25 May 2015 10:15:12
Can anyone give me a good convincing argument for keeping Rodgers?

All I have heard from his supporters so far is that he might get it right if we give him long enough, or that we might get someone worse next time.

No one has come up with a single cohesive argument to justify him still having a role at Liverpool FC!

{Ed042's Note - Well unless the majority of the fans get a hard on on seeing squeaky white teeth and fake tans , i can't come up with anything else

1.) 25 May 2015
Last season I thought I was a BR supporter but in hindsight I was really a Liverpool supporter caught up in the exciting results we were getting at the time and ultimately wanting the best for the club I love. BR's record should dictate support for him and sadly after 3 years it is difficult to see any progress despite there being a very capable squad with many promising youngsters ready both to delivery now and improve for the future. The most damning thing I feel is that in 3 years the defending has actually gotten worse and this from a man who said last season that setting a team up to defend en masse isn't rocket science. At this point ED001 I agree with you, there is no defending BR

{Ed044's Note -

2.) 25 May 2015
All football related arguments are opinion heavy so if you've already made your mind up there is no-one who can change your mind.

{Ed042's Note - Just give your reasons why you think br should be here next season? Even I'd pike to hear them

3.) 25 May 2015
Reasons:

Firstly he's the man in possession on a longterm contract and there needs to be 2 criteria filled before he's sacked. There needs to be a convincing reason to sack him and there needs to be someone better to take over. If you can't guarantee anyone better then why sack him? At the end of the day he got to 2 semi finals and 6th place with the 5th highest wage bill. Is that a reason to sack him? Maybe it is, it's a close call, but who is going to do better in these circumstances. Klopp Ancelloti etc are pie in the sky, you might as well say we should try and tempt Mourinho.

Secondly no-one mentions Rodgers good points. If you're going to criticise, you must also acknowledge his achievements. Last season was the best title challenge for 25 years, never before have we had it in our own hands with 3 games to go. Like it or not you cannot deny we played the most entertaining exciting football for a generation. Don't say it was down to Suarez, even Suarez credits Rodgers with the style of the team.

Thirdly, many players and ex-players of this esteemed club who have played or indeed managed at the highest club level, say he should stay. They know a lot more about football and the club than any of us think we do. You won't find many who say he should go.

4.) 25 May 2015
I can imagine ed01 read Ron keague's post and went why do I bother. Is it so hard for people to just use the search bar and find out that even last seasons football wasn't even down to Rodgers along with this season small period when we played decent for a month.

5.) 25 May 2015
Actually Ron here are some perfectly good reasons to sack him.

He spent nearly £117m after saying that Spurs should be challenging for the title having spent a similar amount, those words should come back to him.

The last 10 league games have been relegation form and losing 3-1 at home to Palace and 6-1 away to Stoke is completely unacceptable in anyone's language.

In this form next season will be a fight against relegation, Rodgers hasn't once looked like being able to find a way to stop the rot, I assume this is a situation you think is acceptable.

If Rodgers is still in charge at the start of next season, i genuinely fear the worst.

The current team is poor, our keeper is prone to errors, our defence makes too many mistakes, we are weak in centre midfield, we have only have one good striker who is injury prone and the players that Rodgers wants are more of the same mediocrity, the fault for this lies squarely at Rodgers feet.

Besides, to say there aren't other candidates is ridiculous to say the least.

6.) 25 May 2015
Name them WF. Bear in mind FSG will only consider English speaking coaches.

McLaren? Allardyce?

7.) 25 May 2015
De Boer would be a better shout and achievable. At this stage id take Benitez over Bodgers. At least he's a winner. Not something you can accuse Bodgers of.

{Ed044's Note - putting aside the vitriol, Benitez is not the answer. There is obvious merit to Klopp. De Boer worries me, in that has has been cocooned at a club with a distinct style, which to be fair he has implemented and even tweaked slightly, but I'm not convinced that his experience would translate into transforming an underperforming club, unlike Klopp a la Dortmund. Ed02 suggestion of Schmidt would be an exciting if not risky proposition.

8.) 26 May 2015
25 May 2015 23:50:15
1) There is a convincing reason to sack him: His consistent lack of long term planning and his flip flopping on his use and treatment of players. It will be exceedingly difficult to establish a core group of players, get them playing well together and then add in the bits you need on the fringes to build a squad that will consistenty qualify for the Champions League and then hopefully challenge for the league on consistent basis (ie. more than once), if your manager can't make up his mind on what he players he wants and where he wants to play them. If everything aligns up in one season (like last year) he can qualify for the CL and even challenge for the title but it won't be sustained (as demonstrated this year). I could pull up other reasons, but that should be reason enough.

"If you can't guarantee anyone better" is a non-argument. There are no guarantees in football and you know that. But you have to look at what you have and make a judgment call as to whether what you have is good enough to be kept, or whether it's time to try something different. If that wasn't the approach and we all needed guarantees, then Gerard Houllier would still be the manager. After all, there were no guarantees that Rafa Benitez (or Curbishley, or Mourinho or anyone else who was linked with the job at the time for that matter) would've been an improvement on him, right? And my judgment call is that Rodgers has demonstrated that he is incapable regularly qualifying for the Champions League, which is the minimum we need our manager to do to re-establish us a serious contender for major trophies in the near future. It is therefore, to my mind, worth the risk of getting Klopp, or Galtier, or Unai Emery, or Rodger Schmidt, or Slavan Bilic, or even going back to Rafa. Yes there is no guarantee that any of them would be an improvement on Rodgers, but it has been satisfactorally demonstrated as far as I'm concerned that Rodgers isn't able to deliver what we need. So why retain him? Why continue something you know won't work when you have the option of trying something different?

2) If it wasn't down to Suarez (and I agree you can't attribute a season like that to one player, even if he is one of the best in the world), then him leaving can't be an excuse. So what's it down to then? Is finishing 6th, in a very bad season in the PL, I might add, after finishing 2nd normal and acceptable progression for a team? Or is it because the manager built finishing 2nd on a tactical system that relied on the team expending most of their effort pressing and running around to an unsustainable degree for 15 minutes at the start and end of each game and being second best in between? Now to be fair to Rodgers, he did decide that the high tempo diamond wasn't really a workable long term formation and I think he was absolutely right to think that, but the problem is he had no idea what to do next.

Do you remember what we were like at the start of the season? Horribly disjointed. The players seemed to have no clear idea what tempo to play with, how to bring the ball out of the back, whether to go short or long etc. Gerrard's form was a point of discussion at the start of the season, so I started watching him closely. Now whilst he wasn't exactly stellar himself, I remember him rarely having short options for forward passes, so he had to go long (or go backwards), but we weren't playing at a tempo in terms of runs in behind, support runs and pressing that supported a direct style. That's a failure of coaching. We then made a 343 workable for two and a half months before that fell flat and we haven't had a clue what to do since. Rodgers completely and utterly undid any good he achieved last season in a matter of weeks, and I'm beginning to suspect that he doesn't fully understand what he did right last season. That means he can't be depended on to repeat it.

3) Ex-players aren't right simply by the virtue of being ex-players. And for all of the football knowledge they apparently have, a small percentage of top players make top coaches or managers. Just because you were a good player doesn't mean you actually know how an entire football team should be set up and instructed.

9.) 26 May 2015
Not capable of delivering what we need? He was 7 points from 3 games away from winning the league. No manager in 25 years has come that close!
I don't attribute this season to losing Suarez. He is one main factor, along with Sturridge being out for the majority of the season thanks to England. I'd add the demands of replacing Suarez and having to build a squad for Champions League was a major factor in why our transfers went so badly wrong. Plus signing so many new players who did not get a full pre-season because of the World Cup.

Ex players and managers will know a lot more about the game than any of us.

10.) 26 May 2015
Ron you have given no argument for him staying, just said 'but we might get a worse manager in if we get rid' that is not an argument, that is idiocy.

Present an argument for keeping him, based on his qualities please.

Your posts so far have been nothing short of a waste of everyone's time reading them as you have presented no competent or intelligent argument.

11.) 26 May 2015
Being 7pts away is still not producing is it? You are still wittering away with nothing to add. Failure is failure, whether it is failing just or failing miserably, it is all the same.

{Ed044's Note - To be fair Ed, by the same measure, would that mean if Klopp came in for example, and finished 5th, 3rd and 3rd in three years at the club it would be a failure because he hadn't won the league? Surely it would mean the club had improved by cementing itself in the top 4? }

12.) 26 May 2015
If Rodgers had done that it would have been an improvement too, but he hasn't so it is not a relevant argument. You can't argue what ifs, that is pointless, you have to decide based on what is.

{Ed042's Note - By the time we are discussing potential managers may i throw lucien favres name in the hat. And no I don't think there is any merit in keeping Rodgers. And you take away all his failures and just look at one thing HE SPENT 120 MILLION POUNDS FINISHED 6TH AND GOT BEAT 6-1 BY STOKE. For one to lose 6-1 to stoke managing Liverpool is a crime in itself

13.) 26 May 2015
Reasons for Rodgers leaving: awful man management resulting in the team giving up essentially; appalling tactical awareness resulting in poor performances and losses to inferior teams; inability to play players in their correct positions; complete inability to analyse a performance and learn from mistakes; massive overspending with no apparent improvement; things are getting worse by the game and by the season.

Reasons for keeping Rodgers: *tumbleweed* ....

{Ed042's Note - Unfortunately many of them are correct

14.) 26 May 2015
I honestly think Ron keague is just trolling. Forget all that has been said. WE LOST 6-1 too stoke. End of discussion.

15.) 26 May 2015
Like I said earlier, when you've already made up your mind it is a waste of time asking for someone to change it for you.
I don't need to present arguments for him staying, I really couldn't give a flying one to be honest. It will have zero impact on my life and my happiness either way.
Unfortunately some are so entrenched in their views that it is clearly adversely affecting their happiness.

It's only a game of football at the end of the day. We differ in our points of view, you're not changing yours, I'm not changing mine, move on and stop insulting each other. To resort to insults exposes your own inadequacies.

{Ed044's Note - at the end of the day, all you need is love.😊}

16.) 27 May 2015
Ron if you had the intelligence to present an argument to keep him, and it was a good argument, you might actually sway people. Instead all you do is post in insulting little messages like a typical troll.

You need to grow up and act like an adult and present an argument, instead of just whining like a small child about how we have already made up our minds, when you have no idea whether that is true or not.

It is simply that you have no argument, so you just try and back out of giving one. If you did have one you would have put it forward by now, but you have never given one single reason for keeping Rodgers at any point.

Sad when his biggest supporter can offer nothing but pathetic whines in support of him.

17.) 29 May 2015
He did present his argument and he got shouted at. You told him to 'grow up', how much of a hypocrite are you.

Someone called him a person for thinking Rodgers deserves credit for last season. Of course he deserves credit, Liverpool were brilliant and he was the manager.

The thing is every one of you thinks you know best. We could get Klopp and finish 10th, we could get him and win the league. I'd say the same about Rodgers.

If Rodgers stays I'll be glad, my opinion is we'll be better next season, i don't know that but I do think that and my opinion (and Ron's) is just as valid as anyone else's here

{Ed044's Note - Of course you are entitled to your opinion Muscat, as is everyone. If we were so good last season, why have we been so bad this season? Signings? tactics? Bearing in mind we were only good last season after Rodgers ditched slow possession based football, how did we start this season? We welcome all opinions on here, even if we don't agree. To me, the facts speak for themselves, but I welcome valid arguements against my viewpoint. To date, I'm not seeing many.}

18.) 29 May 2015
Thanks for replying so reasonably Ed044. I agree the season has been bad but I think context is important. At the start of the season I think we would have wanted 3rd or 4th, 2nd if all the signings worked and 1st in our dreams. 5th would have been disappointing but was par, we have the 5th best squad/money so that's our marker. Even with a disastrous season we still only just missed par.

Why was the season disastrous? The striker situation was one reason but the main reason, I believe, was that the team were carrying Gerrard. Gerrard should have gone last year (it would have been better with a title but that was not to be), the stats clearly show that Liverpool were much better with Gerrard out of the team than in. Arguably it was Rodgers fault that he kept playing Gerrard but the pressure from every side to have him on the pitch was immense. Some will scoff at this, pointing out he was our top scorer, well with Gerrard starting we took just 40% of available points, that went up to 72% with him on the bench or out of the squad.

Next season the striker situation will be better, Gerrard will be gone and I expect (hope) that Rodgers will find the winning formula again. He did it in towards the end of his first season, he did two seasons ago and he did it for just under half of last season (40 points from 17 games). I think he can do it again.

{Ed044's Note - As I have stated before, my biggest issue with Rodgers is learning. I have no doubt his much fabled dossier is packed full of merit in terms of formations and tactics, but I don't believe he actually understands them. Every season, after a summer off, he starts again with slow, possession based football. Not once has it worked, yet still he returns to it. It Took a lesson from Bielsa to get last season back on track, but that is all forgotten by the start of this season.
The striker situation is his fault, picking Gerrard over Lucas is his fault, and having not learnt a thing in each of his 3 seasons, I struggle to see why the penny will miracously drop in his 4th....}