Brendan Rodgers

[sacreblueits442]

2 hours ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

Don’t disagree they are sliding doors moment but under what notion did we know that ‘we played at the level we should’

 

Before the 19/20 season, we’d shown little potential in being capable of challenging the top four. Top six maybe but no one going into Rodgers first full season thought we could qualify for the CL

...I  think the post by @honeybradger answers your question!!!

[Dan LCFC]

16 hours ago, The_77 said:

I’m too lazy to pull up old posts of mine on the topic but you’ve nailed it, Dan. The common refrain on here is that Rodgers is too tactically inflexible, I’d argue that it’s the exact opposite. Rodgers prides himself into building sides with that can play in all setups and multiple formations but that only works when you have a full squad to chose from that’s running on all cylinders. 
 

When you’re in a bad run of form and/or missing players, you need to go back to basics and simplify the game (especially when forced to play players out of position). 
 

We can’t always react to what our opponents do, we have to have an approach that we can fall back on that everyone, no matter their place in the squad, knows front to back. 

Tactical flexibility can go too far I think, I've always thought having a consistent plan A with the occasional deviation is the way to go, but we seem to change formation every other game.

 

Just looked at our last ten games as an example. We changed formation from one game to the other 7 times out of 10. Is it any wonder we lack organisation?

 

I couldn't really tell you our 'plan A' anymore.

[Dan LCFC]

22 hours ago, honeybradger said:

So in 17/18 and 18/19 most people thought we should be finishing 7th in the league over Burnley and newly promoted wolves, who got 54 points and 57 points respectively, and most people on here blamed Puel for this, so surely a quality manager should at least get what was perceived to be the 7th best squad in the league 58 points and above? On top of this we added Tielemans halfway through 18/19 so we're probably expecting around 60-64 points next season if our squad performs to the level it was perceived it should. We end up getting 62 points and 66 points, which would usually get us 7th and 6th but we ended up finishing 5th twice. So we havent overperformed in the league under Rodgers apart from the first half of 19/20 (which later returned to our expected level), what happened instead was the teams around us (arsenal, spurs, chelsea, man united, liverpool last year) underperformed massively. So this spin that Rodgers is pushing about overperformance in the league over the last few years in incorrect, he has managed to get our side around the points we were expecting before he came in but the teams around us falling off has made it look like he's brought a midtable side to a top 4 push when really it was a top 6 push and the top 4 sides dropped down to top 6 level. 

Do agree with this. That isn't to say he's done badly by any stretch but I don't buy this narrative that he's worked miracles. For his first year we were excellent in parts. I think a mistake people make is judging the performance against our name, the stature of the club, rather than the squad we actually have. Our squad was, and is good.

[sacreblueits442]

10 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

Tactical flexibility can go too far I think, I've always thought having a consistent plan A with the occasional deviation is the way to go, but we seem to change formation every other game.

 

Just looked at our last ten games as an example. We changed formation from one game to the other 7 times out of 10. Is it any wonder we lack organisation?

 

I couldn't really tell you our 'plan A' anymore.

 

...4-2-3-1, Rodgers wants to play that all day long!!!

  Should Youri go he will shift it to 4-3-3, with Maddison in the half space.

 We need to get the wide forward in and any monies coming in would cover that position along with a CB.

  If Tarkowski comes in on a free then we will have, Amartey, Soyuncu, Fofana, Tarkowski, Vestergaard and Evans.

 

 

 

 

 

[MattFox]

12 hours ago, Freeman's Wharfer said:

Excellent post.

Those champions league near-misses were sliding doors moments simply because we played at the level we should and a handful of other big teams were having a nightmare couple of years.

 

The status quo was always going to be restored and we’d end up thinking ‘what it’.

19/20 was the big one IMO 

 

Chelsea were under a transfer ban and United were going nowhere before they signed Fernandes

 

We should have had it sealed well before covid hit

[CosbehFox]

49 minutes ago, sacreblueits442 said:

...I  think the post by @honeybradger answers your question!!!

Really it doesn’t because it’s revisionist in how it describes four of the big six having bad seasons in 19/20.
 

Man U were unbeaten in their last fifteen games of that season. They got 32 out of 42 points. Chelsea finished the season with 8 wins, 1 draw and 3 losses. 

Of course the finale of 19/20 was to the backdrop of a congested period where the bigger clubs could rotate far better.
 

Last season in 20/21, Chelsea lost three in the second half of the season. Liverpool in their last ten didn’t lose getting 26 out of a possible 28. 

Even so a reasoned expectation pre season would have been European football and Rodgers achieves both of those. 

[kingfox]

Disgraceful.

 

[moore_94]

Spoilers - when the majority of your best defence is missing, your defensive stats are highly likely to be worse than when you did have them

[kingfox]

9 minutes ago, moore_94 said:

Spoilers - when the majority of your best defence is missing, your defensive stats are highly likely to be worse than when you did have them

Well done for stating the obvious 

 

“Worse off the ball” is what caught my eye.

 

Exactly proves what I said on here after the Brighton game which many agreed with.

 

Watching this team nowadays is depressing because they lack effort, that stat just proves it.

[moore_94]

3 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Well done for stating the obvious 

 

“Worse off the ball” is what caught my eye.

 

Exactly proves what I said on here after the Brighton game which many agreed with.

 

Watching this team nowadays is depressing because they lack effort, that stat just proves it.

No problem 

[st albans fox]

28 minutes ago, moore_94 said:

Spoilers - when the majority of your best defence is missing, your defensive stats are highly likely to be worse than when you did have them

 

16 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Well done for stating the obvious 

 

“Worse off the ball” is what caught my eye.

 

Exactly proves what I said on here after the Brighton game which many agreed with.

 

Watching this team nowadays is depressing because they lack effort, that stat just proves it.

if you didn't know that it surely couldn't be true, you'd think that we were deliberately holding back in the first half of the season to avoid the second half drop off we've seen over the past two campaigns ......

[Ric Flair]

28 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Disgraceful.

 

The most obvious reflex reaction to this is of course we're worse defensively, we've had horrendous injuries at the back. Of course we're worse at set pieces, most of our tall players are out, of course we are worse off the ball, the schedule of the last 2 years has been relentless and add in the former where selection is then difficult to enable rotation and it eats itself and grows.

 

However, all of those are arguably our own doing. If the style of football we want to play is passing out from the back and a defensive high line then you always need the players for it, if we want to press and have the energy to retain the high work rate off the ball then we need enough players to be able to do that and we need to be able to cope with having European football.

 

If we get back to doing both well next season without European football then all that suggests is we have limitations at dealing with meeting our ambitions. 

 

I'm tired of the excuses. I get why certain things are happening but they shouldn't be happening in the first place. If Rodgers cannot keep a squad fit to meet the demands of domestic and European football with the methods he instills, then change the methods. If its not the methods but the suitability of the players then change the players. If its the manager that's causing a large part of this then at some point difficult questions have to be answered between the board and the said regime.

 

Still score some bloody goals though eh?!

[CosbehFox]

56 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Well done for stating the obvious 

 

“Worse off the ball” is what caught my eye.

 

Exactly proves what I said on here after the Brighton game which many agreed with.

 

Watching this team nowadays is depressing because they lack effort, that stat just proves it.

They hasn't been lack effort since Villa away for me. 

 

Personally I reckon it's a natural/psychological effect of winning the Cup. Our off the ball running was absolutely woeful early season. 

Edited 3 February 2022 by Cardiff_Fox

[An Sionnach]

50 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Disgraceful.

 

None of this mentions opposition tactics. They are not going to sit back and let us play the way we want to. If they do ,like Man.Utd. did in their arrogance, you get a predictable outcome. We have been worked out by most opposition teams. They know our strengths and weaknesses. We have to up our work rate and particularly our movement off the ball if we want to overcome teams now , there will be few easy victories no matter what team we put out.

[Corky]

The injuries to the defence haven't helped but you can still defend set-pieces better if you have a plan which we now seem to have (players on the posts being the main example). 

 

We've been poorly coached this year, no getting away from it.

[BKLFox]

On 02/02/2022 at 12:10, honeybradger said:

So in 17/18 and 18/19 most people thought we should be finishing 7th in the league over Burnley and newly promoted wolves, who got 54 points and 57 points respectively, and most people on here blamed Puel for this, so surely a quality manager should at least get what was perceived to be the 7th best squad in the league 58 points and above? On top of this we added Tielemans halfway through 18/19 so we're probably expecting around 60-64 points next season if our squad performs to the level it was perceived it should. We end up getting 62 points and 66 points, which would usually get us 7th and 6th but we ended up finishing 5th twice. So we havent overperformed in the league under Rodgers apart from the first half of 19/20 (which later returned to our expected level), what happened instead was the teams around us (arsenal, spurs, chelsea, man united, liverpool last year) underperformed massively. So this spin that Rodgers is pushing about overperformance in the league over the last few years in incorrect, he has managed to get our side around the points we were expecting before he came in but the teams around us falling off has made it look like he's brought a midtable side to a top 4 push when really it was a top 6 push and the top 4 sides dropped down to top 6 level. 

Kind of poo poo's on our title win if you want to talk of 62/66 usually gets you X & it was only because other teams underperforming that we got Y.

Winning the title with 81pts is the 5th lowest points tally since 1992/93 season (2 pre 2000 78/79pts & 2 post 2000 both 80pts) Arsenal a whole 10pts behind us on 71pts would normally see a team reach anywhere between 4th to 6th so does that mean we didn't deserve our title?

Past figures are great for stats analysis & predictions but the point is each season is its own challenge & a team should be viewed on its indivdual merits within that season not put against past tallies, we were the 5th best team in those 2 season just like we were the Top team & deserving of the title in 2015/16

[filbertway]

Just now, BKLFox said:

Kind of poo poo's on our title win if you want to talk of 62/66 usually gets you X & it was only because other teams underperforming that we got Y.

Winning the title with 81pts is the 5th lowest points tally since 1992/93 season (2 pre 2000 78/79pts & 2 post 2000 both 80pts) Arsenal a whole 10pts behind us on 71pts would normally see a team reach anywhere between 4th to 6th so does that mean we didn't deserve our title?

Past figures are great for stats analysis & predictions but the point is each season is its own challenge & a team should be viewed on its indivdual merits within that season not put against past tallies, we were the 5th best team in those 2 season just like we were the Top team & deserving of the title in 2015/16

There's no shame in accepting that we took advantage of some very big clubs under performing that year.

 

[The_77]

2 hours ago, Dan LCFC said:

Tactical flexibility can go too far I think, I've always thought having a consistent plan A with the occasional deviation is the way to go, but we seem to change formation every other game.

 

Just looked at our last ten games as an example. We changed formation from one game to the other 7 times out of 10. Is it any wonder we lack organisation?

 

I couldn't really tell you our 'plan A' anymore.

Hell, he played four different formations in four games against a poor Villa side in 19/20. 

[The_77]

2 hours ago, sacreblueits442 said:

 

...4-2-3-1, Rodgers wants to play that all day long!!!

  Should Youri go he will shift it to 4-3-3, with Maddison in the half space.

 We need to get the wide forward in and any monies coming in would cover that position along with a CB.

  If Tarkowski comes in on a free then we will have, Amartey, Soyuncu, Fofana, Tarkowski, Vestergaard and Evans.

 

 

 

 

 

Rodgers and the players have always described our preferred setup as a 4-1-4-1 when everyone is healthy. Of course, that switches to a 4-3-3 and sometimes a 4-2-3-1 depending on what’s going on in the game, and we’ll usually switch to 3/5 at the back at some point, and, well, I think we can all see what one of the problems is. 

[don_danbury]

2 hours ago, MattFox said:

19/20 was the big one IMO 

 

Chelsea were under a transfer ban and United were going nowhere before they signed Fernandes

 

We should have had it sealed well before covid hit

it still was pretty much sealed even when covid did hit. the pen each game united were getting and fernandes helped them out massively tho + our huge downfall. 

[Dan LCFC]

3 hours ago, sacreblueits442 said:

 

...4-2-3-1, Rodgers wants to play that all day long!!!

  Should Youri go he will shift it to 4-3-3, with Maddison in the half space.

 We need to get the wide forward in and any monies coming in would cover that position along with a CB.

  If Tarkowski comes in on a free then we will have, Amartey, Soyuncu, Fofana, Tarkowski, Vestergaard and Evans.

If it was up to me I'd switch between 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3, I think moving Ndidi slightly forward has been an error, we were a lot more solid with him effectively playing as a destroyer. It does hinder Maddison somewhat though.

 

Needless to say but the back 3/5 needs binning until we've got at least two new players.

[kingfox]

1 hour ago, Ric Flair said:

The most obvious reflex reaction to this is of course we're worse defensively, we've had horrendous injuries at the back. Of course we're worse at set pieces, most of our tall players are out, of course we are worse off the ball, the schedule of the last 2 years has been relentless and add in the former where selection is then difficult to enable rotation and it eats itself and grows.

 

However, all of those are arguably our own doing. If the style of football we want to play is passing out from the back and a defensive high line then you always need the players for it, if we want to press and have the energy to retain the high work rate off the ball then we need enough players to be able to do that and we need to be able to cope with having European football.

 

If we get back to doing both well next season without European football then all that suggests is we have limitations at dealing with meeting our ambitions. 

 

I'm tired of the excuses. I get why certain things are happening but they shouldn't be happening in the first place. If Rodgers cannot keep a squad fit to meet the demands of domestic and European football with the methods he instills, then change the methods. If its not the methods but the suitability of the players then change the players. If its the manager that's causing a large part of this then at some point difficult questions have to be answered between the board and the said regime.

 

Still score some bloody goals though eh?!

The thing is mate, all fans know that, we know we have one of the worst defences in the league, because it gets stated week in week out.

 

However what fans may not realise is our on the ball and off the ball stats, we can see it materialise on the pitch, but we never know for certain until those stats are brought to our attention.

 

I said after the Brighton game, I can take a season of being average, what I can’t take is to see a team who lack effort & desire, many posters agreed with me, now Richard Jolly’s tweet just proves what I stated.

 

When teams have the worst off the ball stats in the league, it shows one thing, they’ve lost the desire to play. You can’t blame scheduling and injuries on the teams desire to work, many teams have been in the same boat as us, yet they are still producing better work rate than us. We had a depleted team against Liverpool; however they were able to find their effort & desire that day, but in the majority of other matches this season, they haven’t.

 

I can remember when that stat became prominent a couple of season’s back, when West Ham were under Pellegrini or Bilic, might have been both. Sky numerous times mentioned their off the ball statistics, which saw them rank bottom in that department, in the end it led to average finishes, fans turning on the team, then inevitably the manager getting sacked.

[Dan LCFC]

I think people who think we're going to become good with everyone fit (which is a big if if that even happens) are in for a rude awakening. We've had collapses with Fofana in the side.

[Dan LCFC]

1 hour ago, BKLFox said:

Kind of poo poo's on our title win if you want to talk of 62/66 usually gets you X & it was only because other teams underperforming that we got Y.

Winning the title with 81pts is the 5th lowest points tally since 1992/93 season (2 pre 2000 78/79pts & 2 post 2000 both 80pts) Arsenal a whole 10pts behind us on 71pts would normally see a team reach anywhere between 4th to 6th so does that mean we didn't deserve our title?

Past figures are great for stats analysis & predictions but the point is each season is its own challenge & a team should be viewed on its indivdual merits within that season not put against past tallies, we were the 5th best team in those 2 season just like we were the Top team & deserving of the title in 2015/16

I think you'd be hard pushed to find anybody who claims the top clubs didn't have an off season. There's been some massive revisionism about that season (overrating Spurs as usual) but lots of the top teams did have poor seasons. I do however think it's bullshit when people act like the league itself was a lot worse that year than those around it. Nothing special at all in 2014/15 or 2016/17 either, the difference was Chelsea both times.

[honeybradger]

1 hour ago, BKLFox said:

Kind of poo poo's on our title win if you want to talk of 62/66 usually gets you X & it was only because other teams underperforming that we got Y.

Winning the title with 81pts is the 5th lowest points tally since 1992/93 season (2 pre 2000 78/79pts & 2 post 2000 both 80pts) Arsenal a whole 10pts behind us on 71pts would normally see a team reach anywhere between 4th to 6th so does that mean we didn't deserve our title?

Past figures are great for stats analysis & predictions but the point is each season is its own challenge & a team should be viewed on its indivdual merits within that season not put against past tallies, we were the 5th best team in those 2 season just like we were the Top team & deserving of the title in 2015/16

I think you would have to be overly idealistic to say that we werent lucky for our best ever side to coincide with an off year for the usual top 6 sides. You can't really argue that a side didnt deserve to win the title when they got 81 points despite expecting around 40, it's a huge achievement and definitely deserved the silverware it got. It's about the expectations of the side as well, if Man United or Man City won the league that year with 81 points after spending 1 billion they would be much less deserving of the title than ourselves who had a starting XI of 25m.