Brendan Rodgers must go back to his roots if Liverpool are to recover
Brendan Rodgers had a bumpy start to his Anfield career. At times, the "Being Liverpool" documentary even felt like a parody. After a 3-1 Boxing Day defeat at Stoke in 2012-13 -- the midpoint of the campaign -- Liverpool found themselves 10th in the table, 21 points off the top. In the second half of the season, they gained 36 points. Had they kept that pace all year long, they would have been fifth, one point away from the Champions League.
You know what happened next. Liverpool finished second in 2013-14, letting the title slip away with that 2-0 home defeat to Chelsea and the 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace. And you know where they are now: out of the Champions League and ninth in the Premier League, 15 points off the top.
In terms of results, they are back where they were in the first half of Rodgers' regime: 25 points from 19 league games, 1.31 points per game vs. 1.4 points per game this season. In the 18 months in-between, they were a wholly different side, capable of gaining 119 points in 57 matches, or 2.09 per game.
So what's the difference? The simplistic, stock answer is: Daniel Sturridge. He arrived in January 2013 and broke down after three games in 2014-15. He hasn't been back since. His presence coincides with Rodgers' Liverpool doing well. In his absence, they've done badly.
The loss of Luis Suarez, of course, was also a huge blow. He's gone and he's irreplaceable.
That's one way to look at it, and a tempting one to some. It distills the game down to individuals. When Rodgers had two world-class strikers to paper over his cracks, he was devastating. Without them, he's not.
Rodgers and Liverpool are struggling but it can be fixed if the manager returns to his successful roots.
There's a problem with this thinking. First, there were 17 games over that 18 month period during which either Sturridge or Suarez was unavailable. Liverpool gained 2.24 points in those games, which is actually better than their record when they had both.
Second, it implies that Rodgers' contribution is irrelevant and that he's only as good as his front two. You can choose to believe that, if you like, or you can give him the benefit of the doubt, as I choose to do, based on his body of work at Swansea.
Liverpool's improvement, beginning in January 2013, was not solely down to the arrival of Sturridge. Indeed, it had little to do with signings. Other than Simon Mignolet and Philippe Coutinho, none of those who arrived in that 18 month spell enjoyed significant playing time.
The difference came on the training pitch. Rodgers developed a system that allowed Suarez and Sturridge to thrive together. (And, just as important, as the stats show, on their own.)
While it's true that Suarez and Sturridge contributed greatly to the Reds' success, it's not all down to them.
Jordan Henderson, derided by many, became a better player -- and an England fixture. Raheem Sterling developed into a star. Sturridge -- a guy who arrived with a reputation, however unfair it may have been, as a "bad egg" -- showed he wasn't just a great player, he was a good professional as well. Steven Gerrard scored 18 goals in those 18 months -- as many as he had notched in the previous three years.
You don't want to reduce Suarez to mere numbers, but he did score 43 goals in 48 league games since that fateful Stoke match on Boxing Day, 2012. He had 28 in 62 before that. Simply put, he wasn't a $100 million player prior to Rodgers.
It could all be a massive coincidence. Maybe Rodgers just found his rabbit's foot for those 18 months. Maybe Liverpool were just lucky for a very, very long time. Maybe all those guys who seemed to improve at around the same time would have improved anyway, regardless of whether the manager was Brendan Rodgers, Buck Rogers or Mister Rogers.
But I don't buy it.
Unless you're actually a Liverpool player or coach, you don't actually know what he does on the training ground. You only get second-hand accounts, which you can then juxtapose with what you see on the pitch. And I've had enough to conclude that he was working on formations and schemes and movements that made the team better. While also getting individual players to perform better. Not that Rodgers was perfect -- far from it. Even during Liverpool's stellar 18 months, they left a lot to be desired defensively. But it was clearly his day-to-day coaching that was having a positive impact.
Now, that's no longer happening. And as I hope I showed above, it's not simply a function of Sturridge being out.
That's what he needs to regain, first and foremost, if the season is to be turned around. Find a tactical scheme that works for the players you have. It seems obvious, but that's what good coaches do. And that's what got Rodgers to do well at Swansea and later at Anfield.
Clearly, you can point to other mistakes. Much has been made of the summer signings and the fabled "transfer committee." What it basically means is that signings are not left solely to Rodgers but are approved by a group which includes chief executive Ian Ayre, head of performance and analysis Michael Edwards, head of recruitment Dave Fallows, chief scout Barry Hunter and Rodgers himself.
Because Liverpool's signings as a whole have been lackluster -- Sturridge and one or two others apart -- it's seen as a huge problem, particularly by those who are ideologically opposed to the notion of the omnipotent Sir Alex Ferguson-style boss.
Have all the new signings paid off? Not even close but in the case of Markovic, it can turn around.
It's true that Liverpool have overpaid for some guys in some cases and bought the wrong players in others. But while some of the execution has been poor, the structure itself is not a problem, because the different components bring their own expertise to the table. Hunter is a scout; he will have seen more of the potential signings than anyone. Edwards is the analytics expert who can (hopefully) identify value. Ayre is the businessman who knows the budgets and, supposedly, knows how to negotiate. Rodgers has the big picture. You can talk about hierarchy and influence all you like, but even Sir Alex, the ultimate autocrat, relied on input from others who had more specific expertise.
The new arrivals as a group are nowhere near as bad as they've been depicted in some quarters. They simply haven't contributed the way their past performance suggests they would.
You would expect a guy with Rodgers' body of work to figure out a way to get this group to contribute consistently. You certainly would not expect him to do what he did in the last few games, erecting "safety-first" formations and adopting a small club, short-term mentality. As I mentioned on Monday, that's not why he's there. He's there to build something, to turn these guys into a team.
You can also point to other mistakes that were made. Gerrard hasn't complained about it but you would expect more clarity about his position -- both on the pitch and at the club -- and his future. It's not surprising then that he's in no rush to extend his deal.
Sterling has been ridden like some kind of workhorse. At times, you feel like he's single-handedly asked to provide all of Liverpool's creativity in the final third. And, as a result, he's been inconsistent. Young players often are. That's why managers are selective in how they use them. Not Rodgers.
Sterling is a superb asset for Liverpool but he needs rest in order to rediscover his best form.
Sterling has featured in all but one of Liverpool's games this season. The club have played 2100 minutes of football: he's been on the pitch for 1854 minutes. Only Mignolet has played more. By the time he turned 20 on Monday, he had amassed 99 first-team appearances. Lionel Messi, by comparison, had made 71 at the same age; Cristiano Ronaldo, 100.
But here's the difference. Messi had lasted 90 minutes for Barcelona 25 times before his 20th birthday, Ronaldo 30 for Sporting and Manchester United. Sterling's done it 49 times for Liverpool. He's a special talent, absolutely. But if two of the greatest players of all time -- both precocious superstars -- were being used far more sparingly at teenagers than Sterling is, perhaps there's a reason.
Injuries haven't helped and mistakes have been made -- crucially, few of them of the kind that can't be undone -- but there is still plenty to salvage from this season.
Rodgers may or may not be the right guy to turn Liverpool around and take them forward. What's pretty certain in my view is that the guy impersonating Rodgers -- the one who talked about the "importance of clean sheets" and fielded these insipid, fearful, immediate, results-driven and blue-collar teams over the past few games -- is definitely not the guy Liverpool need. He hasn't demonstrated the skill set to be that kind of manager.
What he has shown is the ability to play a different brand of attacking football, to make players better, to make teams greater than the sum of their parts. That's what won him plaudits at Swansea, that's what landed him the Liverpool job and that's what raised expectations through the roof last year.
That's the Rodgers Liverpool need right now, the one who makes a difference above all on the training pitch.
It might not work. But if it doesn't, at least he'll go down swinging. And at least it will be Brendan Rodgers, and not this faux replica, who comes up short.
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