Richard Jolly
When assessing a manager’s reign, there is a tendency to bypass events on the pitch and head straight for the transfer market. Judge Brendan Rodgers on his trading and the verdict might not be positive.
Fifteen players have arrived at Anfield during his four transfer windows and only two, Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho, have really excelled.
When managerial competence is analysed, the defensive record is often a key indicator. In the Northern Irishman’s reign, Liverpool have conceded more goals per game than they did under his predecessor, Kenny Dalglish. The sense is that the back four is not as organised as it was when Dalglish’s assistant, Steve Clarke, was drilling them with Glaswegian rigour.
When a manager’s judgement is questioned, there is a temptation to look first for failings. Are there times when his selections or his tactics backfire? In Rodgers’s case, the answer comes in the affirmative. There are games – away at Hull City, for instance – when his best-laid plans have gone horribly wrong.
And yet it is instructive how minor these problems can seem. They may represent blots on the landscape, but the bigger picture is that Rodgers is doing a superb job.
He inherited a club at a low ebb and a team that struggled to score. He was appointed when the realists around Anfield had sunk into a depression and the keyboard warriors among the support were in vituperative denial about many of the causes of their mediocrity.
He took the post at age 39, devoid of a playing pedigree, having come from a much smaller club and charged with replacing a legend. In such circumstances, the vastly more experienced Roy Hodgson foundered horribly. Rodgers has flourished.
Progress has not always been smooth – indeed, after last week’s unconvincing draw at West Bromwich Albion, it would be rash to assume there will not be more road-bumps along the way – but it has been emphatic.
Saturday’s 5-1 demolition of Arsenal had distinct similarities with the 4-0 Merseyside derby thrashing of Everton 11 days earlier. Together with November’s 5-0 win at Tottenham Hotspur, it means they have routed top-six opponents three times already. Before then, however, Liverpool have to go back five years to find comparable examples of games where they did not just overcome fancied sides, but overwhelm them.
In a golden two-week span in March 2009, Liverpool beat Real Madrid 4-0, Manchester United 4-1 and Aston Villa 5-0. They were the most exhilarating sight in England then, surging forward in devastating fashion. They went on, improbably, to draw 4-4 in successive games against Chelsea and Arsenal. They were unlike any other team managed by the cool, calculating Rafael Benitez.
In the same way, the current Liverpool probably aren’t the side Rodgers envisaged when, equipped with his 180-page dossier and theories about perpetual possession, he ventured north from Swansea City. Liverpool only had the ball for 42 perc ent of the game on Saturday. They used it brilliantly.
Management is partly about playing to a side’s strengths. Shorn of first-choice defenders and their natural holding midfielder, Liverpool’s lie almost exclusively in attack at the moment.
Rodgers’s initial decision to exile Andy Carroll and make Luis Suarez the focus of the forward line remains his real masterstroke, just as his summer refusal to sell the unsettled Uruguayan has been pivotal.
His two transfer-market coups, Sturridge and Coutinho, have been spectacular successes. Factor in the fast-tracked Raheem Sterling, the rehabilitated Jordan Henderson and the reinvented Steven Gerrard, and he has six positive players.
Rodgers devised a way of fitting all into the same unit. They play at pace and start at speed. Everton were beaten before half-time, Arsenal within 20 minutes. The current crop are liberated and lethal. While Benitez briefly had a group of similar potency, it is out of keeping with Liverpool’s past to be quite as destructive.
Their predecessors rarely played with the handbrake off. Few of their title-winning teams boasted such a nakedly attacking style of play. Their reward comes in the form of their goal difference which, compared to the pursuers who covet their fourth place, is worth an extra point.
They may yet overhaul Manchester City at the top of the goalscoring charts and may eventually rank among the most prolific in Liverpool’s exalted history.
That would be impressive under any circumstances. It is all the more remarkable when the recent nadir is remembered.
Liverpool ended the 2011/12 season having scored fewer goals than relegated Blackburn Rovers. Nineteen matches at Anfield produced a mere 24 goals and just six home wins. With three months of the current campaign remaining, Liverpool have already struck 38 times and triumphed on 11 occasions on home turf.
Now the mindset is very different. It may be Rodgers’s biggest achievement. Now, come every home game, Anfield expects, whereas Old Trafford is anxious. It is a radical and rapid role reversal.
Should Liverpool finish in the top four, Manchester United’s sudden decline will be cited as a reason. Yet the reality is that Liverpool aren’t simply there by default. They have improved unexpectedly quickly. And while mistakes have been made along the way, the speed of change is a reason to salute Rodgers.
sports@thenational.ae
