From being the Irish nightclub regular, Brendan Rodgers, the current Liverpool visited many countries including Spain to learn different formations of football, He was an assistant to Jose Mourinho, but he seemed to be more inspired by Pep Guardiola. After getting the pink slip from Reading, he went on to manage Swansea in future. At Swansea, he played a fast, dynamic tiki-taka game. His possession based philosophy worked well. Attacking overlapping fullbacks, Defensive midfielder, a playmaker with a metronomic, inverted wingers were the key components of his philosophy.
His possession based football comprised of attacking with the ball, resting with the ball and defending in zones without the ball.
Rodgers’ first season as Liverpool boss was not impressive, but his transfers of Coutinho and Sturridge proved crucial. 2013/14 was Liverpool’s golden season as Liverpool almost clinched their maiden PL title. Luis Suarez was in God like form, from an erratic forward, he became a prolific goal scorer. Rodgers played a 4-4-2 diamond with Suarez and Sturridge the deadly duo up front, and Steven Gerrard thriving as a holding midfielder. Liverpool played very attractive counter attacking Football. Rodgers mostly used 4-4-2 diamond and the hybrid 4-3-3, with Suarez, Sturridge and Sterling up front. Liverpool almost won the title. Liverpool’s attractive football and Suarez heroics won Liverpool new fans after many years.
What went wrong in 2014/15 transfers? The transfer activity was abysmal in 2014/15, even after the Champions League boost and Suarez money of 75 million, Liverpool did not buy any world class striker who suits club’s high pressing counter attacking game. Rodgers bought Lambert, Lovren, Lallana, all of whom proved to be flops in their first season. So was Markovic. Actually the owners did not want to spend money on world class players’ wages. So no class no experience was added.
Tactically what were Rodgers’ mistakes? apart from persisting with Balotelli and Johnson and not playing 2 striker system, Rodgers made numerous tactical mistakes, though the season was somewhat saved by 3-4-2-1, but the main idea was of Pepijn Lijnders’, who was an LFC academy coach. After some time, this system too was exposed.
After the humiliating 6-1 defeat to the Stoke City, the FSG and the transfer committee woken up. Ian Ayre was outstanding, showed great character in the transfers, bagged the Brazil starlet Firmino, EPL proven Benteke the experienced warhorse James Milner, and the best England RB Clyne being the star signings. But, the bottom line – Is it up to Sturridge to save Brendan Rodger’s Liverpool career?
After coming from Chelsea to Liverpool, Sturridge has gradually established himself as the go-to man for Liverpool. During 2013/14 season, the lethal SAS combo of Sturridge and Suarez bamboozled the opponents with Liverpool almost winning the Premier League. Sturridge reached the 20 goal mark in the season. After Suarez left, in 2014/15 season, initially Liverpool was doing great with Sturridge in lethal form. Liverpool and Sturridge’s exciting form continued till the LFC triumph of 3-0 against Spurs. After that, Sturridge got injured and all hell broke loose. Rodgers started making umpteen tactical mistakes with wrong team selections. Without any proper striker who suits their style, Liverpool players churned out uninspiring performances. Mario Balotelli failing did not help things either. Sturridge injury absence harmed Liverpool to a great extent. After healing the injury, Sturridge came back and scored in his comeback match, which Liverpool won. After some time, Danny boy again got injured with Liverpool’s bad patch coming back to haunt them.
Sturridge went to the USA to undergo hip surgery and has just returned in the season. This season also, even after some brilliant individual performances from Coutinho, Benteke, Clyne, Milner and Ings, Liverpool lost consecutive two matches, one against rival Man Utd (3-1 loss) and other a 3-0 loss against the hammers. After 6 months, Sturridge made his start in the EPL, against Aston Villa, Sturridge scored 2, and Liverpool won 3-2.
One astounding stat is that Sturridge has the best ever goals per game ratio of 0.65 for Liverpool, which is better than even the LFC greats like Suarez, Fowler and Torres. By scoring a brace, Danny boy, the dance master bought Rodgers some time. Now, it’s probably up to him to be clinically lethal to save the job of Brendan Rodgers.