It’s been 105 days since Brendan Rodgers was fired as Liverpool manager, which means the 42-year-old is currently doing what every discarded football manager does between jobs: he’s constantly putting his face on the television of prospective employers in an attempt to stay in the forefront of their minds.
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Unlike most of the unemployed managers who employ this tactic for the betterment of their careers, Rodgers actually has something interesting to say. On Sunday, the Northern Irishman was a guest on Sky Sports’ Goals on Sunday program. Among other topics (you can watch part of his interview here), Rodgers was asked about Liverpool’s often-discussed transfer committee, and how he found life working with such a group. Rodgers pulled few punches and offered the kind of insight that’s rarely given regarding the inner-workings of a club.
Rodgers, first on the transfer committee approach in general; secondly, how the committee dynamic played a part in signing Mario Balotelli after the departure of Luis Suarez:“Obviously the model at the club is slightly different, where the ownership group has a way of working, where they want to bring in young players, and obviously see them develop and move on. …
“As the manager, you’ll always be the figurehead of the club, but there’s a recruitment team in place that will look to bring the players in. … It was a group decision, really. It was certainly not something that I would have the final say on.
“It’s difficult because you want a player in, and there’s a list of players, but if the player that you want isn’t on the list, you have to take someone. You can’t have no players [coming in]. … If you haven’t got a left back, but for whatever reason you can’t bring in [the one that you want], if there’s a list of three or four, you have to take maybe what’s the best in that group.”
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"[Signing Balotelli] is an example of [the difficulty of working with a transfer committee]. … What we were wanting, what we were needing, was that replacement for a player who could really press at the top end of the field. It wasn’t just a goalscorer we were after. Luis Suarez was giving us so much more than that. …
“I felt that Mario wasn’t someone who profiled what we were after, but come the end of the summer when we were struggling to get in the type of player we wanted, I think the ownership group thought this was a player I could develop, because he’d had his issues. … I think [the owners] were thinking this is a player that’s a [$70 million] player that we can get for [$22 million].…
“There were other conditions that meant we couldn’t get other players in. The huge blow for us that season was, we thought we were getting Alexis Sanchez. We thought that Luis was gone … as a like-for-like replacement, if you look at how [Sanchez] plays, he was going to be perfect for us, in how he presses the game, how aggressive he was, and his quality.”
[ MORE: Saturday’s PL roundup | Liverpool 0-1 Man Utd | Stoke 0-0 Arsenal ]
Whatever your feelings toward Liverpool, Rodgers or the transfer committee system might be, it’s simply interesting to hear someone of Rodgers’ experience speak so openly about the positives, and negatives, of such an approach.
