therockbox

Elsewhere, FSG intend to have a manager in place by the time they face us and Klopp has supposedly already been approached. No signings for Chelsea in January, then.

He was part of a comittee that included scouts and a couple of directors. The vast, vast majority of clubs operate this way. The only difference is nobody else has been stupid enough to give it such a grand title. The Committee was a convenient get out for Rodgers - player doesn't work out? They wanted him, he was forced on me, not my fault honest. I'm surprised at Benji saying the media were unnecessarily harsh on him as well. He had a phenomenally easy ride in the mainstream press, compared to the treatment Houllier/Benitez/Dalglish got he had it easy.

It seems decisive now but it only really highlights what a fudge it was in the summer to allow him to stay on and spend another £100m or so on players the new manager could now turn around and want nothing to do with. If you have enough faith to stick with him after last season's shambles then you have to give him more than 8 games, regardless of how they go. If you don't then you sack him in the summer and have a clean start with someone else, you don't change the backroom staff but keep the manager in place knowing that only a stunning start to the season will be enough to keep him in the job beyond a couple of months.

yesss

That new defensive coach

Was never a penalty, he was basically horizontal when his knees brushed the keeper. Lee Dixon on my stream was absolutely desperate to blame Cahill for Southampton's second, when he realised it was Terry who had fucked up he sounded like he was about to burst into tears.

They just need a wee bit of luck, that's all. They've been outstanding, they really have, they're a credit to the club and their families.

The 'Klopp attending Villa game' thing seems to have come from a joke tweet from some Liverpool fanclub that suggested that the fans should go to the game at the weekend dressed as Klopp to send a message to FSG. My opinion of our owners is fairly low but even I don't think they'd be stupid enough to invite him to the game before they've even sacked our current manager.

David Squires' stuff is brilliant at the moment. My favourite is the one where he had the horrendous England/Norway friendly from last year set to The Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed You Black Emperor.

How come it's so low? Did he sign the contract before he started getting into the England squad?

Guus Hiddink resigned today. Then Pearson gets sacked. Coincidence? Yes. What's 'arry up to?

Luis Suarez has signed for ISIS.

NO, NOT BRAD JONES.

Kozak just tweeted this then deleted it more or less straight away. Just bad English or has someone else at Villa broke their leg?

He's made all the good players the players they are today. But not the bad ones. The committee wanted them anyway.

I don't buy the idea that Rodgers didn't want him. His reaction and behaviour on the touchline in that Spurs game whenever Balotelli did something Balotelli-ish weren't the reactions of a manager that didn't want him. I think he thought he could 'crack' him and get the best out of him.

I think finding the system absolutely was luck, we went through enough before finding it. As I said, it wasn't a slight change, it was a radical upheaval from what we started out playing. I'm not saying Rodgers doesn't have his plus points, I think he's very good at keeping momentum going, the problem is I don't think he really knows how to get it going in the first place. The Chelsea/Palace games are issues because they required something different from what had worked before - especially the Chelsea game - and he completely failed to recognise that or make the necessary changes. He has frequently looked incredibly tactically naive in Europe as well, whether it's the Champions League or Europa League. Suarez was that good last season I think it only helped players like Sterling and Sturridge elevate themselves. This season nobody has looked to be anywhere near the level they were last year, everyone has got worse. I don't think Sturridge will have a season like that again, even if he does manage to stay injury free, and Sterling looks like a player who has already decided he wants out.

I'd say Suarez was on a much higher level last season than Bale was for Spurs the season before (I think?). What happened in the Chelsea and Crystal Palace games, coupled with how much worse we look this season is what makes me think it was luck last season rather than judgement. edit You can't keep tinkering around every season though, at some point you have to start getting it right from the off. If they were just slight changes it'd be different, but we seem to have ended every season playing in a radically different way to how we wanted to at the start. He's willing to bomb people out but that only seems to apply to certain players. Gerrard and Allen are two who should have got that treatment a long time ago (Allen in particular) yet he persists with them. They're the flipside of a player like Henderson proving him wrong (although I think Henderson has regressed this season), there are others that keep getting a free pass and we end up having to carry. It's too easy to just blame FSG/the transfer committee for the transfer failings. He made it very clear in his first press conference with us that he had the final say on who arrived and who left.

Good coaches don't necessarily make good managers. It's not simply the changing formation or bad signings in isolation. It's the constant thrashing around trying to find a formation that works despite spending every press conference talking about your philosophy. His transfers rarely make sense, both in terms of the players bought (again, strange for someone who apparently has a philosophy and a set way of playing) or the money spent. £25m on a 26 year old Lallana and we end up using him as a bit player is the obvious example but most of last summer's dealings were odd. Lovren was a good signing signing at Southampton for £7m but to spend almost three times that much on him 12 months later was madness. Balotelli was never going to work. Even though Lambert was basically peanuts we've never shown any intention of using him, even with Sturridge having spent a lot of time out injured and Balotelli being useless. The point about trying 3 at the back last season before switching to the diamond is sort of what I mean. He stumbled upon it. I don't believe for a second he went into that season planning to end up playing that way. It got heralded as a stroke of genius but I'm not buying it. He got lucky last season, and I don't think he really understood why it worked. When he needed to change it towards the end of the season he just couldn't. Chelsea came and played for a draw and all we needed was a draw, we managed to lose. Then against Crystal Palace we went three up and should have shut up shop and been happy with the 3 points, but again he couldn't do it. This season rolls around and we're back to square one, with a system he's seemingly spent a lot of money buying players for in the summer not working, so we go through a host of different systems until finally one works. If he's still here next season (and unfortunately I think he will be) the same thing will happen again.

People got massively carried away last season. I thought it was fairly clear at the time we were basically carried by Suarez (and Sturridge to a lesser extent, who I think probably had the season of his life last year both in terms of goals and remaining fit) and there were clearly gaping holes all over the pitch, particularly in defence. His transfer record since joining is awful with a handful of exceptions and I dread him being given more money to waste in the summer. The issues that I've had with him since he first joined (inability to organise the team defensively and a haphazard transfer policy) are still there, and he's shown no ability to improve these issues in three years. It's great watching us when we click but I almost feel like it's happening accidentally rather than by design. We go on runs where we look shite, he switches formation umpteen times, finally stumbles across one that works (and three at the back this season was just a case of flinging enough shit until something stuck, I'm sure of it), then that system gets figured out and we start again. Rodgers is basically the Northern Irish Kevin Keegan.

Trophy or not Liverpool probably could do much better than Rodgers, the issue is I don't think FSG are up to finding them. We'd end up spending the summer chasing after Pardew.

"Sometimes you can want to win too much..." Yeah, Brendan, if anything you've motivated them too well.

We should all be glad he'll have a team of writers doing the jokes for him on The Daily Show.