There are 24 signings credited to Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool and it is hard to get a decent starting XI from the lot of them. Some, like Daniel Sturridge, have been dogged by bad luck. Others, like Emre Can, may train on. Most, like Mario Balotelli, have been hopeless.
Yet how many are actually his? Liverpool’s recruitment policy is run by a transfer committee. To what extent is Rodgers taking a very public fall for the mistakes of colleagues?
Dave Fallows heads the department, Michael Edwards is director of performance analysis and Barry Hunter is chief scout; where are they in all this? So much of the traditional manager’s role is farmed out these days, yet the buck still stops at the boss’s door. As six Stoke City goals went in at the weekend, all eyes were fixed on the man in the technical area.
Yet is Rodgers working with what he wants or what he is given? And could it be this knowledge that saves his job this summer?
Simon Mignolet may have arrived in the Rodgers era, but was he actually a Rodgers signing? And what of Luis Alberto, or Iago Aspas? The argument will be that the manager has the final say on recruitment, but what are his options? How are the deals presented? There is a difference between desiring a player or simply acquiescing to the best of a poor bunch. Did Rodgers pursue Balotelli or did he merely come to realise the alternatives were even worse? Any review of his season must take this into account.
There has been great unrest at Newcastle United, too, but no demonstration has called for the resignation of head of recruitment Graham Carr. Yet it is Carr’s players that have underachieved and the control Carr exerted was one of Alan Pardew’s greatest frustrations. West Ham have no manager right now but are in negotiation for several players. Much the same happened at Manchester United last summer.
We think of this as the sophisticated, continental approach because we see it works at a club like Real Madrid. Yet Madrid are in a different league from Liverpool. Madrid can recruit independently because they go out and buy the best players in the world. If the new manager is presented with Paul Pogba, David de Gea or Thomas Muller this summer, he is hardly likely to complain.
Liverpool are not in the same market and a coach may feel there were alternatives to Tiago Ilori or Divock Origi, if properly consulted.
It is strange, this absence of trust — as if anyone knows what Rodgers needs, more than Rodgers. Maybe, this summer, he should be left to make his own mistakes. He could hardly do worse.– Daily Mail