As students of Liverpool’s recent history know, managerial reigns have ended at Ewood Park. Now a season could. It is four years since Roy Hodgson’s brief and undistinguished spell at the helm was terminated after a 3-1 defeat at Blackburn Rovers when Liverpool’s haplessness was epitomised by the sight of Steven Gerrard blazing a penalty high over the bar.
Hodgson is the only Liverpool manager since Phil Taylor, who resigned in 1959, to fail to win a trophy. Three seasons into his tenure, Brendan Rodgers is yet to lift silverware. He goes to Blackburn for tonight’s FA Cup quarter-final replay for the last in a sequence of three seemingly season-defining games.
Liverpool have lost the first two, to Manchester United and Arsenal, in startling fashion. A side that went three months without a league defeat and almost four without conceding on the road in the Premier League were comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Louis van Gaal’s side and breached three times in eight minutes by Arsene Wenger’s team.
Rodgers has conceded their hopes of Uefa Champions League qualification are all but over. If their season is to be a success, they have to win the FA Cup.
Blackburn already have ended the Cup aspirations of top-flight sides Swansea City and Stoke City, and arguably sowed the seeds of Liverpool’s recent troubles. They found a way of negating Rodgers’ 3-4-2-1 formation even before Van Gaal and Wenger dissected it, pressing high up the pitch and turning the most confident, in-form side in England into a nervous wreck.
Rodgers has dismissed suggestions they held crisis talks but Liverpool find themselves with both tactical and personnel problems. They have acquired three suspensions and, in Martin Skrtel and Emre Can, miss two-thirds of their regular back three. Given the way Blackburn’s towering target man, Rudy Gestede, troubled them in last month’s stalemate at Anfield, that bodes badly. Perhaps, for the first time in 2015, Rodgers has to consider changing shape.
The third banned player is the captain. If Gerrard’s dismissal 38 seconds after his introduction against United seemed to encapsulate a fall from grace, the notions Liverpool can afford to dispense with the departing midfielder, 34, were disproved at Arsenal on Saturday, where a lack of leadership was palpable. The veteran’s presence was required to negotiate one tricky tie at lower-division opposition, AFC Wimbledon, and he would have been invaluable at Ewood Park.
In the absence of the on-field leader, the off-field organiser is firmly in the spotlight. Rodgers had prospered with left-field picks for months. They backfired badly at Arsenal when a semi-fit Lucas Leiva laboured in midfield, when Jordan Henderson was shunted out to the wing and when Lazar Markovic’s time as a No 10 lasted 45 unconvincing minutes.
Factor in the ongoing dispute between Liverpool and Raheem Sterling’s representatives about his future and a seemingly transformed club sit at a precipice. In his interview last week, the England international forward, 20, said he was motivated by winning trophies. This is Liverpool’s last chance this season. Fail to do so and it is likelier Sterling will eye the exit.
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