“You can’t come to Liverpool Football Club and play a direct game of football, lumping-it-style.” With that one line Brendan Rodgers met the first and most basic requirement of any Liverpool manager – to be true to the principles of a club which prides itself on being purveyors of pass and move football.
When Bill Shankly outlined the philosophy which would set the club on the path to greatness he also established a blueprint for his successors to follow and woe betide anyone who didn’t. “Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass,” he said. “It is terribly simple.”
Those who subscribed to those beliefs have tended to flourish or at the very least enjoy the patience of the Anfield faithful. Anyone who has chosen to follow different values that make possession of the football anything but the priority have floundered as a result, as Roy Hodgson could testify should he finally disabuse himself of the misleading notion that the reason for his failure was that he was not Kenny Dalglish.
Rodgers’ has no such worries on that front. His way is the Liverpool way and vice versa. “This is a club that is historic for the identity, style and DNA of its football,” he said, acknowledging that the lessons learned in past can lay the framework for an exciting future. “For me it is an absolute pleasure to be here. I genuinely think that Liverpool is the heartland of football and of football folklore.”
Having successfully navigated an interview process to be handed his dream job, this was the 39-year-old’s first opportunity to convince those who matter even more than those who employed him, the supporters, that their club is safe in his hands. Had Rodgers been handed a checklist beforehand detailing the right things to say to achieve that objective it is hard to imagine how he could have been more persuasive.
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There were even a couple of Shankly-isms thrown in for good measure with the most passionate of all being a declaration of intent that would make the hairs stand up on the back of even the most hardened Kopite’s neck. “I want to use the incredible support to make coming to Anfield the longest 90 minutes of an opponent’s life,” he said. “That’s the idea. I want to see this great attacking football with creativity and imagination, with relentless pressing of the ball.”
Rodgers is well aware, however, that fashioning a team in his image will not be instantaneous. As he detailed the players that he believes have a big part to play, it was notable that Steven Gerrard was the only midfielder who featured in the oral list. Starting with Pepe Reina made sense as the goalkeeper’s name is always the first on any team sheet but it also chimed with the Northern Irishman’s unshakable belief that football should be played from the back and that players who are comfortable with the ball at their feet should always take priority.
“For a start, there’s a world class goalkeeper,” he said. “I really like Pepe Reina, he’s came through at Barcelona so he will know straight away the identity of this way I would like to bring in and the principles of the game. Defensively, they’ve been reasonably strong throughout the season. You’ve got Glen Johnson who can be the world’s best right back, he can bomb, he can run, he can serve the ball and he’s quick. I know Glen from my time before. You’ve got Enrique who will only get better. At Newcastle he was fantastic and for big parts of last season he’s done great.
“You’ve got your two centre halves, Skrtel and Agger, who’ve done well. You’ve got a legend in Jamie Carragher who will always provide great challenge and motivation for the group. What an absolutely phenomenal player he’s been. Then there are other players in the team like Suarez who is a talent and who scores goals, great goals, Then you’ve got Steven Gerrard who when he’s fit he’s the ultimate.”
Along with the excitement and the conspicuous passion, though, comes an acceptance that he is going to have to enter the transfer market to move Liverpool closer to where he and his new employers want them to be. He is also aware that his philosophies will need to be underpinned by a zealous work ethic and a sense of absolute collectivism if they are to stand a chance of having the desired effect.
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“There are some big talented players here but there is no doubt that to get the team to play how I want to play I’ll need to bring in other players,” he admitted. “No question. To play the offensive, attacking football we did at Swansea we had to make changes in terms of recruitment.
“In terms of the core group here there is some brilliant talent. I work closely with players. My natural environment is on the training field so I am there every day, I coach, and I can make a promise that I will improve players. Hopefully that will continue and get effective results.
“It’s not starting from scratch but tweaking. You are looking at certain individual players and the principle of your game is based on your players. Obviously I have a philosophy in terms of where I want to get to but that won’t happen on the first day.
“What we will need to do is make a number of adjustments and bring in players for key positions that will allow us to play that way. I don’t think it is a total rebuild. They are an educated group of supporters at this club and, okay there might be watered down versions of the style of play, but you can’t come to Liverpool Football Club and play a direct game of football, lumping-it-style.
“It is going to take a bit of time. That’s the reality of it. It is going to take a lot of hard work to play that way. It took a lot of hard work to get that at Swansea, to get the tactical structure of the team and the possession and the position. It took a lot of hard work on the training field. That is why I am here.
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“I think every player will tell you they would love to play that way. The question is, does every player want to work that hard to play that way? It is hard work. For me, a lot of our game is based on pressing.
“Our game at Swansea was talked about a lot and lauded in relation to the football. What people didn’t recognise is that to have the ball for 65-70 per cent of the game you have to get it back very, very quickly. So our transition in the game and positioning on the field to get the ball back became very good and that allowed us to beat Manchester City, to beat Arsenal, should have beaten Chelsea and to beat Liverpool. Big players want to play football. It’s the other side of the game that will be the important factor.
“My idea is to win the ball higher up the field so you are pressing higher and you are in better positions. You win the ball higher up the pitch so you are closer to goal and when you do that you need people with good skills. If you win it and you can’t attack, you recycle the ball and you then go and play. So I don’t think it’s a case of them working any harder because this is a demand anyway, it’s an obligation. For me it’s not a choice. Do you come in every day and do you work hard or not? No, that’s the obligation. It’s the tactic that the manager gives to that which determines how hard you work, how hard you press and what your identity is as a team.”
Arguably the player who fits least into Rodgers’s tactical template is Andy Carroll, for whom pressing high up the pitch and being comfortable in possession are not his most obvious qualities. But the forward’s new manager is not yet willing to write off any square pegs who don’t appear to fit into the round holes he is endeavouring to create. Instead, Rodgers will seek to unburden Carroll of at least some of the psychological pressure which he feels has prevented Carroll from expressing himself as he can.
“He came here for an awful lot of money and he’s still very young,” Rodgers said. “I don’t think anyone would have argued when they saw his period at Newcastle where he did terrifically well. When you come to a club like this one the shirt weighs much heavier than any other shirt. The expectation and the weight of expectation is phenomenal.
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“My job next year is to try and lift some of that weight off the shirt. I’ll take the pressure. The players can just go and concentrate on performing and if you do that you’ll get the result eight or nine times out of ten because of your talent. That will be the same for Andy and any other player. Then, like I say, we’ll take time to review where we’re at and then look forward.
“The reality is that this is a club where I need to align the playing group with the supporters. There is an imbalance at the minute. You’ve got some of the world’s best supporters here and the playing group is not quite at that level yet.
“You’ve got some wonderful players here, some wonderful talent, but the work over the next number of years is to see if we can get that aligned with where it has been for many years. The reality is that, right now, it’s not.
“I’m not going to sit here and bluff and say anything other than what I believe to be the truth. What excites me is the motivation to get that level back up again and that is why I came here. That’s what brought me here.”
Should Rodgers be true to his beliefs as he was at Swansea City then Liverpool could well have found a manager capable of producing a team that is able to play the Liverpool way, as the Anfield anthem demands, even if winning the championship in May remains a distant dream.