Interesting article in SSN this morning following a more detailed interview with Rodgers and subsequent ‘clarifications’ of what was said on Thursday
https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/12688233/brendan-rodgers-exclusive-interview-leicester-city-manager-on-transfers-targets-and-his-most-difficult-summer
In short;
- Wants to put the summer behind him
- Re-iterates that is more than just a lack of investment with speculation and contracts running down affecting the mood in the camp
- Says he remains absolutely committed to the club and the challenge
- Wants everyone in the club to rally around the situation and get behind the team
- Respects the board and the financial situation, no issues between the management and board
- Target is 40 points and the players need the fans onside
Basically the way I read this is that he’s staying (until another club comes in) and has possibly had a ticking off over Thursdays comments. While Brand Rodgers is still the priority - he now realises that he can’t keep slagging the board over a situation he has no control over and until he goes has to put everything into what he can control
I empathise with the mood in the camp, his questionable tactics aside, the players don’t look right and if you’re in the last year of your contract and expected to move on you wouldn’t be giving everything. Perhaps that’s the issue with Soyuncu who clearly wanted out of the club.
It’s time for the fans to get behind the team and to give this one big push starting with the next home game. If we still look no better after the Villa game then the board have got a big decision to make
Rodgers turns the corner?
posted on 3/9/22
Very good article in the telegraph which I’ve pasted below for those who don’t have a subscription. I wholeheartedly agree with this piece and it’s interesting that Brand Rodgers isn’t cutting it with everyone. While clearly Rudkin (BRs biggest supporter) is a fool for allowing this mess to develop the way it has, this exposes Rodgers with some interest parallels to his Liverpool days
Brendan Rodgers must stop blaming his bosses and prove he can stop the rot at Leicester
In a piece of artful deflection, Brendan Rodgers made it clear the blame for Leicester City's tailspin rested squarely with the club's owners, not him. “This isn't the club that it was two years ago,” he lamented.
The suggestion was that a tepid home defeat to Manchester United reflected poorly on the parsimony of his employers, who had waited until transfer deadline day to bring in a single signing, Reims centre-back Wout Faes. And yet if he seeks the fullest explanation for the crisis at the King Power, the manager might want to look a little closer to home.
For all Rodgers' protests that he is being let down by the Srivaddhanaprabha family's reluctance to improve his squad, it is worth remembering that he has, since his arrival three-and-a-half years ago, spent more than £223 million in the service of that very cause.
Four players – Ayoze Perez, Dennis Praet, Patson Daka and Timothy Castagne – account for almost half that outlay. But for a critical match against United, Rodgers left all four of them on the bench, entrusting them with a combined total of six minutes’ game-time. So, does responsibility truly lie with the Thai benefactors' refusal to recruit players? Or is this more a question of Rodgers' inability to develop them?
Few doubt that when Rodgers is first appointed to a job, his hurricane-force exuberance sparks an instant uplift. We saw as much at Liverpool, where, within two years of an eighth-place finish that brought Kenny Dalglish the sack, he came the closest of anybody in nearly a quarter of a century to return the league trophy to Anfield, as his Luis Suarez-propelled team scored 101 goals in a single season.
But there is the finest of margins, with this wired and relentlessly earnest character, between splendour and oblivion. Rodgers' Liverpool reign disintegrated almost as fast as it had peaked, with his side sinking to sixth the year after their title charge, then to 10th before a restless Fenway Sports Group finally pulled the trigger.
When the rot set in, it seemed as if he was powerless to stop it. The same pattern is being played out at Leicester. One moment, Rodgers is on the verge of perfecting his masterpiece, winning the FA Cup. The next, he finds himself presiding over an apparently inexorable decline.
Granted, the financial situation hardly works in his favour. The wealth of Leicester’s owners is estimated by Forbes to have shrunk from £4.5 billion in 2018 to £1.47bn today, with the wipeout of global air travel during the pandemic grievously affecting the family’s empire of duty-free stores. Except the impasse at Leicester is not solely the product of economics, but of a clash of philosophies.
In his programme notes for United’s visit, chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha argued that the consistent aim over the past 12 years was to “build your club up for long-term, sustainable success – we simply will not risk setting it down a path we don’t feel is responsible or in Leicester’s best interests”.
The problem is that Rodgers’ prescribed solution is for the club to spend their way out of trouble. Lashing out at a perceived lack of ambition at boardroom level, he declared, after a fifth defeat in six: “With the greatest respect, we have not had the help in the transfer market that this team needed.”
Is this truly a fair charge, though? Until the brakes were applied this summer, Rodgers had been lavishly backed. Indeed, a year earlier, he had the support of the largest net spend in Leicester’s history, strengthening through the acquisitions of Boubakary Soumare and Jannik Vestergaard, not to mention Ademola Lookman on a season-long loan. The return on investment has been patchy at best, with Daka an especially expensive misfire.
Look through Rodgers’ history and you detect a similar pattern. While he deserves credit for enlisting James Milner and Roberto Firmino in his final months at Liverpool, so many of his other purchases, from Fabio Borini to Mamadou Sakho, Luis Alberto to Iago Aspas, are perhaps best forgotten. As a motivating force for the players he inherits, Rodgers can be a revelation. But as the builder of a dynasty, he is proving again at Leicester that he leaves much to be desired
posted on 3/9/22
Very insightful article 99 . Thanks for pasting in the telegraph article which seems to me to be right "on the money" especially with regard to the 4 signings of Perez, Praet, Dakar & Castagne not getting a look in. Just to be targeting 40 points says it all! Hoping & praying for better times!
posted on 3/9/22
No worries let’s hope things change starting with today!
posted on 3/9/22
Or tomorrow even….!
posted on 3/9/22
99 - it’s amazing to have you back on this forum. It’s sparked it back into life and I’m personally loving it. Thank you.
That telegraph article is a blinding piece of journalism. Finally someone calling a spade a spade!!
posted on 4/9/22
Thanks Mersey!! Yeah it’s good to be posting again and to be honest if it helps to get more people back on here then I’d be really chuffed at that.
posted on 4/9/22
Excellent article. The problem is that this Leopard is highly unlikely to change his spots, so the anticipared outcome is continuing poor performance leading to an inevitable sacking.
In which case it would make sense for this to happen sooner rather than later to give an incoming manager the best chance of turning the situation around.
Of course, as I travel down to the South coast more in hope than expectation, it could all be happiness and light by ten to four with us out of the relegation zone and even above Forest! 😂😂
posted on 4/9/22
I think that’s spot on Nuneaton. The concern I have is that essentially the board are optimistic that Rodgers will turn it around. He won’t. The financial situation of course won’t be helping - perhaps as Foxello says, putting him on gardening leave and hoping he moves to another club very quickly is the best approach, not sure.