The Rodgers effect on players

[James_lcfc]

5 minutes ago, murphy said:

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, could it be that Rodgers was trying and giving of his best but the team had reached its natural end and without the required rebuild went into terminal decline?  Add to that several consecutive windows of poor or next to no recruitment and the die was cast.

Yes, this.

 

He may have been annoyed with perceived lack of support, but I'm sure he was still 'trying' and desperate to turn things around.

 

Maybe he was pushing for the sack for the pay out but I doubt it - Last year was absolutely terrible for his reputation. 

 

..and if there is one thing BR definitely cares about, it's his reputation.

[filthyfox]

14 minutes ago, James_lcfc said:

Yes, this.

 

He may have been annoyed with perceived lack of support, but I'm sure he was still 'trying' and desperate to turn things around.

 

Maybe he was pushing for the sack for the pay out but I doubt it - Last year was absolutely terrible for his reputation. 

 

..and if there is one thing BR definitely cares about, it's his reputation.

There is NO WAY that last years team should have got relegated.

Ergo, one of the following must be true.

1- Brendan was shit

2- Rudkin was shit

3- Top was shit at not sacking either of the above sooner

4- the players didn't give a shit

 

The buck stops at Top.   Full sTop

[sm1]

Taylor was a dreadful manager but in mitigation, we did lose 2 of the best players at the club, in Heskey and Lennon. Rodgers on the other hand, purposely chose guys like Ward and Amartey, when better players were available. What he did was intentional sabotage, Taylor was just shit and completely out his depth.

[don_danbury]

37 minutes ago, murphy said:

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, could it be that Rodgers was trying and giving of his best but the team had reached its natural end and without the required rebuild went into terminal decline?  Add to that several consecutive windows of poor or next to no recruitment and the die was cast.

 

The FT kangaroo court judge has donned his black cap but how can we ever know?  From the outside, it certainly did appear to me that Rodgers had checked out and that is unforgivable.  From the comments he made he always appeared to be trying to get himself off the hook at the expense of the club and players, but on the other hand, such gobshitery is scarcely believable of any professional and the players would have sniffed it out instantly.

 

The irony is, that it Rodgers' had allowed himself to walk away when it became clear that the he wasn't going to get his way with the rebuild, instead of clinging to that golden contract for dear life, his stock would have been very high.  He would only have had to take a short break and wait for a big six job vacancy.  As it is, his reputation is soiled and he has slunk back to the Scottish backwaters.  My only regret is that by sacking him, the relegation that he presided over will never appear on his CV.

 

 

Squad didn't need a rebuild. Even if he was allowed to rebuild it then we'd end up with a terrible squad with loads of money wasted 

[James_lcfc]

17 minutes ago, filthyfox said:

There is NO WAY that last years team should have got relegated.

Ergo, one of the following must be true.

1- Brendan was shit

2- Rudkin was shit

3- Top was shit at not sacking either of the above sooner

4- the players didn't give a shit

 

The buck stops at Top.   Full sTop

Or all four of those are true!

[Langston]

Weren't we after George Graham after O'Neill or have I completely imagined that? I'd have only been 13 or so at the time!

 

EDIT -  Just checked, looked like it was post-Taylor rather than instead of him.

Edited 16 January 2024 by Langston
Correction

[LCFCJohn]

57 minutes ago, James_lcfc said:

Yes, this.

 

He may have been annoyed with perceived lack of support, but I'm sure he was still 'trying' and desperate to turn things around.

 

Maybe he was pushing for the sack for the pay out but I doubt it - Last year was absolutely terrible for his reputation. 

 

..and if there is one thing BR definitely cares about, it's his reputation.

There is a middle ground here. 
 

Was he sabotaging things to the point of trying to lose games. Probably not as you say.

 

Was he trying, no, I don’t think so. It looked so clearly that he had checked out.

 

Personally, I think he just lost the plot and checked out and was just sulking his way through.

[Jobyfox]

3 hours ago, Daggers said:

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…[cont. ad infinitum]

I don’t get why this is so funny. 
 

We were a club going nowhere with no investment. We were just meandering along with no hope or direction. 

 

Mandaric was far from ideal, but he was the only white horse on the horizon that was available. He made mistakes early doors with his meddling and managerial appointments. He took the club down into the 3rd tier (although with a points total that would ordinarily have been plenty). 
 

But under his stewardship we finally had hope. He brought in Nigel Pearson and the restructure started. He made the club an interesting enough project to attract external investment. He was the one who ultimately sold the club to Vichai. 

One can only speculate where we’d have been without Mandaric. Some other investor might have come along, but we were a very unappealing proposition at that time. My guess is that without him our trajectory would have followed a similar path to that of Coventry City or Derby County …. but we’ll never know 

 

[1972 Fox]

3 hours ago, Bert said:

The bloke helped guide us to our 2nd & 3rd highest places finishes in English football

Not true. See 1927/28 and 1928/29 seasons.

[1972 Fox]

2 hours ago, HighPeakFox said:

The telling question for me would be 'Would any PL club take a chance on BR now?'

 

The answer, I suspect, would be a very firm 'no'.

 

2 hours ago, Mickyblueeyes said:

I actually think they would. I dont think he will ever get the top 6 knocking on his door as he did in his early days here but a mid-table PL club would very much take a chance on "great coach" Brendan. 

I could see West Ham being in for Rodgers at some point. They often appear to think that Moyes is not good enough for where they see themselves in the pecking order.

 

Given the chance, I'm sure BR would quite willingly jump ship from his 'beloved' Celtic again as he ego would override any smidgen of loyalty he may have.

[Daggers]

1 hour ago, Jobyfox said:

I don’t get why this is so funny. 

 

Because you painted him as some kind of saviour instead of the clueless, bumbling, lying asshat that he was and any attempt to paint him otherwise is a ridiculous exercise in revisionism.

[Jobyfox]

2 hours ago, Daggers said:

Because you painted him as some kind of saviour instead of the clueless, bumbling, lying asshat that he was and any attempt to paint him otherwise is a ridiculous exercise in revisionism.

People often use the phrase "revisionism" when what they really mean is "I don't agree with what you're saying", which is perfectly fine. 

 

Somebody else said, on this thread, that Mandaric took us to "rock bottom". He might have done in terms of league position, but under Taylor we were on the brink of extinction. In my own mind that was our lowest possible position and was the prelude to what happened for the years that followed (a club going nowhere). We were never in that perilous financial position under MM. 

 

After the Taylor era we were a broken club and would have gone nowhere without new owners. The problem was we were an incredibly poor investment. Mandaric was the least worst option when few (no) other options were available. Despite my many misgivings about him and his poor decision making I feel he was a necessary evil and I can't see the Vichai takeover (which was the really important one) happening if MM hadn't stabilized our position financially. 

 

I will, however, leave the conversation there as I doubt I will change anyone's view who already has a fairly, entrenched, position ...... and this is a thread about "Rodger's effect on players" after all. 

 

 

 

[Beachyboy]

4 hours ago, 1972 Fox said:

Not true. See 1927/28 and 1928/29 seasons.

And the 62/63 season 

[Jobyfox]

5 hours ago, sm1 said:

Taylor was a dreadful manager but in mitigation, we did lose 2 of the best players at the club, in Heskey and Lennon. Rodgers on the other hand, purposely chose guys like Ward and Amartey, when better players were available. What he did was intentional sabotage, Taylor was just shit and completely out his depth.

I think Lennon was the big miss. He wasn't replaceable for the money we got for him. Taylor was, however, well supported in the transfer market in terms of both upfront fees and salaries. They were all lavished on inferior quality players. Now you could argue that the club itself was responsible for the unsustainable expenditure, but there are always vagaries of who was responsible for what just as there were under Rodgers's tenure. 

 

Now I'm no fan of Rodgers, or his behaviour in his last season or two with us and I'm still angry about a totally avoidable relegation - but our club is 140 years old this year and we've won the FA Cup just once. 

[Daggers]

26 minutes ago, Jobyfox said:

People often use the phrase "revisionism" when...

 

... someone is attempting to rewrite history in an attempt to portray Mandaric as a saviour of the club.

 

[Dan]

8 hours ago, Bert said:

Rodgers biggest problem for me was that plan B was to hope plan A didn’t fail. This seemed to happen more towards the end of his reign. He was too stubborn to see it and the confidence/arrogance of planning for a top 10 finish during the World Cup break says it all. 
 

Compare this to Maresca who at the minute doesn’t seemingly have a plan B, you’ve at least got some faith that something will actually come into place. Take Millwall at home for example. How quickly did he identify that the original game plan wasn’t working? Plan A has worked 90% of the time for us this season so you can half understand not having a plan B. 
 

But for people to say Rodgers worse than Taylor? Have a day off. The bloke helped guide us to our 2nd & 3rd highest places finishes in English football, as well as delivering the much sought after FA Cup we were missing. 
 

Peter Taylor completely disregarded one of our club legends, spent silly money on players not good enough for the league below, left us in dire financial straits and massively contributed to our relegation.   

Maresca as well gets a bit of leeway for me because he's still a rookie. I think some errors are half expected with him. He's got the best squad in the league walking the league but it was entirely plausible that he completely tanked and he hasn't.

[Lionator]

11 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

Maresca as well gets a bit of leeway for me because he's still a rookie. I think some errors are half expected with him. He's got the best squad in the league walking the league but it was entirely plausible that he completely tanked and he hasn't.

…yet

[The Doctor]

7 hours ago, murphy said:

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, could it be that Rodgers was trying and giving of his best but the team had reached its natural end and without the required rebuild went into terminal decline?  Add to that several consecutive windows of poor or next to no recruitment and the die was cast.

 

I mean I, like all reasonable people, think Rodgers should have been put in the stocks after the Forest debacle and every season ticket holder and person who attended that game given a timeslot to boot him, but this is also the case, chunks of that team had checked out and decided that they were too big to be at little old Leicester. That said, why wasn't the rebuild possible? In summer 2021 he was backed handsomely and wasted it all on players that were not good enough and too highly paid to shift, not to mention that ultimately getting those wantaways to still show up on Saturday at 3pm is a part of the managers job.