JUST OVER A year ago, Mauricio Pochettino’s Southampton defeated Liverpool 3-1 to effectively end the Anfield club’s hopes of finishing in the top four last season.
The Liverpool team that day was as follows: Jones; Johnson, Jose Enrique, Agger, Skrtel; Gerrard, Phillippe Coutinho, Downing, Allen; Suarez, Sturridge.
An encouraging end-of-season run was brought to halt, as Liverpool fans experienced a feeling they had become increasingly accustomed to in recent campaigns — failure.
The sense then was that it was a team in transition, and one which was in need of major renovation — Gerrard was past his prime, Henderson wasn’t good enough, Coutinho was erratic at best, Sturridge was a Chelsea reject…
Little did they know that just over 12 months later, with more or less the same core group of players, they would be on the verge of history in the form of their first league title in 24 years.
Accordingly, below are some of the qualities that helped Rodgers mastermind this incredible turnaround, rendering him the only suitable candidate for Manager of the Year in the process.
Overachievement
Liverpool finished in seventh place last year, yet they’re now odds-on to win the title. Such a rapid improvement in such a short space of time very seldom occurs in football and is verging on miracle-worker territory. Quite simply, it’s difficult to imagine any other manager taking control of this Liverpool side at the start of the season and getting them to the position they’re now in.
Perhaps Jordan Henderson epitomises their incredible transition from no-hopers to potential league champions. Branded a flop by some commentators before this season and strongly linked with a move to Fulham, the central midfielder played all bar 22 minutes of Liverpool’s title campaign before his sending off against Manchester City last week. Many people thought he was destined to become one of the many young English midfielders who prematurely fade away despite an extremely promising start to their career, yet a combination of his own improvement and the self-belief that Rodgers gradually instilled in him has turned the ex-Sunderland man into a key member of this Liverpool side, belatedly enabling the 23-year-old to fulfill the potential that earned him a £20million move to Anfield in the first place.
So as impressive as the achievements of Mourinho, Pulis et al have been, there is no question that Rodgers has overachieved more than anyone given the limitations he’s been forced to deal with. It would consequently be a travesty if he failed to win this season’s Manager of the Year accolade, irrespective of whether or not the Reds ultimately claim the title.
Tactics
Over the course of the season, Liverpool have recorded comprehensive victories over some of the league’s top teams. Tottenham, Manchester United, Arsenal and Everton have all been roundly outclassed by the Rodgers’ side at one point or another.
Few people would argue that Liverpool have considerably better players than the teams in question — certainly, not to the extent that they should regularly be beating these teams by four or five goals. Instead, they have a manager who showed superb tactical acumen on each aforementioned occasion, while ensuring the team’s pre-match preparation and understanding of the system they were playing was exemplary.
Over the course of the season, Liverpool have interchanged from 4-5-1 to 4-4-2 to 4-3-3 to the diamond formation. Yet the side have rarely looked ill-at-ease despite these consistent alterations. To acquire such success in this regard, a club needs two things: players who are intelligent enough to adhere to such tactical versatility and a manager who has the bravery and communication skills to enable his players to buy into his philosophy. Clearly, in Rodgers and the core of this team, Liverpool have both.
Handling of the media/players
(Steven Gerrard has spoken highly of Rodgers’ managerial ability)
For managers, demeanour is everything. David Moyes, over the course of the season, has been exposed time and again in post-match interviews. From his ill-advised admission that United aspire to be like City, to his often nervous and uncomfortable disposition, he gives the impression of a man ill-at-ease with his surroundings who hardly seems equipped to inspire a group of underperforming millionaires.
Brendan Rodgers, by contrast, this season has invariably given the impression of a man in complete control of the situation. Unlike Mourinho, he has refrained from ever lashing out at his players and he clearly has their respect.
As high an authority as Steven Gerrard, for instance, recently said of Rodgers: “I have been absolutely blown away by his sessions, his tactics and his maturity in the job and I am learning from him every single day.
“When you become a little bit of an older player, you look to see how the manager does certain things and he has been fantastic for me personally. He keeps tweaking and tinkering with the formation and making little subtle changes to personnel and tactics and it is coming off from week to week.
“He manages every single player differently. He knows we have different characters in the dressing room and his one-on-one management is the best I have known. He makes you go out on to the pitch feeling a million dollars — full of confidence and belief. He is a very confident manager.”
Innovation/Bravery
What separates Rodgers from the average manager is his willingness to take risks and continually succeed in doing so. His conviction in making these decisions is consequently what’s made his Anfield project such an overwhelming and near-instantaneous success.
Many critics considered his decision to sell Andy Carroll at the time to be an unwise one. Could he not keep Carroll as a Plan B, in case Plan A doesn’t work, they once asked. Yet Rodgers was determined to stick to his unique vision — if it could not accommodate the England striker, even a player of his impressive ability had to go.
Similarly, some people initially wondered whether playing Steven Gerrard so deep in midfield was a good idea. A footballer often criticised for his lack of discipline and positional sense surely wouldn’t be able to cope with the restrictions of his new role. Yet once again, Rodgers proved the naysayers wrong, with Gerrard playing an influential role in their title challenge, and picking up a Player of the Year nomination for his troubles.
Brand of football
It’s sometimes wrongly assumed that attractive football and outright success are mutually exclusive. Arsenal are often cited as an example of a team that have customarily been beautiful to watch, yet have enjoyed little success in terms of silverware in recent years. However, Liverpool and, to a degree, Manchester City, have proved this theory to be incorrect over the past few months.
Liverpool, in particular, have gained a reputation as the neutrals’ favourites, owing to the thrilling brand of football they’ve adopted (as well as the fact that they haven’t spent to the extreme levels of City or Chelsea).
And again, Rodgers must be credited with masterminding this turnaround. Before he arrived, Liverpool were lumping balls up to Andy Carroll and often finding goals hard to come by. This season, however, the Reds’ commendably adventurous style has been reflected by the fact that they scored their 93rd goal of the season against City last weekend — in the process, breaking their all-time record goals total in the top flight, previously secured in the famous 1963-64 season, when they won the league under Bill Shankly.
The Northern Irish manager demanded a similarly enterprising and swift brand of counter-attacking football when he was at Swansea, and crucially, this style tends to be as effective as it is easy on the eye. Of course, it will count for nothing if they don’t win the league, but either way, it’s admirable to see a manager urging his team to take such a positive approach — in contrast, for instance, with the more laboured style of Jose Mourinho-managed teams — and especially, when a number of the players at his disposal are not overtly brilliant technically.
So with funding Katie Taylor trained in a gym with no toilets? Must be great funding so? There is a huge interest in cycling in Ireland we could focus on that. I know of one BMX track in Meath that is the only one in Ireland built from the passion of a few local people.
Its 25 years since Stephen Roche won the Tour de France and there is still no velodrome in Dublin.
It’s 20 years since Englands Chris Boardman won gold in cycling at the Barcelona Olympics and the British government built a velodrome in every large UK city.
They’re reaping the rewards of that policy now, Team GB dominates world cycling.
But here in Ireland the National Lottery profits are used as a slush fund for politicians, not for realizing a vision like they do in the UK
The ISC won’t even recognise the NGB for Olympic Rifle and Pistol shooting – the NTSA – let alone support them. This is despite shooters from the NTSA bringing home international medals for Ireland this year in competitions against the same people who’ve just won Olympic medals in the past few weeks; despite representing Ireland in the Atlanta and Sydney Games; and despite the NTSA having worked with the ISC for years while under a now-defunct umbrella body.
And their individual carding grants, which Tracey boasts can be given to athletes even if there’s a problem with their NGB, aren’t actually possible to win for rifle shooters every year (to get the top level of funding, you have to have won an Olympic medal in the previous year – so you could get the 30k grant next year if you had a medal now, but you wouldn’t get it for 2014 because you wouldn’t have won a medal in 2013. Efforts to have the criteria replaced with something more sane, fair and usable have been stalled and rebuffed for years. And just two years ago, the ISC stopped the national qualification of two of our coaches because of the NGB recognition problem that the ISC were themselves the cause of – even though those two coaches were already recognised at a higher level by the international governing body of the sport and are the two most successful coaches in our sport at the moment.
Frankly, while the individual people in the High Performance Unit do their best, the top table in the ISC needs a bit of a mental realignment so the ISC becomes more about the Sport and less about the Council….
India (pop 1000,000,000) won a silver and bronze. So Ireland did very well. Well done Team Ireland.
Hardly a definitive benchmark – seems to me that all we can infer there is that India did appallingly bad.
All in all a good Irish Olympics I think. The amount of athletes and sports should be looked at. I’ve been looking at the Jamaican performance, 2.7 million people, 50 athletes, 4 sports, 4 gold, 4 silver, 4 bronze. Are they who we should emulate?
They all came in athletics though – one discipline. If we just focused on boxing (for example) and aimed for six gold there – it’d mean that the likes of Annalise Murphy, Cian O’Connor and Rob Heffernan would be overlooked. Is that fair? Should it be really all about the medals?
Plus stars like Bolt receive enormous sponsorship from their global sponsors, which can be reinvested.
It depends what we go to the Olympics for. Do we go to be there or do we go to win? If we go to win then a more niche approach to the sports we enter would seem to yield better results wouldnt it? Fair to all doesn’t or shouldn’t enter it. Should we send over someone who has almost no hope of coming anywhere near the top?
Ok to put it this way, team ireland spent approx 11,000,000 on 60+ olympians and their coaches and we got the results we got. If we cut the Olympian number in half think how much we could do with the investment
@ Scarr,
“Should we send over someone who has almost no hope of coming anywhere near the top”?
Yes we should, because they have qualified by reaching the standard required.
And because experience can be a big contributing factor for future motivation and improvement.
Maybe the standard required could be raised, but then the olympics would soon become a rather dull spectacle with little or no global appeal.
I see one of the biggest problems in Ireland is lack of sports dovirsity….especially in schools.
if its not GAA, football or rugby nobody wants to know you and the exact same can be said for what RTE show on tv and what the vast majority of people watch on tv.
yet every four years people bitch and moan.about how poor Ireland has done, yet the rest of the time people have no interest.
perhaps if more people had an.interest more of the time we,d have more people taking part in certain sports and as such more to choose from.
most of the people complaing and also.nothing more then a bunch of couch potato critics.
we should be damn proud of how we did at the Olympics!
Don’t worry, they’ll have something different to moan about tomorrow. Though if there was a gold medal for moaning, Irish people would get gold, silver and bronze…
The ISC are living in dreamland, the self serving shower of clowns in the Dail know only one thing, slash & burn. However when it comes to themselves & their Banking & Unsecured Bondholder cronies it will be happy days…!!!
For the next 20 years we will be subservient to the EU/Troika/Bankers/Unsecured Bondholders, Govt will continue to pay unsecured bondholders, prop up failing banks, and make feck all out of NAMA. All institutions that provide a good service to the people of this country will be hit with phenomenal cuts. Meanwhile we will be handing over those cuts to the Banking, Unsecured Bondholders & Political caviar brigade.
Bankers, Unsecured Bondholders & Politicians will have huge pensions, salaries & benefits, while the other 99% will end up with the crumbs off the table…!!!
Could you be anymore off topic?
Yawn. Are there aren’t enough other stories to rant on?
give it a bloody rest already, your rant is completely off topic
Wow you are getting more boring comment by comment….
It old you that you wouldn’t remember the pills. It’s either back inside the hospital or accept the depot injections. Also please stop that ridiculous name of Peedoff.
Ya ya ya.
It’s a testament to our athletes – all of them, whether they won or lost – that they were able to compete to such a high standard on an International scale. Team GB’s cycling programme alone for this Olympics was £26million which I think is more than the entire Irish Olympic programme across all sports!
A bit more than twice the entire funding for the Irish Olympic programme if the figure of eleven million I’d heard was accurate…
I thought we did excellently well at the olympics, and well done to our athletes. However, something’s not sitting right with me about the overemphasising of competitive sports that Treacy is eluding too, considering our sports policies are excluding ye least well off (exception boxers). I think more emphasis needs to go into tackling sedentary and obesity through sport, and also promoting the social aspect and the benefits it has on society as a whole, we will all celebrate medals but it’s short lived, when investment in inclusive policies could not only be good for society but raise the pool of athletes hence having longer term benefits for Irish sport.
Excellent post and if we can link it all into investment in education we will prosper not just in sports but in our general health and well being. This will result in less funding requirements in health. Education+sport = investment in our youth. Think on Enda and Eamon.
@ Shane: Michael Ring made the same point yesterday, albeit rather poorly.
Where has all the lotto money gone. GAA and gold clubs got most of it. Then the quangos. Some Barrister should find out why Bertie and co took the lotto back from sports and divided it up in projects that bought votes. Real Irish. Look at the British hockey where they have brilliant facilities with the 50 million they used their lotto for. Their children will benefit while ours will only have golf or GAA which are not in the Olympics. The GAA have a brilliant set up and should be congratulated but government have a responsibility to everyone in sport. It makes our boxers real Herod are they are clean and honest with no funding. Katie’s mother had to pay her own airfare anytime she travels yet Pat Hickey brings John Delaney with him for a drinking buddy.
Golf will in fact be at the next Olympics. And while I agree with what your saying, the Government doesn’t have an unlimited sports budget and not every sport can be funded. And GAA games, soccer and rugby are by far the most popular sports in Ireland it would seem – so obviously should get the lions share of funding.
If popularity dictates funding priority, rather than say, performance levels or participation levels, you’ll have all the money going to the sport with the most fans; which is not necessarily the best place to invest.
You wouldn’t dump ISC funding into premier league football, for example, because it’d be (a) an embarrassingly small amount of money and (b) a waste of that embarrassingly small amount of money because the sport has more than adequate funding from elsewhere.
And yes, I know premier league football is in a different country, I chose it so I could make the point without having to pick a sporting group in Ireland to pointlessly suggest defunding.
Funding should go to the grassroots development of the less established sports, but it needs to be carefully managed. For example, throwing money at a small local sports complex is all well and good, but it should come with the proviso that structures and programmes are put in place that will lead to actual progress over time.
So there was three PB not bad out of a bunch of athletes totalling about 55 or more well when I say not bad I mean a waste of money that could of been spent better oh well bring on rio for the next party cause they are looking to do f#*ck all else other than party ah sure I suppose the boxers will bing home the bacon again and we can all say the whole team done well open ur eyes will ya
You didn’t read the links, did you? There was more than three.
And when you go to a large match like the Olympics, you won’t hit your PB most of the time; the idea is to push your PB past where it has to be to win.
Look at the World Record and Olympic Record for most Olympic sports and you’ll find the former’s higher than the latter for just that reason.
Which is a damn good reason not to use “Did you medal at the Olympics, (Y/N)” as your sole evaluation criteria for an athlete’s funding.
So name all of them then there was three in the olympics that beat there personal best there was others that beat there PB to get to the olympic which is what every amateur athlete is supposed to be aiming for every four years but ours just go for the party stop all this PB sh#*e they won nothing simples make all the excuses ya want it was the boxers and a horse rider who medals the others came nowhere but well done for tacking part sounds like little Johnny in the school games ah give him a medal for taking part everybody’s a winner is that what we are gone back to
Well how many of them have won medals ir have been placed hugh up the ranking in European championships or in meets that are held all over the world then and it was something wrong then that none of them broke their PB or got near it but alright if u want to reward failure go ahead there is John joe nevin after winning a silver and says he felt let everton down and the athletes what do they say I’m looking forward to rio
What do you mean by “none of them broke their PB”? Many of them did, and a few who didn’t were injured or sick.
And you’re not rewarding failure. If the athletes don’t meet their performance goals with the ISC, they lose their funding. That’s how its been since the High Performance Unit was set up. They just evaluate them based on *all* of their performance, not just whether or not they medalled in the Olympics the way the press is doing.
Can ya name the athletes or give a link showing the athletes that broke there PBS
You can start by reading this website :)
PB hit qualifying for London (just to make the point that you have to earn your spot on the team, it’s not that your name’s pulled from a hat):
http://www.thescore.ie/deirdre-ryan-olympics-london-2012-profile-high-jump-501869-Jun2012/
PBs hit in London
Day 3: http://www.thescore.ie/live-london-2012-olympics-day-3-537778-Jul2012/
Day 11: http://www.thescore.ie/london-2012-olympic-liveblog-ireland-548556-Aug2012/
Day 15 (3 or 4 PBs here) : http://www.thescore.ie/live-john-joe-nevin-boxing-campbell-554465-Aug2012/
You can start by reading this website :)
As the comments system won’t let you embed http links easily, go to the live blogs for days 3, 11 and 15 on thescore.ie and search for ‘PB’.
Also, Deirdre Ryan hit a PB qualifying for London (just to make the point that you have to earn your spot on the team, it’s not that your name’s pulled from a hat).
Well maybe if they needs the money for the coaches the training and other stuff maybe it’s been done wrong why shouldn’t people criticise we should be happy about our athletic association having low standards
The ISC’s high performance people do continual assessment of athletic performance based on the athlete’s written plans and performances in both training and *all* of their events.
The press does assessment based on whether or not they won a medal at an event that comes round once every four years and is forgotten in the interim.
Which sounds like the better evaluation method to you?