“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 who pride themselves on pass-and-move football.
When Bill Shankly outlined the philosophy that would set the club on the path to greatness, he also established a blueprint for his successors. “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 fans at Anfield. Anyone who has chosen to follow different values has floundered.
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 learnt can lay the framework for an exciting future. “It is an absolute pleasure to be here. I genuinely think that Liverpool is the heartland of football and of football folklore.”
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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. There were even a couple of “Shanklyisms” thrown in for good measure.
“I want to use the incredible support to make coming to Anfield the longest 90 minutes of an opponent’s life,” the 39-year-old said. “I want to see this great attacking football with creativity and imagination, with relentless pressing of the ball.”
Should Rodgers be true to his beliefs, as he was at Swansea City, Liverpool could well have found a manager who, like so many of his predecessors, is able to produce a team capable of playing in the manner that the anthem at Anfield demands, even if winning the championship in May remains a distant dream.