well and truly in the undecided camp Its not bad like the Hodgson tenure but its not extremely positive like with Kenny's return. But he has us playing in a way I like and with the right arrivals I can see us kicking on. I will reserve a full judgement until at least the new year
doing a fantastic job under difficult times...once January comes and he brings in a few players then a top 6 finish is on the cards and if things really go well a top 4 finish.....good manager..
mt view is easy to sum up a) must must take some responsibility about signings. got borini, let carroll out on the thrusday trusting others to go get him dempsey... those are errors. hardly fatal but must not be repeated following learning harsh lessons. b) has improve the football without question... however tactical niaivity remains in the squad and perhaps the manager. the goals being thrown in do not show the talked about tactical discipline as we over commit players time and again and get caught on the break.. individual sloppy errors mean players must share a large part of the blame. c) total lack of penetration is another much talked item in the summer and he's failed to deliver it. without suarez (any injury) we'd be relegation candidates. He's been hamstrung by point a and it wasn't all down to ayre. thats simplistic. Overall i think he's learned a bit, and he's started to show some tactical flexibility. I hope its not player power starting to ignore him but he's changed formation a little to suit what he's got and thats after a reasonable amount of games. I hope he continues to develop and shows the club has overall learned from august 31 debacle. honeslty some ill luck and very annoying mistake by players have meant the league and europa records are not as good as they could have been but make no mistakes he'll be judged by signings and results and so he's GOT to bring in a cisse type of impact player in january. We need to improve, there is no CL run like rafa had, there are no nice cups to win as per kenny but what he can do is make us more solid and make a run of clean sheets happen. If we stop leaking goals we can get up the tbale quickly. A record of 3-6-3 could either become 5-6-3 short or 3-6-5. one will remove pressure, the other will amp it up.
Happy with him. Happy with our football. Not always happy with the results but a few signings to replace the crap will fix that.
We're about where I thought we'd be on the curve. Some mistakes made, some good fortune, some bad fortune. Some very good work from past managers & coaches coming to fruition. Squad still look enthusiastic after a shaky start & now seems to have settled. A young coach with determination but seems open to learning to balance his end goal aims with what he actually has now. Unless something disastrous happens I'll stick to my original decision to judge him after the 3 years. I think we'll hit a couple more rough patches yet & I think we need to do good business in the next couple of transfer windows but happy enough so far.
My thoughts exactly. It's tough because we have no money, but we're creating chances which we're beginning to finish. Our style is much better. I just hope the owners can back everything up.
What if he got Cole or downing scoring? Actually, he will be a genius in my eyes if he sells them in january.
Rodgers is better with the press than our last few managers I think to. Another thing worth mentioning is refereeing decisions. On MotD 2 last week they showed what the table would look like if refereeing decisions had all gone the right way. I cant remember exactly where we were in the table, but we were noticeably much better off. Mainly because of the Everton game I would assume.
This is quite good. nobody should be villified for a mistake, only repeated mistakes. Rafa made pleaty of errors as we all know. Its a good point that the youth policy is very much saving our collective asses. Finally i think judging him can only be done over a period but 3 years is too long, as a PROJECT the whole club may take that long to turn about. I think his mettle will be truely tested and proved this season. I do think FSG are more in the dock than Rodgers. I think perosnally a majority of fans will absolutley go mad if we don't lay out 20mil in january. If rodgers is left to sell carroll for about 10mil or something and try to scratch up a few more million to get someone in FSG will be judged as complete spoofers. Rodgers has bought yesil, borini and assiadi in conjunction with his "team" so now he needs a first teamer. if he doesn't get one he's relying on a lot of luck in season 1
Everything coming out of BR's mouth suggests anyone wanting £20M spent in January is going to be disappointed. Its all "only the right acquisition" and "not a lot happening" in January other than to bolster our attacking depth. I personally think (if lessons learned from Summer) we'll have a list of 3 in and around the 10-15 million mark with the aim of getting one of them. I sort of agree with this as long as we get the right ONE rather than one to say we acted. As for 3 years being too long; I didn't mean the team performing as it does now for that time and magically improving right at the end lol. I obviously expect to see improvement between every transfer window. Not giant leaps forward (not complain if they happen of course) but slow and steady building from our decent base to a competitive team.
We need more than one player though... We need three new players, and that's just for the front three. We need a left back at some point, and probably another senior centre back. And in my opinion we need to improve our side with more than 1 player this january. Otherwise Luis, Skrtel, Agger etc will look at their futures in the summer and tell themselves that they are at the peak of their careers now, and that if they were ever to leave for a big contract and honours that now is the ideal time to move to a City/Barca/Madrid/PSG especially if they feel we aren't showing enough ambition in the transfer market and improving our side at a snail's pace. I'm not saying we need to do all our business in january but two attacking players is the minimum I, and I suspect everyone else, expect from the window, and by that I mean two senior players ready to come into the team and make an impact not like Assaidi who's getting eased in with about 1 game per month in Europe. This window is also about FSG showing their ambition to the players and the fans. If we don't add anything at all to the squad then the players, manager and fans will be furious and there will be a massive cloud of negativity around the second half of the season. If we sign 1 player the fans will be disappointed. Sign 2? The second half of the season will be really positive.
