Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers has shown a certain degree of fondness for the press in recent times and they in turn appear to be indulging his somewhat pretentious rants about his footballing ‘philosophy’, but rather than spend press conference after press conference talking about himself, it would be better if he focused more on helping the team higher up the table.
Saturday’s win over Norwich was certainly a step in the right direction, during which Liverpool cruised to a 5-2 victory over Chris Hughton’s side and it could have been a lot more ugly than that scoreline suggests such was their dominance both on and off the ball, even if they did concede two more sloppy goals borne out of slack individual errors.
The main talking point about Liverpool this season under Rodgers has been how the manager would take to stepping up a level and how the players would take to his new footballing methods. The accepted truth has been that results haven’t quite matched performances and they certainly out-played both Manchester clubs at Anfield despite only taking one point away for their troubles.
In that respect at least, it appears to be going along a very similar path to that of Kenny Dalglish’s second spell in charge of the club, during which a mixture of goalkeeping heroics, poor finishing and a penchant for hitting the woodwork ultimately cost them the points that their displays merited culminating in a deeply disappointing eight-placed league finish last season, leading to Rodgers taking charge.
That is where the similarities end with Dalglish, though and in terms of how they handle the media, they couldn’t be more different. The media always like a rent-a-quote manager, that’s why they’ve always championed Harry Redknapp’s cause to a cult-like extent while bashing his infinitely better successor Andre Villas-Boas simply because he doesn’t like talking to them all that much (by the way, if you haven’t seen him putting down The Sun’s Paul Jiggins in his press conference over Hugo Lloris and the subsequent ‘Spurs in turmoil’ article from the bitter and embarrassed journalist, you should check out both as soon as you can).
Brendan Rodgers clearly has something going for him; he’s been praised by both Jose Mourinho and Sir Alex Ferguson in the past, and he did a marvellous job at Swansea, first getting them to the top flight and then keeping them there. However, I’m not the first, nor will I be the last to have been put off by his needless managerial jargon. During pre-season, he seemingly created news where none existed just because he loved talking about himself and his methods so much.
There is a certain David Brent streak which runs through Rodgers, which is fine in itself, but it’s when this pretentious nature bleeds into other areas and we have to listen to it over and over again that it begins to grate. He talks at length about his ‘philosophies’ like he has just more than one and uses the phrase ‘going forward’ all of the time, which as we all know, is usually the reserve for suits in soulless jobs in middle-management.
Real people don’t actually talk like this, so lord only knows where he’s picked it up from; it’s all geared to make him sound more intelligent than he really is, but in the end all he sounds like is a thick pseud. Whether its insecurity that sees him ramble on for hours at the simplest of questions or that he simply likes the sound of his own voice remains to be seen, but he seems to be the perfect fit for the club at the moment on the pitch, it’s just the frequency which he likes to open his mouth that’s the problem.
On the pitch, though, this Liverpool side really look like they’re starting to take to his methods and Joe Allen has proven an inspired signing in the middle of the park. His willingness to grant first-team opportunities to a swathe of the club’s exciting young crop of talent has also been welcome and while the situation may have been foisted upon him to an extent by the tightening of the purse strings, he seems to genuinely care what happens to these players and how they develop, even if on Being Liverpool he did state “I see every player as like a son”. Cringe.
It’s this managerial speak, of which Villas-Boas himself is also somewhat prone to, that is most irritating. They’ll throw words like ‘connectivity’ and ‘transitionality’ at you but none of it rarely actually means anything, it’s just talking for the sake of it and it lacks both substance and a point. The media are lapping Rodgers up at the moment because he’s filled that Harry Redknapp-shaped hole in their column inches, while the supporters like that he’s already played up to his audience by calling them ‘intelligent’.
Despite all of this, there is very much a decent manager in there somewhere and he’s starting to have more of an affect on the side and their style of play. I’m always suspicious of football managers when they lean too heavily on the word ‘philosophy’, because after all, it’s only a game with a ball at the end of the day, there’s no need to hype it up and make it sound more complicated than it actually is, but there’s no denying that he is as much a coach as he is a manager and this hands-on approach should reap dividends.
What Rodgers does have going for him is that he’s clear in his methods and where he wants to go, and with the pay-off finally coming in the shape of his first league win at Carrow Road, he needs to continue this upward curve rather than continuing to talk about himself every chance he gets; at least he’s not referring to himself in the third person yet. The idea of Rodgers is sound, the practice so far has been pleasing, but I just wish we didn’t have to listen to him too.
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