Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher has recently warned Rodgers that the owners can be "ruthless" naming England manager Roy Hodgson and King Kenny as recent victims to fall at the hands of the FSG group.
Therefore, why do they seemingly carry on supporting Brendan Rodgers? At this stage of the current campaign we would have been better off under Roy Hodgson's leadership. Giving any manager time to bed himself and his new players into a club obviously takes time, but how much time? And would it be better to foresee the future and change things immediately rather than carrying on with this miserable season, where we are struggling in every area of the pitch. How much worse would things get if we changed it around now and inject new blood, brains and ideas into the club? Brendan Rodgers, Colin Pascoe and Marshy undoubtedly are doing their best. However, is their best good enough? Or maybe this task is becoming too difficult for them and maybe, unfortunately, they are out of their depth.
Personally speaking, I bet Henry is highly disappointed with Rodgers at the moment but obviously he can't make these feelings public. One thing I’d like to mention at this stage is going on Liverpool's recent history, for the first time we can't point our fingers at the owners. Although, Mr Henry and friends, at the end of the day, are businessmen and their principal objective is making money. However, my personal view is that The Fenway Sports Group have a genuine interest in succeeding in Sport. An investment in over a hundred million on players and nearly the same amount on the new stadium expansion clearly shows their vision and commitment to the club.
After this massive investment the man at the helm to make this investment a successful one is Brendan Rodgers a coach who has never had experience at the top level and has never won any mayor honours. Rodgers will be learning from the mistakes he has made at Liverpool in the future with new clubs, which is wrong. Our current manager should be experienced enough not to makes these mistakes and should have made errors at previous clubs and not at Liverpool. The point I’m trying to make here is; after the investment made and the position Liverpool Football Club are in at the moment this job isn’t the one for an inexperienced "mediocre" manager.
Two issues that Pro-Rodgers supporters will pull me on are: "Last season" and "Injuries". Firstly, Liverpool fans have been made to feel worse due to the fantastic exciting way we played last season and I’ll be the first to say it's the best football we have played since the 1980s! However, the fact we had the football genius in Luis Suarez fighting for us unfortunately made Brendan Rodgers shine and now without him he is unable to manage and cope without him. Secondly, and just as important is the Daniel Sturidge injury, yes, he has been unlucky and with Daniel on the field we undoubtedly would have scored more goals. Nevertheless, to sell Luis Suárez and not prioritise a decent enough replacement was negligent in the extreme and ultimately down to Brendan Rodgers.
How long will this last for? Why aren't Raheem Sterling and Steven Gerrard signing new contracts? This is Liverpool Football Club they should be asking the club for a new contract not the other way round. The only meaningless explanation for this is the air of uncertainty that is surrounding the club at the moment which is influencing the decisions of two of our top players. The central figure of this uncertainty is Brendan as he is the focal point of the club. Fenway Sports are; on the one hand showing their patients with him but as every day passes I’m sure they are losing their faith in him. Almost like a damaged marriage where the couple have many ties together but keep putting off the spilt in hope of change and a bright outcome.
This time last season we were seven positions higher up the table with nine more points on the board and scoring fifteen more goals. Rodger's win rate in the league and Europe this season is a shocking 32%, whereas The “Chelski Rentboy” has a 73% victory percentage. That is a 41% difference. Why should we accept this? After finishing higher up in the league than them last season and spending a lot more on players this summer. A 32% win rate is unacceptable for a team of our calibre.
I do understand fans who say we need to support the team when we are winning as much as when we are losing. I'll always defend Liverpool Football Club as "a club" but not the people, they come & go. We need to think of the wider picture, one thing is showing our support to the cause, but on the other hand showing our support and even criticism for the sole benefit of our club can only be positive.
I'm aware of this transfer committee people are talking about. However, Brendan Rodgers is the only Liverpool manager to spend over a£100 million in a single summer. An amount which really should have given us a fighting chance in this year’s Champions League.
I feel he has blown a large portion of his funds on totally average players. Since Brendan took control of Liverpool we have signed twenty-five players for £212,380,00m with no trophies won. In all honesty, I don't agree that our squad needed improving so drastically as we finished 2nd last season. A couple of £40 million stars would have replaced Suárez and made us stronger.
"Squad players" in my view should be made up of lads from the "academy". That's why we invest so much into it, but when will these hopefuls get their chance? When players like José Enrique and Lucas haven't even made the bench this season. Therefore, the young kids will get nowhere near the bench due to the wages these players are earning automatically puts them before the academy lads.
Needless and ineffective signings such as: Borini (10m) Alberto (6.8m) Aspas (7m) Llori (7m) Lovern (15m) Assaidi (3m) Lambet (4.5) Allen (15m) Markovic (20m) is about £80 million just in itself. How many of the above are realistically going to have successful careers at Liverpool Football Club? Rodgers is failing in his inability to get the best out of our Midfield. No balance, little tempo, no fight & desire. I'm still undecided about Joe Allen's abilities. I’m sure the £15 million we paid for Joe Allen was a present from Rodgers to Swansea.
I know we have made changes to the team and the players need time to settle in and adjust, but with the money spent we should be seeing positive changes to our play. At the moment we are seeing no evidence of this happening. As I tweeted at the weekend "Lovren makes Torben Piechnik look good". Although, I have doubted Rodgers man managerment on a number of occasions regarding various players, I agree with the decision to play Kolo Toure ahead of Lovren. However, after performing excellently for the Saints week in week out last season, which consequently gave him a £20 million pound price tag, to be dropped with only two months into the season, something is not quite right! Lovren is the most expensive defender Liverpool have signed in our entire history.
Furthermore, Simon Mingolet was highly rated before he joined Liverpool and up until last season he has performed well & saved us from dropping many points. Now he is regarded as a mediocre, insecure goalkeeper lacking confidence in many parts of his game. A similar situation is happening with Alberto Moren who has only had one decent game since joining from Seville, at Spurs, topped off by a stunning finish & probably our best goal of the season so far. Apart from that, Brendan has failed to get the best out of him. Once dubbed the new Jordi Alba and after breaking into the Spanish national team, Alberto joined us carrying a lot of potential to become our number one left back for many years. However, Rodgers has benched him many times this season & has preferred Glen Johnson and José Enrique ahead of him.
Rodger is also failing with the development of Lazar Markovic one of our marquee signings this summer at a staggering £20 million. However, he has only featured eight times for the Reds since his arrival from Benfica. Although, still only twenty he seems to be struggling to fit in to the team and the premier league in general. He definitely has the potential, anyone with that price tag should, and therefore it's down to the managers influential coaching to prepare him for life in England.
Finally Mario Balotelli, who is a tricky one, as I don't think Rodgers, wanted his services and it was "the last available option". Nevertheless, going on his form last season at Milan it seemed a promising signing. However, when Mario has been selected he has always played him as a lone striker; yes he planned for a Ballotelli and Sturidge partnership up top, so he was unlucky there. Nevertheless, I feel Brendan has been stubborn in the fact that he has never played to Mario's strengths, which is funny as he was the only striker he "could" play. Game after game he picked Mario and demanded him to fit in to his system. By the amount of goals Balotelli and the team scored when playing like this obviously indicates Rodgers was wrong.
To sum up, why should Brendan Rogers deserve more time than Kenny Dalglish got to put things right? Has he earned it? He hasn't won anything?. If he was replaced now by "the right replacement" how much harm would this inflict on our current situation? Are we rock bottom yet? The way I see it is unfortunately we are going from bad to worse. I do respect the fans positivity towards Brendan but the fans don't deserve waiting serval years for our champions league return and by December having to make do with the Europe Leauge. After all, the Champions League is where our club should be not only from what we achieved in the late seventies and early eighties but in the ten previous years we have won it once, came runners up on another occasion and various semi-final appearances. It's insulting for the club to have to accept Europa league qualification after being given such a massive investment in order to assist us to compete amongst Europe’s elite. Finally, all the effort and triumph last season winning just one of our six matches, and that win came after a late Balotelli goal at home to Ludogorets Razgrad is totally unacceptable in my eyes.
Merry Christmas @anfieldeurope.
