Brendan Rodgers

[oxtonfox]

14 minutes ago, pmcla26 said:

Well, that's not true is it?

I just checked, 2010/11 season, January 3rd at the Walkers. 2-1 to Leicester, goals by Berner and Vassel. Swansea actually got promoted under Brendan later that season in the playoffs against Reading. I was at the game and remember Swansea's game built around possession. 

[Rain King]

4 minutes ago, oxtonfox said:

I just checked, 2010/11 season, January 3rd at the Walkers. 2-1 to Leicester, goals by Berner and Vassel. Swansea actually got promoted under Brendan later that season in the playoffs against Reading. I was at the game and remember Swansea's game built around possession. 

Sven was in charge for that match.

[Spudulike]

21 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

I just checked and Forest had actually knocked Liverpool out of the European Cup by the end of September that year (78-79). 

 

Further historical research reveals:

- To win the 82-83 Cup Winners' Cup, Fergie's Aberdeen beat Sion (Switz), Dinamo Tirana, Lech Poznan, Bayern Munich, Waterschei (Bel) & Real Madrid

- To reach the final of the 86-87 UEFA Cup, Dundee Utd beat Lens, Craiova (Rom), Hajduk Split (Yug), Barcelona & Borussia Moenchengladbach, losing the final to Gothenberg

 

Whereas, after Liverpool, to win the 78-79 European Cup Forest only beat AEK Athens, Grasshoppers, Cologne & Malmo.....so their inferior achievement deserves no respect whatsoever and should be expunged from the record. 

Back in those days, it was much harder to win the domestic cups than euro cups. 

 

UEFA list the old European Cup as a separate competition, which it was, and bears no comparison with the now 30 year old Champions League. Same goes for the Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Cup that have been replaced by much tougher competitions. 

[Spudulike]

11 minutes ago, oxtonfox said:

I just checked, 2010/11 season, January 3rd at the Walkers. 2-1 to Leicester, goals by Berner and Vassel. Swansea actually got promoted under Brendan later that season in the playoffs against Reading. I was at the game and remember Swansea's game built around possession. 

 

6 minutes ago, Rain King said:

Sven was in charge for that match.

Perhaps it was the match the season before that's causing the confusion? First match back in the Championship and NFP was the manager... 

 

https://www.goal.com/en/match/leicester-city-v-swansea-city/8sxdn93vzqixvx55ez3wpkp1x

[Fox92]

31 minutes ago, oxtonfox said:

I just checked, 2010/11 season, January 3rd at the Walkers. 2-1 to Leicester, goals by Berner and Vassel. Swansea actually got promoted under Brendan later that season in the playoffs against Reading. I was at the game and remember Swansea's game built around possession. 

Pearson wasn't manager then and I don't think Rodgers was at Swansea either.

 

We beat Swansea 2-1 first game of the 09/10 season under Pearson. The season we made the play offs.

 

But Swansea have been built around possession for years now, before Rodgers' time there too. Martinez, Sousa, Rodgers, Laudrup were all possession based, I think it's how Swansea wanted to play back then.

Edited 25 April 2022 by Fox92

[oxtonfox]

31 minutes ago, Rain King said:

Sven was in charge for that match.

Fair cop- it was probably the season before or the FA Cup win around that time against Swansea.

[CosbehFox]

23 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

 

Perhaps it was the match the season before that's causing the confusion? First match back in the Championship and NFP was the manager... 

 

https://www.goal.com/en/match/leicester-city-v-swansea-city/8sxdn93vzqixvx55ez3wpkp1x

Aye and we got rings ran around us first half. Was Sousa in charge of Swansea. 
 

Rodgers was at Reading at the time and we did play them live on sky in one of his final games before he got the sack. 1-0 win Waghorn. 

Edited 25 April 2022 by Cardiff_Fox

[Guest Chocolate Teapot]

Just now, oxtonfox said:

Fair cop- it was probably the season before or the FA Cup win around that time against Swansea.

It sounds very romantic and I'm not sure it ever happened.

[Guest Chocolate Teapot]

1 hour ago, Stadt said:

"I've never seen a bag of money score a goal" - Johan Cruyff.

 

That's over-rational, if the league was decided by budgets then they'd be very little point in competing. Finishing position is determined by the quality of player and the management (and some other factors like injuries, luck etc). Budgets have an important influence of those two things but it's not 100% fatalistic. The most recent set of accounts peg us as the 7th biggest spenders on wages (add in Vestergaard, Bertrand, Soumare & Daka) and we had the 6th largest net spend last summer too. Not to mention one of the highest paid managers and a squad most objective observers would say is somewhere between 6th-8th.

 

Newcastle might spend £200m in the summer but will they have a better squad? Highly unlikely. The narrative forming is that we had a few good years in the sun rather than we've failed to capitalise on our successful club-building efforts over the last decade. Our fans have enjoyed disrupting the big 6 over the last 3 or 4 years but now we've let our standards slip; a few fans seem to be resigned to giving up the ghost on progression.

Agree its very rational however for someone to get sacked I imagine we'd have to be performing below expectations- fact is we're slightly below having been well above for two years. This doesn't suggest to me the bloke is in danger of losing his job.

 

Also on your point about wages etc, I think the adjusted version has us 9th.

 

 

[coolhandfox]

1 hour ago, Stadt said:

"I've never seen a bag of money score a goal" - Johan Cruyff.

 

That's over-rational, if the league was decided by budgets then they'd be very little point in competing. Finishing position is determined by the quality of player and the management (and some other factors like injuries, luck etc). Budgets have an important influence of those two things but it's not 100% fatalistic. The most recent set of accounts peg us as the 7th biggest spenders on wages (add in Vestergaard, Bertrand, Soumare & Daka) and we had the 6th largest net spend last summer too. Not to mention one of the highest paid managers and a squad most objective observers would say is somewhere between 6th-8th.

So in one breath, you are saying budgets shouldn't decide league placing, and in another, you are saying we should be 7-8th because we have the 7th biggest spenders on wages and the 6th largest net spend last summer.  

 

1 hour ago, Stadt said:

Newcastle might spend £200m in the summer but will they have a better squad? Highly unlikely. The narrative forming is that we had a few good years in the sun rather than we've failed to capitalise on our successful club-building efforts over the last decade. Our fans have enjoyed disrupting the big 6 over the last 3 or 4 years but now we've let our standards slip; a few fans seem to be resigned to giving up the ghost on progression.

More of an acceptance that progresses is not always linear, and sometimes you go backwards to go forward.

 

Sometimes when you have success, you can rest on your laurels and stop doing the things that work and made you successful.

 

Still pretty confident with a few tweaks, we will be back in around the top 6 next year. 

 

 

[Stadt]

5 minutes ago, Chocolate Teapot said:

lso on your point about wages etc, I think the adjusted version has us 9th.

Is that anywhere public? I'd be interested in having a look

 

I'd agree by most measures we've over performed to a degree but I think our squad has probably been a bit underrated which evens itself out.

[Stadt]

1 minute ago, coolhandfox said:

So in one breath, you are saying budgets shouldn't decide league placing, and in another, you are saying we should be 7-8th because we have the 7th biggest spenders on wages and the 6th largest net spend last summer.  

 

More of an acceptance that progresses is not always linear, and sometimes you go backwards to go forward.

 

Sometimes when you have success, you can rest on your laurels and stop doing the things that work and made you successful.

 

Still pretty confident with a few tweaks, we will be back in around the top 6 next year. 

 

 

I don't know if that's tongue in cheek or not but the argument I was (and have been) making is that finances aren't the be-all-and-end-all yet for some fans that's why we can't breach the top 6 again - if that really is the case then teams below should struggle to compete with us.

 

The quality of a squad isn't that dependent on finances, Man Utd's is much more expensive than ours or West Ham's but it's not that much better (if at all).

 

Success isn't linear, you're right, but nearly every metric is trending worse year on year. Under Rodgers we seem to collect a major issue each season without solving them, I seriously hope we rebound well for next season but I just can't see it

[Guest Chocolate Teapot]

35 minutes ago, Stadt said:

Is that anywhere public? I'd be interested in having a look

 

I'd agree by most measures we've over performed to a degree but I think our squad has probably been a bit underrated which evens itself out.

It's due to last season not accounting for 3 months so this year's had an extra three months accounted for. I'll try and dig out where I read it.

[Ric Flair]

53 minutes ago, Chocolate Teapot said:

Agree its very rational however for someone to get sacked I imagine we'd have to be performing below expectations- fact is we're slightly below having been well above for two years. This doesn't suggest to me the bloke is in danger of losing his job.

 

Also on your point about wages etc, I think the adjusted version has us 9th.

 

 

Really? Given we haven't really sold any high earners last summer and made 5 new signings + contract extensions for Justin, Ricardo, Barnes and Fofana I'd not be surprised to see us still higher than the other 14.

[coolhandfox]

1 hour ago, Stadt said:

I don't know if that's tongue in cheek or not but the argument I was (and have been) making is that finances aren't the be-all-and-end-all yet for some fans that's why we can't breach the top 6 again - if that really is the case then teams below should struggle to compete with us.

 

The quality of a squad isn't that dependent on finances, Man Utd's is much more expensive than ours or West Ham's but it's not that much better (if at all).

 

Success isn't linear, you're right, but nearly every metric is trending worse year on year. Under Rodgers we seem to collect a major issue each season without solving them, I seriously hope we rebound well for next season but I just can't see it

Was just having a little fun with you.  

 

A significant thing for me is to have a fit and healthy squad. We can argue to the cow come home who fault that is, but I pretty sure we would have got top 4 last season with a healthy squad.

I'm also confident we would be in the top 6 this season with our best players available. 

 

Pretty sure if we get Ricardo, Evans, Fofana, Castange and Ndidi on the pitch for the majority of the season, we will be fine defensively. 

 

People would argue we have that now, but Ricardo, Evans, and Fofana have played around 300 minutes each in the last nine league games.

 

Not overly worried about the set-piece issues. I think we are seeing positive changes on that front and green shoots of recovery.

 

We have been a bit turgid since Christmas, but I see that as a need must as, we couldn't go on conceding two a game, and it had to change. This has this led to us scoring less and creating less? Of course, But I think we can take the handbrake off a little once we have the defence sorted.

 

Under Rodgers, we scored the 4th highest amount of goals in 19/20 and joint 3rd in 20/21; even this year, we are 8th highest scorers this season whilst being crap. 

 

Being poor defensively samps the confidence of the whole side a leads to people playing save rather than playing the killer pass. Pretty sure that swagger and confidence can come back. 

 

The last three games are no indication of anything. We are on the beach in the league and have a massive distraction.

 

Do with have a things to sort? Yes, we need to bring in a couple of creative players, definitely an RW, and go back to a formation that gets the best out of our attacking players. For me, a 4-2-3-1 with Maddison at 10.

 

For me, the 4-3-3 has been a sticking plaster to cover our defensive issues, we also need to sort who plays as part of two at CM.

 

I think we have just hit that point where we need to freshen up a few areas of the squad and then go again. 

 

 

 

 

Edited 25 April 2022 by coolhandfox

[Daggers]

On 24/04/2022 at 12:51, volpeazzurro said:

Do you not think over a year of poor on field performances, failure to address defensive issues, poor team selections, tactics and strange substitutions with repeated mistakes are not some form of evidence? If you hire someone to repair your car or invest your money, you don't have to know them personally to recognise if their cocking things up.

 

Do you personally, after 3 years, have faith in him enough for him to spend the clubs money on his choice of players? Is there anything in his current or past history to corroborate such faith?

 

1. You are not a qualified mechanic.

2. You weren't a spectator in the workshop.

3. You haven't named a suitable replacement vehicle - and even if you do someone will tell you it's crap or unrealistic.

4. Ten years ago you were driving a much worse car.

5. Five reverse gears and one forward is a perfectly acceptable gear box.

6. Where we're going we don't need roads.

[Guest Chocolate Teapot]

34 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

Really? Given we haven't really sold any high earners last summer and made 5 new signings + contract extensions for Justin, Ricardo, Barnes and Fofana I'd not be surprised to see us still higher than the other 14.

https://www.spotrac.com/epl/payroll/

 

Rodgers was also quoted as saying 9th and I imagine he's got a better idea than a website.

Edited 25 April 2022 by Chocolate Teapot

[fuchsntf]

9 minutes ago, Daggers said:

 

1. You are not a qualified mechanic.

2. You weren't a spectator in the workshop.

3. You haven't named a suitable replacement vehicle - and even if you do someone will tell you it's crap or unrealistic.

4. Ten years ago you were driving a much worse car.

5. Five reverse gears and one forward is a perfectly acceptable gear box.

6. Where we're going we don't need roads.

Ahhh.Now I know..(6)
We are going to have a pile up in Charnwood forest..& our journey ends up

between Groby-pool & Cropston reservoir or bottom thereof..

[Ric Flair]

28 minutes ago, Chocolate Teapot said:

https://www.spotrac.com/epl/payroll/

 

Rodgers was also quoted as saying 9th and I imagine he's got a better idea than a website.

That website is heinous, that's the one that claims Choudhury is on 3k a week or something and Tielemans about 20k. Our wage budget is considerably more than £55m a year!!! I know the website might be relative and all clubs wages are understated for whatever reason but I'd be surprised if we've gone from 7th to 9th given what's gone on.

[foxinsocks]

20 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

That website is heinous, that's the one that claims Choudhury is on 3k a week or something and Tielemans about 20k. Our wage budget is considerably more than £55m a year!!! I know the website might be relative and all clubs wages are understated for whatever reason but I'd be surprised if we've gone from 7th to 9th given what's gone on.

we know the players we have - anyone think we should be doing better?  I  do.  

How effectively other clubs spend their money is their business.
I would add that  the epl clubs are the richest - yet clearly we don't win in Europe all the time.  This is because many clubs are financially inefficient in terms of converting spend to trophies or points.  I think this is because (1) they churn their managers too often who then rebuild the squads despite the commitments in place; (2) clubs are taken advantage of by agents.  The winners are the players and their  agents. The losers are the fans and the owners. The willingness of the owners to press on without fixing this shows how they are driven by hope.

Edited 25 April 2022 by foxinsocks

[An Sionnach]

12 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

That website is heinous, that's the one that claims Choudhury is on 3k a week or something and Tielemans about 20k. Our wage budget is considerably more than £55m a year!!! I know the website might be relative and all clubs wages are understated for whatever reason but I'd be surprised if we've gone from 7th to 9th given what's gone on.

The clubs financial report put the salary bill for players alone at north of £90 million so the total salary bill is probably well over £100 million. Comfort yourself with knowing that is less than half of the two Manchesters and Chelsea.

[CosbehFox]

The latest accounts from the PL 2020/21 season Swiss Ramble reviewed was Fulham.

Palace, Newcastle, Burnley and West Brom to come. 

 

We are 7th highest wage bill 

[Guest Chocolate Teapot]

22 minutes ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

The latest accounts from the PL 2020/21 season Swiss Ramble reviewed was Fulham.

Palace, Newcastle, Burnley and West Brom to come. 

 

We are 7th highest wage bill 

That's defnitely the case last year - Rodgers explicitly said 9th. 

 

Whether it's 7th or 9th - we won't be that far off the clubs in that area so to go back to the original point we're not that below expectations.

[Guest Chocolate Teapot]

56 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

That website is heinous, that's the one that claims Choudhury is on 3k a week or something and Tielemans about 20k. Our wage budget is considerably more than £55m a year!!! I know the website might be relative and all clubs wages are understated for whatever reason but I'd be surprised if we've gone from 7th to 9th given what's gone on.

it has hamza on 61k a week.

[Mickyblueeyes]

4 hours ago, lcfceaves said:

I understand everyone's argument about what we have achieved on paper, under Rodgers, we have had 2x 5th place finishes, won the FA Cup for the first time in our history. Those first 3-4 months of both seasons, we played some of the best football I have seen... I just wonder why that isn't happening anymore. 

 

Now I can only speak on behalf of myself, I don't know what everyone else's motives are for disliking Rodgers, it may be that they have their head in the clouds and think we are going to be challenging top 4 every season. My issue isn't with that, I know our level, and to be honest, where we are in the league right now, with the amount of injuries we have had to key players, I think 9th-10th is about right...

My issue with him and this style / philosophy, is the obsession with possession and thinking that more possession, means you are the better team / manager (which he clearly believes as you hear it nearly every week in the aftermath). 

 

To sum up what we have become, we just played a team at home, who had lost 4 on the bounce, are below us in the league, yet we finished the game with more possession (64%) and yet lower xG (think it was 0.26). Villa's was 0.8 something. From memory (although I soon erased most of it) our best chance, and most our xG probably came from 2 Maddison free kicks...  

Just utterly boring, non-penetrative football. This was the reason I wanted Puel out. Puel on paper, again, probably had us where most would expect us to be 8th-10th. But the football was dreadful.  

 

There is obviously a lot else that is wrong, the conceding free headers week in, week out, at set plays, the high amount of goals we concede within the last 10 minutes of games, the persistent injuries. But for me, above all that, it is the snooze fest of a game we have seen a lot in the domestic games because of the obsession with possession. Thinking we are going into next season with him doesn't get the 'juices flowing'... 

 

This is such a good breakdown of reasons why so many have turned against Brendan. I actually dont think there is any fan who expects to be top 4 (yes we all want that but no one expects it). There massive issues this season. Basics done wrong. In addition, issues that have been prevalent in the past two season just dont get fixed. Being Brendan out doesnt mean you dont respect his achievements. But for some this club over the reputation of a manager or player is bigger. There is nothing wrong with saying we havent been very good this year at the fundamentals and change is not the worst thing in the world. The reign is over and whether that happens now, at the end of the season or six months into the next, it wont change things.