New "Technical" Direction

O'Driscoll joins the club as assistant manager to Brendan Rodgers, while Lijnders takes on the newly-created role of first team development coach after 12 successful months at the Academy.

Rodgers said: "I have made these appointments because I want to take us in a new technical direction, in terms of coaching.

"I believe the entire first-team set-up will benefit and I am extremely positive and excited about what we can achieve, as a group, going forward."

O'Driscoll arrives at Anfield with a wealth of coaching experience, most recently as England U19s manager. He's also been at the helms of Bournemouth, Doncaster Rovers, Nottingham Forest and Bristol City.

"My admiration for Sean, as a professional, is well documented," said Rodgers. "He is someone with a clear vision and philosophy and has proved he has the ability to transfer that knowledge, through his coaching, to the players.

"I am looking forward to working with him and also learning from his experiences and gaining valuable knowledge from his expertise."

O'Driscoll added: "I am excited to be joining one of the world's most iconic football clubs. The hallmark of any successful club is its culture and that comes from the people who work there, from the chief executive and first-team manager to those people behind the scenes whose faces may not be known but who are the lifeblood of the club.

"From the moment I drove into Melwood last week and was greeted by Kenny the gateman, I could not have been made to feel more welcome. If you are going to have any level of success these people are as crucial as the players; from my experiences so far it is clear everyone wants to help this club succeed."

Lijnders, who held roles at PSV Eindhoven and FC Porto prior to joining Liverpool in 2014, oversaw the development of the club's U16 group last season.

He will continue to work with the elite talent at the Academy as part of his new brief, which has been created in line with the new technical approach to coaching undertaken by the club.

And the senior squad are now also set to benefit from his regular presence at Melwood.

Rodgers said: "This presents a fantastic opportunity for Pep and one I know he will grasp with both hands.

"He has excelled at the Academy and I believe this is the perfect time for him to make the step up to the first-team set-up and use his talents for the benefit of the senior squad.

"Pep displays a passion and enthusiasm for his profession that is truly infectious and I believe will have a positive impact."

http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/188037-o-driscoll-lijnders-join-coaching-staff

So would this explain why we are looking at Benteke? What is Rodgers' new direction?

 

Technical direction in coaching doesn't need to mean the style on the pitch is changing

I think having someone take the young lads coming in each day out of academy and working them in is not a bad idea at all.

 

I'd imagine Rodgers new direction is more to do with what goes on on the training ground, not tactically on the pitch.

Benteke is just a target our one minded panel have chosen based on stats and his PL experience.

 

Just like Firmino then

 

Firmino is a marquee signing.

I read a quote from Rodgers saying that to many players who could not speak English arrived last summer.

 

so firmino is marquee but benteke at more money to play CF is not?

who's that working then?

 

I read that and found it very amusing. Because Lallana, Lovren, Lambert and Mario were so good thanks to their ability to communicate in English.

 

In deed.

Can and markovic then scape goated???

 

Of course. BR's thinking that if he throws enough people under the bus it may grind to a halt before it hits him

 

theres a 50/50 chance both can and markoivc had at least some enlgish as well.. you never know these days. european = highly likely to have some english

 

FSG are taking the piss.

 

Interesting article regarding new appointments

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...n-ODriscoll-with-him-and-no-more-excuses.html
Liverpool news: Buck stops with Brendan Rodgers now that he has Sean O'Driscoll with him and no more excuses
The real conclusion of Liverpool's post-season review was it was not a change of manager that was required, but a change from the manager

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Game of Thrones: Brendan Rodgers is putting the pieces in place Photo: GETTY IMAGES

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By Chris Bascombe

The surest way to make an assistant manager appear the most important figure at your club is to sack him.

A number two never seems more vital than on the day he leaves, a fact Liverpool have discovered since it was announced earlier this summer Colin Pascoe was exiting Anfield.

Pascoe is a genuine, decent guy, who for five seasons was a loyal lieutenant of Brendan Rodgers. He arrived with the Liverpool manager from Swansea City where he evidently helped the Northern Irishman assimilate into the Welsh club (and the city) with some success.

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Whenever a manager is appointed, they tend to bring with them someone they trust implicitly – the eyes and ears around an unfamiliar training ground – so Pascoe followed Rodgers to Anfield. His role was always one of deference to his boss, a low key assistant who was uncomfortable on those occasions he was thrust into the public eye, which tended to be when press conference duties were required in the early stages of the League Cup.

That is not to demean Pascoe’s contribution, but on the day both he and first team coach Mike Marsh left Liverpool their status was elevated to a level they were never afforded while still in the job. That can only be attributed to the timing of their departure, coming as it did after a season review which determined the best way to get the best out of the manager and players was to improve the standard of the support staff.

“Thrown under a bus,” has been the recurring phrase to assess the dismissals, Pascoe and Marsh cast in the role of convenient scapegoats for a dreadful campaign.

It does not fit the conspiratorial argument that a change in the coaching staff had been under consideration long before the season review. It’s a cute notion that during the course of May’s two hour meeting with Fenway Sports Group president Mike Gordon and chairman Tom Werner, Rodgers unveiled a masterplan to ditch his pal Pascoe and not renew Marsh’s contract. The reality is somewhat less opportunistic. Indeed, the first tentative discussion regarding the addition of a more experienced coach was 12 months ago – after Liverpool finished second - when former Manchester United number two Rene Meulensteen was a genuine contender. Rodgers was not keen then. He did not feel it necessary on the back of such an excellent campaign. Few argued with his rationale at the time, and Rodgers was clearly empowered on the back of his new contract. Meulensteen would later wreck his chances of a fresh approach by publicly criticising Rodgers’s lack of an experienced number two.

As Liverpool’s troubles intensified last season the issue was revived, with increasing demands for more coaching expertise to be added. Calls for a ‘defensive coach’ proved especially irksome to the manager but after such a terrible run, something had to change.

Rodgers and chief executive Ian Ayre decided last January personnel issues would be addressed, even though those meetings coincided with an upturn in form. Rodgers was eager to hear fresh voices and ideas as he tried to come up with new strategies and formations to get the best from his squad. He was starting to feel the burden of having all the responsibility. The backroom question has now been dealt with as Sean O’Driscoll and the Liverpool Academy’s highly thought of Under 16 coach Pepijn Lijnders create a new dynamic.

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Rodgers with Colin Pascoe (left)

The arrival of O’Driscoll and Lijnders does not signal a change in philosophy at Melwood, but there will certainly be a shift in methodology.

O’Driscoll’s addition is significant because – like Rodgers – he is first and foremost a coach who has dedicated his career to ending the culture of ‘kick-and-rush’ overly physical football in the English game. That has been an especially tough gig in the lower leagues. Rodgers has identified and headhunted O’Driscoll from the Football Association. You don’t recruit someone such as O’Driscoll to ‘put out the cones’ or answer questions about which teenagers will play in the third round of the Capital One Cup. He has been brought to Liverpool to coach and will take sessions of his own.

Equally, Lijnders - the 'first team development coach' - will be trusted with individual coaching sessions with players.

Rodgers has always been a hands-on, tracksuit manager so it is a departure for him to have such a highly qualified and experienced assistant. During his three years at Liverpool he has never felt any compulsion to delegate responsibility - it is his vision he is seeking to impose and the idea of him standing on the sidelines while Pascoe or Marsh took training sessions was not on the agenda. Pascoe and Marsh may argue they felt inhibited – maybe Rodgers never fully trusted them enough – but after agreeing to the changes it was essential the Liverpool manager surrounded himself with those he believed could not only carry out his instructions but regularly offer ideas of their own, particularly during more testing periods.

Many Liverpool supporters wanted a higher profile, more authoritative number two – dare one say a number one in waiting. That would have been divisive and potentially destructive, carrying echoes of when Roy Evans was introduced to Gerard Houllier in the summer of 1998. You can’t impose a coach on a manager and expect anything other than volatility.

There are examples of managers who are quite happy to take a backseat during the week to allow others oversee coaching – under Kenny Dalglish it was very much the Steve Clarke show on a day-to-day basis at Melwood, while Sir Alex Ferguson let his assistants get on with it in his latter years at Old Trafford - but that is not how it has worked at Anfield under Rodgers.

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Rodgers has shaken up his coaching team

His approach was fine when Liverpool were competing with Manchester City for the title because there is a simple rule in football. When everything is going well, all those training ground habits are evidence of the small details we like to pounce upon to prove how good a manager is. When Liverpool were winning and playing scintillating football, how refreshing it was to have a coach whose meticulous training ground preparations kept him at Melwood from 8am until 6pm every day, who had all his staff under his charismatic spell.

Fast forward a year and the same characteristics become a whip with which to beat him. The ‘meticulous planner’ is transformed into a despot who only wants ‘yes men’ and refuses to delegate coaching responsibility. If the latest changes work, stay tuned for the episode in which Rodgers is praised for his move towards pragmatism.

What Rodgers now has at his disposal is a skilled former manager and up-and-coming future manager capable of overseeing training sessions on those days a fresh voice needs to be heard. An ex-player to remind the current crop of what it means to be a Liverpool footballer will eventually complete the new look backroom team.

The Liverpool manager, who relishes getting his boots dirty, will not be transformed into a master delegator, surveying the Melwood turf from his lofty office while O’Driscoll and Lijnders put his charges through their paces. But for the players who may seek a different point of view there will now be at least three, possibly four, office doors to knock on rather than one. Will it work? They’ll need to hit the ground running.

The real conclusion of Liverpool’s post-season review was it was not a change of manager that was required, but a change from the manager. Today’s confirmation of a new backroom team is further proof that when a club appoints a 39-year-old boss – as Liverpool did in 2012 – you can not expect the finished product. Once you’ve taken that decision you have to be prepared to let him evolve in the job rather than panic and rip up the long-term plan when there is whiff of trouble.

That said, Rodgers needs his new look bootroom to yield instant results. He has been granted the kind of second chance his predecessors (and his outgoing backroom team) were denied after a poor season. And he knows if there is not a vast improvement immediately, next time the buck will not stop at the door of the assistant manager

 

some of this seems to be actual time line of discussions and then it goes off into wild speculation by the end of players having multiple doors to knock on etc etc.

frankly any cub is the same the assistant is the guy who hears the moans and the manager is the guy who deals with it.

I think the fact that it was begun last january or before shows something interesting.

for the entire second half of the season did certain coaches know the score?

 

Decent article I read from someone much more informed than myself:



What you get with O'Driscoll is a man who will not try to preach or teach, he will try to enlighten them, so that they see it for themselves, rather than just hearing him tell them. He will set up the training sessions to allow them to learn to communicate better with each other, to see for themselves what to do, rather than being told what to do.

One of the most common tales you will hear from his former players is how he likes to work on communication between players, to bring them closer as a unit, by tweaking rules on small sided games but only telling one player from each team what the rules are. Those players then only have a few seconds to tell the rest of the team what the new rules are.

Players are constantly being pushed to be able to learn how to communicate important information quickly, so that when things need to be changed on the pitch, the players are able to make the changes quickly. The clear problem of complete lack of communication from Martin Skrtel to his team mates would be worked on, rather than just left to fester, like has happened in previous years.



At the end of last season there were a number of games when Liverpool's players were clearly bewildered by the tactical changes Brendan Rodgers was trying to make. Every time the ball went out of play there would be a number of players immediately looking to the sidelines for instructions and their faces would just cloud with confusion.

One thing O'Driscoll is known for is his ability to make it clear what he wants from his team, with his instructions not needing to be too in depth, as he teaches the players to show initiative and make decisions on the pitch. Not for him is the possession for possession's sake or just lumping it long every time a defender gets it, he likes players to do what is needed, sometimes that might mean putting it in row Z when you are a defender, rather than looking to play out from the back.

As he said himself: "The whole possession/passing thing is a bit of a misnomer. I've never coached passing, we aim to give players options on the ball, then coach decision-making. You can't be predictable. Sometimes passing it out from the back might be the right thing to do but why would you persist with doing that if your centre-halves or sitting midfield player then kept getting caught in possession in dangerous areas?"




"If players are comfortable in possession and don't lose the ball, like Xavi and Busquets, it's an easy option to give it to them. But sometimes your keeper or centre-half spotting a striker has peeled off his man into a dangerous position in the channel, and playing the ball up to him, is completely the right thing. If you keep getting joy that way and you play 15-20 'long' balls into that space, does that make you a long ball team or an intelligent one?"

It reminds me of the way Liverpool were torn apart last season by Louis van Gaal's usage of Fellaini pulling wide to put pressure on Emre Can and it completely unhinged Liverpool's defence. Liverpool ended up overloading down their right side to try and help Can out, only to leave acres of space down the left for the goals to come.

What impresses me about O'Driscoll is his insistence on teaching players to show initiative, rather than just be robots like so many British coaches seem to want their players to be. As a student of military history, I have often read how the German soldiers in WW2 were able to hold their own against much larger forces because they would use their initiative, while their opponents were having to wait for the orders to come through before they knew where and when to attack.

That initiative can be the difference, having players taught to look for weaknesses and how to exploit them for themselves gives them a major advantage. They can attack that weak spot until the opposing manager has time to organise tactical tweaks, they do not need to wait for their own manager to spot them first and pass over instructions.

It was what brought Arsene Wenger such success in his early days in English football, he was not sending them out to play rigid formations until he gave them instructions on what to change. He was sending out a team with basic instructions that would adapt to the changing demands as the game went on.

"It sounds so simple but from the youngest ages players in this country have never been challenged to think and make decisions like that themselves, they've always waited for a coach to tell them what to do.



"What we try to say is 'Here are your options, what do you think is the right thing to do and why?' If they pick the right option and it doesn't come off we will still applaud the decision making, but if they continually pick the wrong option then you've got a problem. I want to develop players and a team who understand what is being asked of them, and therefore can make their own decisions on the field of play, players who are prepared to take responsibility for the decisions they make.

"As I said before, we will never have a go at a player for trying something and it not coming off if it was the right thing to do at that time. If it was stupid, irresponsible and careless they won't be afforded the same grace!" These are not the quotes of a man spouting meaningless rhetoric in an attempt to sound clever, this is a man with a clear idea of what he wants, from his players as individuals and as a team.

As an assistant manager, I doubt Liverpool could have made a better choice from within the English game, one of the best coaches in recent years, and his ideas are a good fit with the ones Pepjin Linders works with. They do not overlap, Linders is more of a skill coach, who will make the players more skilful, more adept at control, more able to work the ball around the pitch.

What O'Driscoll will do is make the players better at using their skills, knowing which pass to make when or if it is time to run at the defence. He will improve those aspects of the game that can be the difference between a good player and a great player. O'Driscoll will produce a team from the skilled individuals he has available to him.
Written by Tris Burke


I would have liked someone who was more of a name, but I'm not totally against this guy. Guess we'll see how things go early on in the season. This bloke is normally pretty clued up and seems to rate him, so I'm happier. For now.

 

I've an open mind.

do you honestly think it will be any worse than before. i don't

the reality is if rodgers et al don't stop the leaking soft soft goals they will be sacked so they are all in it together.

 

Sounds very positive. I know Rodgers came out with this type of stuff when he first arrived so I'm apprehensive simply because the guy has no top level experience or experience as a number 2.

But as MITO says, he's an upgrade on Postman Pascoe.

Most importantly - his philosophy is based on possession so maybe we will see Rodgers revert back to his original style and really invest time and effort into it. I would certainly welcome this rather than the 13/14 season but this style is far more sustainable.

The problem with Rodgers is that he's quick to chop and change systems - whilst versatility is crucial, the best managers don't completely change systems which allows them embed a fundamental style and more importantly, identity at the club. I hope Rodgers now persist with the possession style and learn to improve it, and not ditch it.

 

I suggest our new technical direction is scoring more whilst conceding less. ****ing mumbo jumbo from Rodgers again!

 

Are you hoping that our new technical direction is in fact one direction?

 

Pretty sharp Nozzer. I'm just a tactical genius, Rodgers should hire me.

 

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