honeybradger

He was poor at the start of the season after he got another injury playing for croatia. Rodgers didnt trust him with first team minutes as he really wanted the League cup. Worst thing we could have done for him was start him in the PL/FA cup and him not be up to standard and all our reactionary fans write him off instantly. Imagine if soyuncu played like he did at the end of last year in a year like this one that really mattered, no one would rate him. Benkovic needed a loan to get back up to standard but when he's back to 100% he's going to be incredible for us.

We'll see, Wilder has shown himself to be tactically flexible in the past like him switching to a 352 this year which allows him to get late runners into the box while also having strength in the midfield, compared to last year where he played 3412 where a more advanced midfielder allowed him to keep sustained pressure on weaker teams and break them down. Also he created an entirely new tactic in overlapping centre backs, the only managers who come up with new ideas in football have a very good understanding of the game unlike most other managers who learn their tactics out of a book written by other people, so i cant really see him being tactically outsmarted by most managers.

Respect Dyche highly as a manager but his brand of football has a ceiling for me. As i said earlier Wilder's tactics are good enough to win the CL with as long as he's got quality players who will work for him.

Fair, for me Wilder is the first non established manager ive bought into the hype for, brilliant man manager, got his players playing at 110%, tactically inovative, knows exactly what he wants from his team and even if he wins if he doesnt see something he likes he will see past the result and try and improve it. Never bought into the hype for Howe, that Bournemouth side never had much fight in it and Howe let players go missing for long periods of time based on past success such as Fraser last season whereas Wilder is very happy to drop his best players when they arent putting in the effort.

The thing about that Sheffield United team is that apart from Berge and maybe osborn there's no one to raid, theyre all 28+ year old players that were playing league 1 a few years ago. Even if all their players were bought Wilder knows exactly what kinds of players he wants, unlike some managers, and would probably use that money to upgrade instead of fall off. The only difference between this sheffield united team and Klopp's liverpool is that Liverpool have better players, Wilder is their main asset and as long as he stays that club is only going up.

There are 3 elite managers in the Prem, Pep, Klopp, and Chris Wilder. The way he's got Sheffield United playing is phenomenal, give him any top 6 club and he would be challenging for the CL in 2-3 years although i hope he stays at United, will be interesting to see how far he can take them.

Obviously this is our club's golden age no doubt about it but when it happens you dont want it to end. Us not making CL this year could very well mark the beginning of the end of this golden era and have us slowly return back into a lower table PL/championship club. With our fantastic owners i still have hope but things need to start going right for us again.

Can you imagine us losing and a vardy red? This whole place would explode.

It's not like Rodgers bought Sakho and Mignolet for decent money at the time... Making the right transfers is a part of the manager's job as well. Liverpool 13/14 was a classic case of rodger's 'if it's not broke dont fix it' approach where Suarez, coutinho, sturridge, sterling kept on winning him games so he never adressed his side's defensive problems.

Surely if Bournemouth goes down David Brooks is a no brainer, beats people with ease, top decision making, good passing, good shot on him, left footed. Perfect Mahrez replacement imo, and cheaper than a player like bailey who's all ability no footballing intelligence at the moment. Edit: also carvalho is the Ghezzal of midfield, he's absolutely shocking not sure why people on this forum rate him.

Can you imagine if we bottled this one with 12 players in the lineup. Rodgers would have some serious explaining to do.

I think doubling Rodger's salary has got to be the biggest mistake this board has made. After years of letting players who want to leave go for a more than fair price (drinkwater, mahrez, maguire), desparately doubling Rodgers's wage to try and hold onto him after links with Arsenal who were midtable at the time doesnt follow our club's policy. It's small club mentality to try and hold onto personel that dont 100% want to be here and to cave into wage demands of these people (ozil at arsenal, Man United post Ferguson). Either Rodgers wanted to leave and he's not worth having or he wanted to stay and there was no reason to double his salary. Hopefully Top learns from this, if he wants to make us a consistent Top 7/8 club we need to have the mentality that our success never depends on one individual and whoever leaves we will move forward without.

Lost his man for the stoke goal, still got a bit to improve.

Honestly i havent been that impressed with our performances for any stretch of games this season, at the start i think it was just a bubble and the bubble burst. Vardy was barely getting service in the first 18 games, like now, difference is he was ridiculously clinical. There have definitely been a few good one off performances where we show what we we're capable of but realistically our early season form was just Vardy carrying us and a solid defence, the attacking teamplay has never really been there for us this season.

I thought Justin's been decent tbh, sure he doesnt beat opposition players at will like Ricardo but at least he's defensively solid and he's still young so the attacking know how will come as well.

There's nothing humble about what he's said, yesterday it wasnt tactical it was the players not putting in the effort, now the club's not big enough to be in the top 4. Both times he's backing himself and throwing everyone else around him under the bus. If he admits fault and says he got it wrong and he will work to improve himself as a manager and people still criticise him then fair enough but both of these statements are him not taking responsibility, theyre the same thing.

Theyve conceded 50 goals, at least our back four and goalkeeper have been solid for most of the season. Maybe you can argue the midfield is similar but for me maddison > mount, tielemans = kovacic/barkley (debateable but for me tielemans is struggling due to the system and not his ability as a player) and ndidi > kante (current form)/jorginho. Vardy is indisputably better than giroud/abraham. I understand that these other teams have a bigger budget than us but our transfer policy is better which rodgers has had very little hand in. This underdog spiel doesnt work when he's been saying it's in our hands for the entire second half of the season, he's only saying it now to try and cover over the fact he's ****ed up.

Living in the past honestly, if we're looking at which clubs should be where we would be below the likes of arsenal, aston villa etc. The reality is we're competing with a Man united team that has had to start absolute shite like lingard and pereira for half the season and has had rashford and pogba out for long spells, a chelsea team that is massively overrated tbh they have good depth but apart from their wingers our starting 11 is leagues ahead of theirs and wolves and sheffield who also have worse players than ours. Doesnt matter how big the trophy cabinets of the teams around us are we should have been qualified for CL weeks ago if we were half competent.

Perez is a good player but rodgers doesnt know how to use him best. Those 7 goals 4 assists are from flashes of him showing his quality not from consistently strong performances, there have been so many games where he looks lost and like he wouldnt score or assist even if the game went on for 300 minutes. For me him and Vardy dont work together, considering the amount of time theyve been on the pitch together theyve only linked up for a goal once and that was the brighton game where vardy was constantly looking to pass to him for him to get his confidence up. I would honestly start Gray over him just because him and vardy have some chemistry when Gray decides to turn up.

I actually love this guy so much, he makes mistakes as with last night but he always gives 110%. Honestly wasnt even mad when he lashed out we were all feeling the same.

Tielemans is struggling because Rodgers doesnt understand what his strengths are. Tielemans was thriving last year with barnes, vardy, gray and ricardo making runs behind the opposition back line and him making through balls to them, perez just doesnt make the runs/have the pace for it so Tielemans has had to play without one of his main creative outlets the entire year. Also Perez when played on the wing moves centrally a lot which stops tielemans from making runs into the box, if we had barnes or gray on the right hand side that would leave space for him to push up as they like to stick wide. I imagine if we had just bought an upgrade on gray/barnes for that right had side instead of playing a CAM there Tielemans would have had a much better year.

I want him to admit to the fans and the players that he ****ed up. How many times can he deflect fault onto the players in the post match talk before he admits he's had us in cruise control for half a season. Every game where we come up short it's always we played well and the opposition got lucky or the starting 11 lacked motivation. It's his job to motivate the players and if we dont get a result he needs to put a fire under their asses not say we played good enough to win but didnt.

Im not fully rodgers out but if this continues i dont think he's proved himself enough elsewhere for us to hold onto him. He was poor at reading, decent at swansea, almost won the title with liverpool but we all know how that went, anyone can win the league with Celtic and his form in Europe against half decent teams was abysmal and now we're here. For me he doesnt have a great history as a manager to fall back on and needs to put in the results sooner rather than later to make his case.

I disagree, evans's ball playing ability is a weak point in our squad. I dont think ive seen him hit a long ball all season and it's not for lack of him trying. He's good enough when there's no pressure on him but when a team presses high when we're playing it out of the back he doesnt have the composure and just hits it up the field. Benkovic might never be as good defensively as him but that option for a ball over the top or to beat a press will make us a much more solid team against the pressing teams who like to get the ball back from forcing turnovers.

His distribution is already a massive improvement on Evans. If he can find his way back to his pre injury defensive form he could be pushing for a starting place next year. As good as evans is defensively if we're going to keep playing the ball out the back we need two centrebacks that are good with their feet.