“The slip happened at a bad time. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about if that hadn’t happened. Would things have been different?”
They were not Brendan Rodgers’s words, but Steven Gerrard’s. Speaking in June, arguably Liverpool’s finest ever player admitted the infamous moment when he lost balance and the ball and Demba Ba ran away to score for Chelsea will haunt him for the rest of his days.
Gerrard’s Liverpool career never recovered from that slip. Neither did Rodgers’s. Each has now left Liverpool, neither as a Premier League champion. When Chelsea arrived at Anfield in 2014, each stood on the brink of an extraordinary achievement. For Gerrard, it would be the culmination of a great career. For Rodgers, the start.
That instant, just before half time, represents a sliding doors moment in Liverpool’s recent history but, more particularly for the sacked Rodgers. Before Chelsea, his team had won 32 of 47 Premier League games, scoring 123 goals. Beginning with Chelsea, they only won 22 of the next 49, scoring just 65 times.
They went from being the most viscerally thrilling sight in English football to a mismatched mess, occasionally enlivened by individual excellence or haphazard defending, but sometimes simply descending into dullness.
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Rodgers, who had seemed to showcase a futuristic brilliance with his inventive tactics, capacity to improve players and high-octane brand of football, lost his reputation as a far-seeing figure. His frequent changes, of personnel and formation, which had been seen as inspired experiments, now began to betray hints of desperation. Liverpool never recaptured the same spark without Luis Suarez, even if injuries invariably prevented Rodgers from picking all of his premier players.
By the end, he travelled a familiar path. There are managers who are hailed as visionaries upon their appointment. They show some signs they will be transformative figures. Yet when, exhausted and increasingly unsuccessful, they are dismissed, it is harder to say what they stand for.
“Death by football,” to use Rodgers’s phrase? Seven teams have had more possession than Liverpool this season. Brilliant, blistering counter-attacking? Only Watford, West Bromwich Albion and Newcastle United have scored fewer goals. Training-ground expertise? That did not extend to defenders, who continued to commit glaring errors and who, as individuals and a unit, showed few signs of progress.
Mentions of a philosophy can sustain managers when their debut campaign is a season of progress. They cannot when they have entered their fourth year at the helm, when the majority of the team arrived during their reign and they have forged a reputation for failing in the transfer market.
At Liverpool, the fault does not lie with Rodgers alone. Not considering the transfer committee’s errors. They are sprinkled not just across the squad, but across Europe, with several dispatched out on loan. Yet having displayed their ruthlessness, owners Fenway Sports Group also have to show some honesty. Liverpool’s group of players do not comprise a top-four squad. Should Rodgers’s successor steer them back into the Uefa Champions League, he will have overachieved, just as the Northern Irishman did in 2013/14.
That title tilt was a spectacular one-off, a wonderful mirage. Rodgers contributed, tactically and by taking Suarez, Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling to new heights, but his subsequent inability to replicate it suggests the Uruguayan will go down in history as the catalyst. The Northern Irishman’s revival always had a hint of fragility because he only ever had half a top-class team, but they came agonisingly close. Stellar attackers acquired momentum, displayed chemistry and destroyed all-comers, until Jose Mourinho ventured north with a weakened team and a superb game plan.
A former mentor turned destroyer. An ally — and Gerrard continued to praise Rodgers even after his move to LA Galaxy — accidentally began the process which ended in his removal. The tide of history turned against both men.
Gerrard left with his greatness enshrined on what proved an extended, if at times ignominious, farewell tour. The hero of Istanbul is rightly revered. Rodgers exited with the majority of supporters pleased to see him go.
He nearly conjured Liverpool’s most remarkable league title. Instead, he was Anfield’s nearly man, destined to forever wonder if things could have been different.
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