Brendan Rodgers

[Fox92]

On 12/04/2022 at 10:02, The Year Of The Fox said:

Only 15 league goals have come from 4 players combined in that time. We are not as free flowing or free goalscoring as we should be given the quality of our attack. 

Dunno about "quality" in our attack.

 

Taking Vardy out the side I don't see another player in that attack scoring 15+ a season.

[Guest454545]

29 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

I'll take your word on Celtic then, but as @Muzzy_Larsson has said on a number of occasions, his handling of players at times was suspect and you got lots of injuries. You pair can debate that, I do have a vast knowledge of many aspects of football but I'm relying on those closer to past events as well.

 

In regards to Liverpool, there's evidence out there. Prior to his arrival at Liverpool they'd had 20 injuries in 2010/11 and 18 injuries in 2011/12.

 

Rodgers came in in 2012/13 and the number of injuries started to increase year on year, which is what we've seen at Leicester. 2012/13 - 21 injuries, 2013/14 - 23 injuries and 2014/15 - 33 injuries. The season he left 2015/16 - they got 31 injuries in total and 7 of those were in the first 2 months he was still there.

 

Klopp is another manager who has been accused of his teams getting a lot of injuries due to the intensity in which they train and play. I suppose its the nature of the beast and I can accept that to a certain degree but when it's as sustained as we have seen stretching well over a year then it becomes very difficult to ignore and I don't think its right to simply assume that it will eventually improve without making a significant change.

 

I do think we are now making changes, you can see how he is treating those with persistent injuries or who have come back from long injuries differently to how they did before. I'm more than happy to acknowledge that and hopefully that leads to an improvement over time. We are close to appointing a new medical head too, so it was evidently clear the one who was here less than a year has been considered a failure.

I think you make good points on the number of injuries that the high intensity play seems to elicit. But tying those injuries to training methods or recovery methods is where I have an issue - simply because it would require a knowledge of the exact methods, plus a comparison to managers with similar methods to see if there's a correlation. For example, Bielsa seems to have had a lot of injuries this season before being sacked, but his methods are well known to be extreme, whereas I think Brendan is known more for doing a lot of ball work and possession drills rather than out and out fitness. So my only doubt to that idea is the connecting of training methods to this seasons injury issue for your lot, given the is a decade of evidence to refer to for Rodgers, and he's never had anything like you've experienced this season. Which is why I think you should give him next season to see how it plays out. If it happens again, then you know he had a problem. If it doesn't, then you know this year was a freak occurrence

[Ric Flair]

4 minutes ago, Guest454545 said:

I think you make good points on the number of injuries that the high intensity play seems to elicit. But tying those injuries to training methods or recovery methods is where I have an issue - simply because it would require a knowledge of the exact methods, plus a comparison to managers with similar methods to see if there's a correlation. For example, Bielsa seems to have had a lot of injuries this season before being sacked, but his methods are well known to be extreme, whereas I think Brendan is known more for doing a lot of ball work and possession drills rather than out and out fitness. So my only doubt to that idea is the connecting of training methods to this seasons injury issue for your lot, given the is a decade of evidence to refer to for Rodgers, and he's never had anything like you've experienced this season. Which is why I think you should give him next season to see how it plays out. If it happens again, then you know he had a problem. If it doesn't, then you know this year was a freak occurrence

I have said it a number of times, it's the way we handled Ricardo, Evans and Vardy in December that really alarmed me. I can go in to it again but others must be bored to tears by it now, likewise what he did with James Justin after a year out, 1 sub appearance and then started him 3 times in a week and he got injured again. 

 

Anyway, I hope I'm proven wrong and the relentless injuries we have had are proven to have been a freak year and we keep our squad largely fit. Not playing in Europe next season which is a possibility will help with that anyway.

[Tielemans63]

3 hours ago, Wasyls Pec Deck said:

When I look back in hindsight - with the depleted squad we had for large parts of the season (particularly in defence) Brendan did well to steer the ship to mid table. You can see the difference now when there is a healthy competition for places and we are getting our best players back to fitness.

 

I’m also not convinced the injury problems were all Brendan’s fault. The football club as a whole, yes (and the situation and external pressures) of which Brendan is a key employee. Unless anyone can convince me otherwise. 

Agree with everything you've said here WPD. 

[Reg Vardy]

Said it before, any original injury....Vardy's knee, N'didi's knee, any hamstring, any groin is caused by the players decision to make the challenge/run, and likewise any fracture is either the players decision to make the challenge (Justin), or in Fofana and Perreira's case a reckless challenge. All of this is completely at the door of the players or the challengers, and is completely out of Rodgers hands.

 

Bringing players back, can be levelled at the club, but Castagne three different injuries(shoulder, hamstring, thigh), Vardy two different (hamstring,knee),Barnes (knee,hamstring), Evans, (hamstring, heel) My point is the player has often been bought back after recovery from one injury, only to be sidelined with a different injury. I am not sure this can be placed in Rodgers responsibility.

 

Lastly, players who have had serious injuries (Perreira, Fofana, Justin) it will take time for them to get their game back up to speed, and it clearly has....both JJ and RP have found it difficult to immediately replicate their pre injury levels.

 

I have never before heard of a manager being accountable for the level of injuries at any club, and I am not sire its fair to drop it all on Brendan....

 

[Ric Flair]

2 minutes ago, Reg Vardy said:

Said it before, any original injury....Vardy's knee, N'didi's knee, any hamstring, any groin is caused by the players decision to make the challenge/run, and likewise any fracture is either the players decision to make the challenge (Justin), or in Fofana and Perreira's case a reckless challenge. All of this is completely at the door of the players or the challengers, and is completely out of Rodgers hands.

 

Bringing players back, can be levelled at the club, but Castagne three different injuries(shoulder, hamstring, thigh), Vardy two different (hamstring,knee),Barnes (knee,hamstring), Evans, (hamstring, heel) My point is the player has often been bought back after recovery from one injury, only to be sidelined with a different injury. I am not sure this can be placed in Rodgers responsibility.

 

Lastly, players who have had serious injuries (Perreira, Fofana, Justin) it will take time for them to get their game back up to speed, and it clearly has....both JJ and RP have found it difficult to immediately replicate their pre injury levels.

 

I have never before heard of a manager being accountable for the level of injuries at any club, and I am not sire its fair to drop it all on Brendan....

 

Wow wow wow

[Nick]

1 minute ago, Ric Flair said:

Wow wow wow

I think he makes fair points, Ric.

[Ric Flair]

2 minutes ago, Nick said:

I think he makes fair points, Ric.

Seriously? He's stated that it is unthinkable for a manager to have anything to do with players getting injured. That's the long and short of it. All the other stuff that might hold some merit on balance is undone by that statement.

 

It's like me raising the various points I've raised about suspect handling of players carrying injuries and still playing them or not handling players come back from long term injuries and then saying all of these injuries were caused directly from the manager and only the manager.

 

Meet somewhere in the middle and that's about the truth. If people genuinely believe it's impossible for a managers methods to cause injury problems then I give up, it's worse than some of the takes I've heard coming from our current government on stuff.

[Webbo]

I still don't understand expected goals but tbh I don't really care. If you need stats to tell you how well your team is doing then maybe you shouldn't be watching sport.

[Nick]

8 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

Seriously? He's stated that it is unthinkable for a manager to have anything to do with players getting injured. That's the long and short of it. All the other stuff that might hold some merit on balance is undone by that statement.

 

It's like me raising the various points I've raised about suspect handling of players carrying injuries and still playing them or not handling players come back from long term injuries and then saying all of these injuries were caused directly from the manager and only the manager.

 

Meet somewhere in the middle and that's about the truth. If people genuinely believe it's impossible for a managers methods to cause injury problems then I give up, it's worse than some of the takes I've heard coming from our current government on stuff.

I read the post which you replied to. He didn't say it was unthinkable at all, he actually made some reasonable points then said he didn't think it was fair to lay it all at Brendan's door? I thought it was quite reasonable tbh, maybe there's history between you guys I don't know about...

 

I think BR may have misjudged one or two returning players and overplayed them when coming back but I'd also have thought the physio and doctor would be putting an amount of minutes on their game time if they thought they would be at risk.

 

I think we've been unlucky with injuries - silly unlucky and the odd decision hasn't helped in hindsight when further misfortune has struck but they are the calls and the risks which are calculated and sometimes don't pay off. In my humble opinion, I think the BR blame for the injuries has gone a bit far from some quarters being honest.

[foxes1988]

10 hours ago, Aus Fox said:

The biggest floor in looking at XG is that it does not take into consideration a lot of vital factors including who is given the chance - Wilf Ndidi and Youri Tielemans with the ball 30 yards out and running towards goal, would have the same XG. 
It also doesn’t take into account a teams style of play and how they play to their strengths. 
Chelsea have scored 11 goals from outside the box this season, Crystal Palace have scored 0, so a chance for both these teams will look very different.

It also doesn’t take into account the strengths of a goal keeper a 1:1 with Kasper is a more difficult chance than a 1:1 with Angus Gunn.

It is a vastly unreliable stat to judge any performance as their are too many factors involved in scoring a goal that cannot be accounted for. Context is really important. At the end of the day, the only stat that really matters is how many times you actually put the ball in the back of the net and so far this season only 6 teams have done that more than us. 

This.

 

It basically works on averages.  Advocates of XG will say look how accurately it predicts goals over time but the amount of time it needs to be accurate renders it pretty meaningless as you may as well look at the actually league table/stats at this stage anyway.    You can use it to try and predict things here or there and I can see why you use XG XA when comparing players to sign if you've got years worth of data and the players are similar but in general it isn't much better then most other statistics in my eyes.  People end up using xg wrongly for individual matches or over very short periods of time for example arguing we should have won this game because look at the xg or so and so will do well this season because in the first 5 games they have a high xg aggregate.

 

 

[Ric Flair]

2 minutes ago, pmcla26 said:

Your conspiracy theory would make more sense if they were nearly all muscle injuries, and our players who have played the most football had sustained them, but that's not the case. 

Wrong again. I've repeatedly raised the handling of Vardy vs Liverpool twice in a week where both times he was injured and yet kept on and led to a 3 month injury. Evans was massively struggling in the weeks leading up to the game he went off after 10 mins, the physios had encouraged him to play on in the game previous.

 

Ricardo got a fractured leg and yet he carried on twice, each time he sat down and the physios came on and then he carried on before going off and it being reported he had broken his leg. Incidentally carried on back in March 2020 when he'd done his ligaments too, warrior of a player or physios and a culture of being pushed and pushed to play?

 

James Justin - out for a year, absolutely cruel for the lad, with a number of setbacks before he could make his return. Comes back and after 1 brief sub appearance he then starts 3 games in a week and gets injured. Brainless stuff.

 

The general long list of injuries spanning well over a year or more I can only really make accusations that there's a general culture at the club that is leaving our players very suspect to injuries. I accept that it's a suspicion rather than me having cast iron proof because I don't and I accept that plenty of the injuries are for various reasons and I'm not blaming Rodgers for every injury, that would be as insane as those claiming its impossible for a manager to make any impact on whether players get injured or not, that's taken my breath away today that has, I cannot spaaake. 

 

But what I cannot ignore is the examples I've provided above in the midst of the catastrophic amount of injuries we've had stretching over a year and ask the questions on what is at play here. When you consider Liverpool fans and Celtic fans accused him of similar then its perhaps easy to jump on that and I apologise if I'm using that stick to beat him with when in reality I'm going off what they have said and only anecdotal evidence that I've also provided on injury numbers at Liverpool.

 

I hope I'm proven wrong here and that we overcome this astonishing run of injuries, right now it suggests we are doing but we've also been in this position before (early on in the season with just a few injuries) and then it's got progressively worse again. I'm happy to apologise or agree I've gone over the top or even that my suspicions and accusations were way off the mark if we don't have a number of injuries again. I will acknowledge that there seems to be a marked shift in the way the club and the manager are handling squad rotation for the likes of Justin, Castagne, Ricardo, Fofana etc since Justin, Ricardo and Vardy quickly got injured again back in February/March. So fair play and like other aspects,

 

Rodgers is proving he's willing to change and as I've repeatedly said, my issues with Rodgers have never been he's not good enough as a coach or that he's lost the dressing room, it was that if we continue to get the amount of injuries we have then we will continue to be hampered in maximising our potential and for a club like ours we don't have the luxury to buy ourselves put of this and we risk losing all momentum of this undoubted talented squad.

 

Those with the complete opposite view of mine don't seem to be as willing to consider anything other than Rodgers cannot be held accountable at all, not even slightly for pretty much anything because if injuries only ever lay with the player themselves then surely that's the same for all aspects of being a manager. How can a manager be at fault for players playing badly or missing sitters? They aren't purposely asking the players to, not their fault. 

 

As with a lot of the shit I spout, meet in the middle and it's closer to the truth.

[Ric Flair]

10 minutes ago, Nick said:

I read the post which you replied to. He didn't say it was unthinkable at all, he actually made some reasonable points then said he didn't think it was fair to lay it all at Brendan's door? I thought it was quite reasonable tbh, maybe there's history between you guys I don't know about...

 

I think BR may have misjudged one or two returning players and overplayed them when coming back but I'd also have thought the physio and doctor would be putting an amount of minutes on their game time if they thought they would be at risk.

 

I think we've been unlucky with injuries - silly unlucky and the odd decision hasn't helped in hindsight when further misfortune has struck but they are the calls and the risks which are calculated and sometimes don't pay off. In my humble opinion, I think the BR blame for the injuries has gone a bit far from some quarters being honest.

I like Reg Vardy as a poster, often agree with plenty they say so its nothing personal.

 

You missed the bit that about players getting different injuries can't be blamed on the manager or that they've never known a manager be responsible for a teams injuries? 

[The Year Of The Fox]

57 minutes ago, pmcla26 said:

Iheanacho gets 15+ a season if he played as our first choice striker. Not many sides have more than 1 player that does, though.

He needs to be starting then 

[Nick]

3 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

I like Reg Vardy as a poster, often agree with plenty they say so its nothing personal.

 

You missed the bit that about players getting different injuries can't be blamed on the manager or that they've never known a manager be responsible for a teams injuries? 

No, I didn’t miss those statements Ric, but I read them and interpreted them in the context of the post… 

[The Year Of The Fox]

Surely above anything else, the fact that Leicester got rid of Dave Rennie, but then (eventually) employed someone else at the start of this year is proof there was a problem during the 12-15 months without either? 

Edited 13 April 2022 by The Year Of The Fox

[Sharpe's Fox]

28 minutes ago, Webbo said:

I still don't understand expected goals but tbh I don't really care. If you need stats to tell you how well your team is doing then maybe you shouldn't be watching sport.

People who go on about expected goals either way don't go to games of football. Most fans understand that if your team is making chances or giving them away that its the barometer of a good performace whether you win, lose or draw. xG is the eye test turned into stats.

[Ric Flair]

11 minutes ago, The Year Of The Fox said:

Surely above anything else, the fact that Leicester got rid of Dave Rennie, but then (eventually) employed someone else at the start of this year is proof there was a problem during the 12-15 months without either? 

That person has since left as well, or is leaving and we are looking for a new head of medical to go with the new head physio we appointed recently too. Nothing to see here.

[The Year Of The Fox]

1 minute ago, Ric Flair said:

That person has since left as well, or is leaving and we are looking for a new head of medical to go with the new head physio we appointed recently too. Nothing to see here.

😂😂😂😂😂😂

 

 

What a joke 

[filbertway]

10 hours ago, sacreblueits442 said:

 

"Leading into the game against Cardiff he had a tight hamstring for a few days. He was fit enough to start and play; he felt it a little bit in the game so obviously we had to take him off.

 

 

 

Nobody could have seen it coming I imagine, pure fluke.

 

 

Edited 13 April 2022 by filbertway

[Webbo]

Wasn't reported on here that Dave Rennie was sacked by Susan Whelan for non football reasons? 

[Reg Vardy]

To wrap it up for me, has a manager ever been dismissed for a poor record on injuries? Results yes (influenced by injuries I can accept)Injuries ? No. 

[Muzzy_Larsson]

6 hours ago, Guest454545 said:

I'm a 30 year Celtic supporter. We had injuries. Just like we're having now with Big Ange. And before Brendan. And after him. But we never had a crisis that lasted half a season like yous. The crocks who were crocked under Brendan were also crocked under Ronny and under Lenny. But on the other hand, Scott Brown was ever present, and Jamie Shooders was never more robust than under Rodgers. Most of our injuries were either having the snot kicked out of us, or the plastic pitch at Livingston. And I looked into the Liverpool claim. Can you point out to me which of his two and a half seasons was blighted by having half a team out injured? 

Yes we did. Do you remember the Hearts game for example right after he left when we had basically no midfield left and we had to throw an untried, 18 year old Ewan Henderson in to midfield to start. That very season we were absolutely riddled with injuries from the start of the season until when he left so well over half a season (https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/1082370/Celtic-news-Brendan-Rodgers-Scottish-Premiership-Tom-Rogic-James-Forrest), so much so that I'm pretty sure we were languishing around 3rd or 4th in the table come October. Or going to ibrox with no fit strikers and having to play Mikey Johnstone up front (more than once), or having to negotiate the champions league qualifiers with Eoghan O'Connell and Nir Bitton at centre back.

 

We have had injury crisises under various managers like you say but look how Ange manages the squad now he has that luxury (since the January window), he's being clever and rotating players in the right games. The key thing you leave out is Rodgers inability to rotate properly when he was here, he ran players into the ground. Look at Tierney and the injury problems he's having now and latterly at his time at us, all most likely the result of running him into the ground and never resting him in his formative years when he was still developing physically. The stats also say Rodgers didn't rotate enough as I'm pretty sure Tierney, McGregor and Forrest all played the most minutes in world football three years on the trot or something like that. There were plenty of games, particularly at home, against the likes of St Mirren, Ross County, Hamilton, etc where Rodgers could have rested the guys I mentioned and never did.

Edited 13 April 2022 by Muzzy_Larsson

[filbertway]

25 minutes ago, Webbo said:

Wasn't reported on here that Dave Rennie was sacked by Susan Whelan for non football reasons? 

Probably by @ramadaone 

[Ric Flair]

18 minutes ago, Reg Vardy said:

To wrap it up for me, has a manager ever been dismissed for a poor record on injuries? Results yes (influenced by injuries I can accept)Injuries ? No. 

Interesting question, I can't think of any solely dismissed for that reason, but there have been managers accused of being part of a regime that has many many injuries - Wenger and Klopp have had it said.

 

There has of course been managers sacked and then the argument has been its because of injuries they've struggled. It's a big grey area and I am sadly too vexed to see it other than in black & white, I accept that. I hope I'm wrong.