Liverpool FC Forum

[Redman in wales]

Brendan Rodgers aims to convert long-ball believers

13 Jan 2012 from The Telegraph

His pulpit is a training ground by a health club with one AstroTurf pitch, his church the Liberty Stadium, his flock Swansea City Football Club. Rodgers is the evangelist for the beautiful game. Or, more correctly, the beautiful British game. And his congregation is growing.

On Sunday, Arsenal come to Swansea. Arsène Wenger’s side have long held a monopoly on doing things stylishly in the Premier League. Yet this technical game was thought the preserve of an imported elite.

The lack of British players in the Arsenal side for the past decade was evidence, it was claimed, that these foreign ways were beyond the ken of our honest boys.

Now smaller teams have played good football in the Premier League in the past, but none have done it like Swansea. Despite a modest wage bill, Rodgers has built a side who have impudently dominated possession against their supposed superiors.

“This is our philosophy,” Rodgers said. “I like to control games. I like to be responsible for our own destiny. If you are better than your opponent with the ball you have a 79 per cent chance of winning the game.

"For me it is quite logical. It doesn’t matter how big or small you are, if you don’t have the ball you can’t score.”

Rodgers says he comes “from a different bottle” to the majority of British coaches. Growing up in a village in Antrim, he grew to share his father’s enthusiasm for the great Brazilian and Dutch teams of the Seventies.

When he played for the Northern Ireland youth sides he barely got a touch of the ball — it was always being punted back to the opposition over his head. He had trials with various clubs, including Manchester United shortly after Sir Alex Ferguson took over, but ended up at Reading.

At 20 he quit the game, realising he was not good enough to play at the top level. He did, though, think he could coach there.

“I wanted to make a difference. I went to Spain. I was a big lover of Spanish football and spoke the language. I spent a lot of time at Barcelona, talking and working with coaches, finding out about the model and the philosophy of the club. I’d been to Sevilla, Valencia and Betis.

I also spent time in Holland. It was a sacrifice because I had a young family at the time but I had a real thirst for knowledge. I wanted to be the best I possibly could.”

After coaching in the Reading academy he got his big break in 2004 when Jose Mourinho took him on in his backroom staff at Chelsea.

“I always say that working with Jose was like going to Harvard University,” he said.

While Mourinho’s integrated approach to management was a great influence, Rodgers has his distinctive methods. Pep Guardiola is another who has inspired him and his Swansea team are modelled, in their tactical system, on Barcelona. He even sketches out the tactical system on my notepad.

“My template for everything is organisation. With the ball you have to know the movement patterns, the rotation, the fluidity and positioning of the team. Then there’s our defensive organisation.

"So if it is not going well we have a default mechanism which makes us hard to beat and we can pass our way into the game again. Rest with the ball. Then we’ll build again.

“When we have the football everybody’s a player. The difference with us is that when we have the ball we play with 11 men, other teams play with 10 and a goalkeeper.”

Rodgers was cut up to lose his sweeper-keeper, Dorus de Vries, to Wolves in the summer and he realised he was going to need a very specific replacement. He found Michel Vorm.

“British people had said to me he was too small, which was good for me because it probably meant he was good with his feet. When we got the chance to see him I realised he was perfect. He was 27, humble, and makes saves that a 6ft 5in keeper won’t make because he’s so fast. But, importantly, he can build a game from behind. He understands the lines of pass.”

Rodgers’s claims are supported by the statistics.

Swansea’s passing percentages are behind only Arsenal and Manchester City. They do play a greater percentage of passes in their own half than any other side in the Premier League but it is all about being patient. To those raised on the orthodoxy of direct football this is baffling stuff.

“People will jump on us whenever we make a mistake. We had it against Manchester United. Angel Rangel had the ball at his feet and the commentary after the game is that he’s got to kick it into row Z.

"He had time on the ball, why would he smash it up the pitch? He just made a mistake. We need to give our players confidence in their ability. To play this way you can have no fear. The players respect that if there are any goals conceded through playing football I take the blame.

“Here’s another example. We were 2-0 up away at Wolves with six minutes to go but we failed to manage the pressure. We stopped playing it out from the back. We kicked the ball long and they got it and just smashed straight back into our box. Eventually we drew 2-2 and the players were devastated.

"I told them we needed to learn the six-minute game.

“The following week we worked on managing the pressure. But with the ball. Low and behold the next game we are at Bolton. We are 2-0 up. With 17 minutes to go they go 2-1. You could sense the nerves in the crowd.

"How were we going to deal with it? For 10 minutes Bolton did not get a kick of the ball and, eventually, we got the goal to win 3-1.

"Afterwards in the dressing room it was fantastic — that was how to manage pressure. When they had the momentum we sucked the life out of them.

“Our idea is to pass teams to a standstill so they can no longer come after you. Eventually you wear them down. We did that against one of the greatest teams in Tottenham. We did it against Manchester United in the second half. In the first half we were playing the history.

"What I said to them is 'now that you know what shirt you are getting, now can you play our game my friends?’ And they did.”

Yet for all the focus on Swansea’s passing, Rodgers is keen to stress that there is a lot more going on.

“People don’t notice it with us because they always talk about our possession but the intensity of our pressure off the ball is great. If we have one moment of not pressing in the right way at the right time we are dead because we don’t have the best players. What we have is one of the best teams.

“The strength of us is the team. Leo Messi has made it very difficult for players who think they are good players. He’s a real team player. He is ultimately the best player in the world and may go on to become the best ever. But he’s also a team player.

"If you have someone like Messi doing it then I’m sure my friend Nathan Dyer can do it. It is an easy sell.”

Sold? You can make your own mind up on Sunday afternoon whether you want to join the flock.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/swansea-city/9013702/Swansea-manager-Brendan-Rodgers-aims-to-convert-long-ball-believers.html

[Redman in wales]

Brendan Rodgers: Spain have been a great model for me over many years

11 May 2012 in The Guardian

It is 9am on Wednesday at Glamorgan Health and Racquets club and the cafe is a busy place to be. Fitness fanatics are strutting in and out, a few toddlers are testing the patience of their mothers and those a little longer in the tooth are sipping coffee while flicking through the papers. It is not a particularly unusual scene, apart from the fact that on one table, seemingly oblivious to everything going on around him, a Premier League manager is holding the morning meeting with his backroom staff.

Brendan Rodgers, whose Swansea City side have been such a revelation in the Premier League this season, must feel as if he works in a goldfish bowl. Without a training ground of their own, Swansea make do with what is effectively an upmarket leisure centre, where the public mingle with the players in an environment that feels a million miles from the state-of-the-art facilities and acres of land most Premier League managers take for granted.

Not that Rodgers seems fazed. The only request the Northern Irishman made when he took charge a couple of years ago was to have his own office, which is not much bigger than a broom cupboard and located in a corridor that everyone walks past to get to and from the changing rooms. "This was a physiotherapy room," Rodgers says from behind his desk. "When I came here there was no office. But I needed some sort of privacy. It's not what Arsène Wenger or Sir Alex Ferguson has but, listen, it's raw and it allows me to work."

Rodgers loves to work, especially on the training field, which has been his "natural environment" ever since he took up coaching at Reading in his early 20s. This week he invited the Guardian to spend a morning with him to talk tactics and to see the training sessions that have helped to produce a Swansea team who have made more passes this season than any other Premier League club. It is a remarkable statistic, although what is often overlooked is how hard Swansea work without the ball. Their pressing game, where they close people down in zones and at speed, is fundamental to the way they play.

"I like teams to control and dominate the ball, so the players are hungry for the ball," Rodgers says. "You'll see in some of our exercises this morning, a lot of our work is around the transition and getting the ball back very quickly. Because I believe if you give a bad player time, he can play. If you give a good player time, he can kill you. So our emphasis is based around our positioning both with and without the ball. And for us, when we press well, we pass well."

Winning the ball back quickly and high up the pitch was a key feature of Barcelona's approach under Pep Guardiola and, as Rodgers explains, is much more sophisticated than it may appear. "You cannot go on your own," he says. "You work on zonal pressure, so that when it is in your zone, you have the capacity to press. That ability to press immediately, within five or six seconds to get the ball, is important. But you also have to understand when you can't and what the triggers are then to go for it again because you can't run about like a madman.

"It's decision-making and intelligence. And this was always the thing with the British player, they were always deemed never to be intelligent, not to have good decision-making skills but could fight like hell for the ball. I believe they have all of the [attributes] and, if you can structure that, then you can have real, effective results."

Swansea are living proof. They go into the final game of the season, at home against Liverpool on Sunday with a chance of finishing in the top 10. Whatever happens, though, it has been a remarkable campaign. They have not only won matches but won them in style, including memorable victories against Arsenal and Manchester City. There was also the goalless draw at Anfield in November, when Swansea were applauded off the pitch by Liverpool fans.

"That was really touching because that is such an historic ground," Rodgers says. "But I suppose in terms of performance the highlight has to be beating what could be the champions, Man City. To actually dominate the game as well — we controlled possession, kept passing and kept the confidence and then, eventually, we were able to get the breakthrough. So in terms of where they're at and where we're at it was a defining moment."

It is close to 10.30am and Rodgers is looking at his watch, the cue to dash to the training pitch, which is artificial and belongs to the Llandarcy Academy of Sport and Learning. The grass pitches that Swansea used earlier in the season were dug up and relaid a couple of months ago, leaving them with little option but to train on an all-weather surface. Not that the facilities appear to have any effect on the standard of a training session that is fascinating to watch.

At one stage nine players are working in small teams of three in an area that seems so confined that it is difficult to believe they will be able to run around freely, let alone pass to a team-mate without an opponent intercepting. Yet they manage to do so time and again, often taking no more than one touch before quickly moving to create an angle to receive the next ball. All the while those without the ball are snapping at their heels, pressing with the sort of intensity that Rodgers demands in matches. It is, in short, easy to see why they are so good at keeping and retrieving the ball.

"When I first came in I said to the players, we will push ourselves in every element of training, so it's reflective of the real game, so I don't have to go on about intensity all the time because that is an obligation," says Rodgers, who closely watches training all of the time. "This morning's session is based around football strength, small-space work, lots of options on the ball and covering the principles of our game, which are possession, transition, pass-think, pass-think, pass-think and the core ingredient of hard work."

It goes without saying that Rodgers would like better facilities but the players seem to buy into the idea that Swansea are offering something more valuable than plush locker rooms and rows of immaculate training pitches. "There is only a certain type of player that will come here, a player that is hungry and a player that wants to develop his talent," says Rodgers. "You get the raw materials here in this moment but they're arguably the most important materials, which are time and quality on the training field."

They also get to perform for a manager who has a clear philosophy on how his team should play. Rodgers talks about four phases that underpin Swansea's approach when they have the ball. "There is the building and constructing from behind, the preparation through midfield, the creativity to arrive in the areas and then the taking of the goals. These are all areas that we have to continually improve on but that is the basis of our game and it doesn't change."

One of the few criticisms levelled at Swansea this season is that they often keep the ball in their own half or in areas where they are not hurting the opposition, although that argument is flawed in several respects. Rodgers points out that, while the primary reason for possession will always be to penetrate, the simple fact is that, while Swansea have the ball, the opposition are unable to score. He also says that by "recycling" the ball for long periods his team are able to recover. "The only time we rest is when we have the ball," the 39-year-old says. "When we haven't got the ball is the moment for intense pressure to get the ball back. But you can't go for 90 minutes, so in order to recuperate and conserve energy, we'll do that sometimes by building our way through the game — our tiki-taka football, our small lending games to keep the ball.

"When we're stuck in the game, we go back to our default system, which is possession."

Always open to fresh ideas, Rodgers has been exploring an alternative system, which he tested in the 4-4 draw against Wolves last month, when Swansea changed from 4-3-3 to 3-4-3. He also hopes to have a few more tricks up his sleeve after spending four days with Spain at their Euro 2012 training camp in Austria later this month, as a guest of their manager, Vicente del Bosque. "Spain have been a great model for me over many years, so I always take the chance where I can to travel and understand new methods," Rodgers says.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/11/brendan-rodgers-swansea-city

[Bermenstein]

Very good articles. After reading them, I really hope he is a success, and Im sure he is absolutley delighted to be at a club like Liverpool. He seems like a good bloke.

If FSG's vision is a successful one, well I will take back everything negative I feel about the appointment.

Now lets see if they back him with a good Technical Director and some cash, and lets see who we get in.

[RED BEERGOGGLES]

Very good articles. After reading them, I really hope he is a success, and Im sure he is absolutley delighted to be at a club like Liverpool. He seems like a good bloke.

If FSG's vision is a successful one, well I will take back everything negative I feel about the appointment.

Now lets see if they back him with a good Technical Director and some cash, and lets see who we get in.

I think he will be backed in a monetary sense by the owners  .... I also believe the Kop will love him .

Love your signature picture mate .

[metalhead]

read those articles on RAWK, then compared them with Woy's philosophy, totally different managers.

If he gets backing in the transfer market I'm sure he will do really well with us

[Bermenstein]

Very good articles. After reading them, I really hope he is a success, and Im sure he is absolutley delighted to be at a club like Liverpool. He seems like a good bloke.

If FSG's vision is a successful one, well I will take back everything negative I feel about the appointment.

Now lets see if they back him with a good Technical Director and some cash, and lets see who we get in.

I think he will be backed in a monetary sense by the owners  .... I also believe the Kop will love him .

Love your signature picture mate .

Tnx Red Beer.

Really hope he gets some funds and some decent players in.

[Thommo's perm]

Reading that, he seems very clued up, passionate and determined
Remind you of someone...?

[friendlyguy33]

Great articles hopefully there's more to come about him. He seems like a great bloke who's going places and I think he'll definitely go places at Liverpool.

[LFC2007]

Some new insighs there that I hadn't read before.

For one thing, even though he's only 39, his experience in coaching and management stretches back some 19 years. During that time he's made a mark in Academy management, had a taste of management at lower levels and at an elite level with Chelsea. Love him or loathe him, Mourinho knows his football and for him to recruit Rodgers and endorse in such glowing terms has to be encouraging. He's also shown an interest in learning from other leagues and from different styles of football that are proven to be successfull at the highest level and then gone on to demonstrate that at Swansea. That's key because his style of football has to be of a kind that can be successful at the highest level. As well as wanting a manager who has a deep understanding of the tatical side of the game, you also want someone who has the character to lead, and the right values needed to bring about success at a club of our stature. There are encouraging signs of all those things in the way he speaks about the game, his upbringing and in the way others have spoken about him.

He's inexperienced, we know. He's never won a major trophy, we know. And yes, he might not fulfil the potential we see in him to begin with, or at all. That's all part of the gamble.

Course it could be completely different. In 5-10 years' time, there'll be a new breed of managers occupying the top jobs, some of whom will have phenomenal success. We'll have shown good foresight if we've made the right judgment call making the change now.

[red till i die!!]

he talks the talk anyway.
i do like his philosophy and look forward to seeing how he implements it here.hopefully we have someone like van gaal to scout and sign players through their vast experience and contacts.
hopefully he can get to work soon and start buying and selling with a decent amount of backing from fenway.
the future is bright!! the future is brendan rodgers!!.
onwards and upwards

[ethanr]

His philosophy can work.  That's pretty much the philosophy I used on the high school team I coached.  I now going from a high school team to Liverpool, two completely different things, but the way the philosophy works can be simple.  I wanted us to play a high-pressure, pass and move style of football, keep possession of the ball, get the other team tired and make them make mistakes.  With the players we had, we were the worst team in the league.  But in our 8 league matches, we only conceded 4 goals (2 of which were complete man-marking mistakes off corner kicks- they were all a foot shorter than the other teams) and the supposed worst team ended up winning league.

In theory, Rogers philosophy can work really well for us, but it's up to the players to make sure they do their part.  Obviously there's more to it than that, but if we get some good additions in and just keep possession of the ball as much as possible, we won't get scored on much, and we will score a lot more goals than last season.  In theory.

[Kenny Kan]

That's a good read. The four phases that "underpin" his game I suppose can be related to any team - no matter their style. Our problem (over the years) has been the "preparation of midfield" that has a knock on effect on the "creativity to arrive in areas".g I know last season we lacked the goals more than anything but those issues IMO were still there underneath and are an achillies heel of this/past teams of ours. The fact our midfield conjured up nothing of note on the goals front shows that we're lacking IMO in Rodger's 2nd & 3rd phase.

I like his philosophy, hardly scientific, yet simple and effective - which when all is said and done, so is football - simple that is. But! I do think you need the personel to play that philosophy AND to get them on the same wave length as the manager implementing it, this will be Rodger's hardest task, and trying to make this work with a new squad a little quicker may be difficult. Carroll is an interesting player to see under Rodger's style - I'd like to see what he does with him (the rewards from training onto the pitch with this philosophy undepinned). I can see a player like Henderson being the perfect fit for Rodgers while no matter how bad he is (and given time on the ball), I don't believe Rodgers will get anymore out of Downing.

[RED BEERGOGGLES]

10 am tomorrow the official unveiling of our new manager.... 

[Boxscarf]

I get the sense that Rodgers arrival at Anfield will be the end of Jamie Carragher's playing days.

[Rimetto]

I get the sense that Rodgers arrival at Anfield will be the end of Jamie Carragher's playing days.

i think it's time for him to hang up his boots anyway to be fair (and i'm a fan of him) and would love to see him made part of the coaching team