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Hey Chelsea fans, meet your new caretaker manager, maybe? Or so sayeth the rumors in certain segments of the British press following a 3-nil beating at the hands of Juventus that pretty much has the title holders facing elimination from the Champions League group stages. If this actually does come to pass, maybe he can make Fernando Torres work again.
I didn’t mean to re-blog myself but now that I have I’ll just say that if Chelsea takes Rafa — please do, so we Liverpool fans don’t have to hear about how much he wants to come back to us any more.
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☛ The World's Game: Brendan Rodgers, from the Liberty Stadium to Anfield.
If both the BBC and the Guardian have it as a certainty with an announcement in 24 hours, that’s usually good enough for me. Disclosure: yours truly is a Liverpool fan who thought Rodgers would be insane to go to Anfield as late as this morning.
The hire is interesting for a few…
My general thoughts on Liverpool hiring Brendan Rodgers away from Swansea City, posted elsewhere. One thing I did not mention in the TWG piece is what this means for Pepe Reina — because he is not necessarily a Valdes or Vorm-work-it-out-from-the-back-type keeper. He could be, but given his form at the end of the season…Reina could be watching out for his spot, and so should Gerrard, Downing, and Adam at the very least. (Carragher is not included because everyone with a brain knows he’s done; Glen Johnson might thrive under Rodgers but I sense Martin Kelly will push him harder.) I suspect Carroll will get to build himself back up.
I’m positive about the hire because it’s an up-and-comer and not a backward-looking figure for the club, but let’s not mince words: Rodgers will have to clear out a lot of dead weight. It’s not Chelsea-level player power in there (and at least those guys won a CL this season), but it’s pretty stiff nonetheless.
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Liverpool want to talk to Brendan Rodgers about manager’s job | Football | The Guardian
That’s all well and good but after Swansea signed Gylfi Sigurdsson to a full deal, I’m not sure why Rodgers would want to leave. Essentially he has full control of the players and the team and just nailed one of this best players — if not the best — from last season down.
Let me say that I would be very, very surprised if Brendan Rodgers leaves South Wales for Merseyside. FSG should have interviewed Andre Villas-Boas as well, but it will probably be Roberto Martinez, which I would be more than fine with.
Too true.
Gylfi has admitted he only initially came here on loan because of Brendan. He won’t sign if Brendan’s leaving because he doesn’t want a repeat of what happened at Hoffenheim.
It’s people with big egos - speculation junkies if you will - shortening the odds and people take it in and bam he’s favourite. They don’t call this silly season for no reason.
And anyway, we are, maybe I’m looking through rose tinted glasses but right now I think that we are actually a better team than Liverpool. It’s too much of a step sideways, or, dare I say it, backwards, for Brendan to go there.
Right now Swansea is definitely a better footballing side than Liverpool. The Reds went around a lot of last season without a clear philosophy of play outside of “watch Suarez destroy a defender” or “unleash Craig Bellamy late.” FSG don’t have as much money available as Sheikh Mansour or Roman Abramovich (hell, even the Glazers), but it’s not so much a question (to me, biased toward Liverpool as I am) of who’s a better team now, but the highest level each club can reach with its resources — that’s the question every manager probably asks himself when dealing with a big money move.
Swansea would be thrilled with a Europa League spot. Champions League at this point would be out of the question with what it spends. Liverpool can still spend enough to fund a CL spot challenge — but I would argue FSG must take a page from the Newcastle book and find its Graham Carr, because it’s not going to outspend Chelsea, Man City, or Man United — and a lack of a coherent philosophy leaves it behind Arsene Wenger, who is apparently going to spend this summer and hope he can keep van Persie.
The real question for Rodgers re: the Liverpool job is whether he believes he can replicate his work at Swansea at Anfield and do so quickly enough to earn Champions League qualification. It’s really about how high his ambition goes right now. I like his philosophy but I think he would be insane to take the Liverpool job if offered it. He has a better setup right now within its more limited financial parameters, and a lot of the groundwork done at Swansea City is also thanks to Paulo Sousa and Roberto Martinez, the latter being his likely competitor for the LFC job. I see the incentive for Martinez to leave — every year he loses his two or three best players and has to rebuild the squad again with loans to save it from relegation. Loyalty to Dave Whelan can only get you so far; Lancashire clubs have taken a major hit these days.
But that hasn’t happened at Swansea yet, and board has coughed up the pounds to bring Rodgers’ best player into the squad full-time instead of on loan. Barring some mass exodus of sales, I have no idea why Rodgers would want to leave now. Maybe 2-3 years down the line if the Swans are still up, but not right now.
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☛ Liverpool want to talk to Brendan Rodgers about manager's job | Football | The Guardian
That’s all well and good but after Swansea signed Gylfi Sigurdsson to a full deal, I’m not sure why Rodgers would want to leave. Essentially he has full control of the players and the team and just nailed one of this best players — if not the best — from last season down.
Let me say that I would be very, very surprised if Brendan Rodgers leaves South Wales for Merseyside. FSG should have interviewed Andre Villas-Boas as well, but it will probably be Roberto Martinez, which I would be more than fine with.
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☛ Talk to Rafa
“Rafa Benitez restored Liverpool’s dignity, its time to repay that and show him the dignity he deserves!”
It’s clear some LFC fans have totally lost the fucking plot.
(via the Fiver)
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If you ask me, I’m going to tell you that I’d take Roberto Martinez in a heartbeat over a second era of Rafa Benitez, and here’s why:
- We’ve been down the old glory well with Dalglish already. Yes, Rafa is better tactically and has supporters still in the dressing room — but this is a squad that needs the proverbial enema nearly as badly as everyone thinks Chelsea will require sooner than later.
- Benitez seems ill-suited for the new Prem reality where Man City are champs, Tottenham are regular top 4 contenders, and Newcastle will remain quick on its feet and challenging for top spots so long as Graham Carr is scouting out Ligue 1 and Bundesliga bargains.
- This is a Liverpool club that cannot compete with the new top 6 reality on purely monetary matters — Anfield is limited income-wise and FSG is still smarting from last summer’s horrific transfers augmented by the British Player Tax. What it requires is a manager who is interested in making the most of what it has while finding shrewd signings for less. I’m not sure Rafa is that man now.
- Additionally, Benitez is a control freak. Who knows if he can work within FSG’s preferred director of football/technical director and manager setup.
- The boring critiques of “what has Martinez won” are poor ones — if only because Liverpool are not the type of club that can automatically command top-shelf winning managers. It is in the position of having to take a chance on someone again and hopefully it will work better than Roy Hodgson did.
- Finally, appointing Benitez for a second go-round is an obvious sop to the fan base by FSG and we’ve already had one of those — while Dalglish did stabilize things, finishing eighth in the league is not progress, no matter what cup you win.
Essentially I’m all for Martinez being a finalist, and hopefully Andre Villas-Boas and Paul Lambert are asked to interview too. Going back to the past only gets you so far in a cash-doped league, and Benitez cannot buy his way to the top four in a second stint at Anfield.(via Roberto Martinez and Rafa Benitez in power struggle for Liverpool job - Mirror Online)
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☛ LFC part company with Dalglish - Liverpool FC
This had to happen. Another season like this and LFC would have been in the hinterlands and really facing a fight to make its way back. The 2012-13 Premier League season is pretty much make-or-break — otherwise Liverpool is facing a future as Aston Villa.
Kenny Dalglish will always be the King to Liverpool fans, but the problem is the squad looked really confused on the field — and some of the players who put in great performances at times would be out of the line-up the next go-round. Others just played out of spots — Henderson never really looked comfortable ever, Downing is the flop of the season.
Personally I’d like Roberto Martinez or Paul Lambert. These managers have tactical flexibility and understanding that needs to be put in place for this squad to get somewhere.
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☛ Chelsea part company with manager André Villas-Boas | Football | guardian.co.uk
You cannot sack five managers in less than as many years and be a consistent winner. It empowers players who should be slowly guided out of regular first team play into squad complements to act like they run the show — and it’s clear they do at Chelsea.
John Terry for player-manager. Maybe then Abramovich will understand what his itchy trigger finger has enabled.
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Goodbye, Bob.
We got what we wanted. So what now? Sunil Gulati better have some kind of ace up his sleeve, but I’m betting he doesn’t.
