Liverpool FC Forum

It is understood that Liverpool will not now appoint a director of football.


Hmmm, that's interesting, So Van Gaal not coming to our club now....?

Kash_Mountain » Wed May 30, 2012 2:52 pm wrote:It is understood that Liverpool will not now appoint a director of football.


Hmmm, that's interesting, So Van Gaal not coming to our club now....?

Van Gaal as manager now?

another twist in the tale 

Read somewhere FSG want to put 3 directors in place to work with the Head Coach.

I don't know how that works

metalhead » Wed May 30, 2012 2:58 pm wrote:Read somewhere FSG want to put 3 directors in place to work with the Head Coach.

I don't know how that works

I quite like the guesswork that's going on here, its as tedious as it is entertaining 

metalhead » Wed May 30, 2012 1:58 pm wrote:Read somewhere FSG want to put 3 directors in place to work with the Head Coach.

I don't know how that works

neither do they. they're a touch clueless it would appear

metalhead » Wed May 30, 2012 1:58 pm wrote:Read somewhere FSG want to put 3 directors in place to work with the Head Coach.

I don't know how that works

Wonder if this is how it works in Baseball and other American sports, if so, they need to think a bit more about it, 3 directors to work with the Head Coach in Football, imo just wouldn't work, but you never know I suppose

If there is an easy way to become the manager of a Premier League football club, then Brendan Rodgers has not taken it.

Forced to retire as a player at 20 because of a genetic knee condition, the Carnlough man turned to coaching potential professionals only a few years younger than himself.

By his own admission, it was a difficult and laborious path, a time when long hours away from home made leading an unfashionable team to the highest rung seem a long way off.

So when his Swansea team closed on victory at Wembley on Monday, Rodgers allowed himself a moment of reflection on how unlikely it had all once seemed.

Sacrifices

"At 4-2 and 30 odd seconds to go - and I've never, ever done it before - my mind sort of wandered to my journey as a coach," he said after the game.

Continue reading the main story
Brendan Rodgers factfile
He was raised in Carnlough where he spent much of his youth playing Gaelic football and hurling
As a young coach, he travelled around Europe and now speaks Spanish and Italian
His son Anton plays for Chelsea's youth team and has represented the Republic of Ireland at U-17 level
His nickname is Buck

"From my early 20s, working with kids, driving many hours, missing time with my family, all that emotion - the whole journey flashes through your mind."

Those sacrifices began to be rewarded with a post as head of youth development at Reading, the club where he had played his last game.

If that appointment with the Royals was a boost, then the subsequent arrival of a certain Portuguese manager at Chelsea was a rocket in the right direction.

Jose Mourinho was looking around for a new head of Chelsea's academy and reportedly head-hunted the Northern Irishman who had a growing reputation in youth football circles.

Born exactly 10 years to the day before Rodgers, Mourinho saw other characteristics which mirrored his own and gradually promoted the former Ballymena United man through the club.

Ambitious

"I like everything in him," Mourinho said. "He is ambitious and does not see football very differently from myself. He is open, likes to learn and likes to communicate."

Unfortunately for Rodgers, the beginning of his managerial career also had something in common with the self-proclaimed Special One, who had once left Benfica after only nine games in charge.

A spell at the helm at Reading, the club he had once played for and ironically the team beaten by Swansea in the Championship play-off, was ended with the sack after only a few months.

His latest success has come despite that setback and against a backdrop of difficult circumstances in his personal life.

He lost his mother, Christina, 12 months ago and his father Malachy travelled to Wembley on Sunday despite suffering from terminal cancer.

Rodgers has said he likes to think his team's performance reflects his father's work ethic.

"I used to help dad paint and decorate to earn pocket money. He installed in me the value of a hard day's work. He believes that leads to success in whatever you do. He's right," he said.

"He'd work from dawn to dusk to ensure his young family had everything. I think you can see his philosophies in my team."

His family's experiences with cancer have inspired Rodgers to eschew a lengthy summer break in favour of walking up Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for charity.

With Swansea already installed as one of the bookmakers' favourites to be relegated next season, he knows he has another mountain to climb when he returns.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-13601736

AH here you go the article is from goal.com regarding the 3 directors.. so it's BS

EXCLUSIVE
By Greg Stobart & Wayne Veysey

Roberto Martinez ruled himself out of contention to manage Liverpool because of the club’s plans for an inflated new management structure, Goal.com can reveal.

The Reds want a tier of three directors to take up the duties performed by former director of football Damien Comolli in a pioneering plan to make their operations more effective.

Martinez, however, was not willing to work under three men, plus managing director Ian Ayre, and the Wigan boss informed Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) on Tuesday that he would not join the club.

Rodgers is prepared to work within Liverpool’s proposed structure and fits FSG’s vision for a young, dynamic manager


It leaves Brendan Rodgers in line to take over at Anfield, with a fresh approach for the Northern Irishman expected in the next few days.

The Swansea manager is prepared to work within Liverpool’s proposed structure and fits FSG’s vision for a young, dynamic manager who is capable of introducing a footballing ethos which runs through all levels at the club.

Goal.com understands Liverpool’s groundbreaking plan is to employ one executive to oversee statistics, another whose role will be to conduct negotiations and a third ‘football man’ with contacts within the game.

FSG has already interviewed four candidates to take on the duties, with current Head of Analytics Michael Edwards set for a promotion to take charge of the ‘Moneyball’ concept of finding value in the transfer market based on statistics. Edwards was previously a performance analyst at Tottenham and Portsmouth.

Louis van Gaal remains the outstanding candidate to take on the more traditional sporting director duties given his wealth of experience, his knowledge of players and his worldwide contacts.

Rodgers is believed to have told Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins that he would like to take over at Anfield during a two-hour meeting on Tuesday.

That came shortly after Martinez turned down the job, believing his power and control over the football side of the club would be too diluted for him to realise his vision to bring regular Champions League football back to Anfield.

Martinez, 38, still feels ready for a new challenge and remains a leading candidate for the vacancy at Aston Villa.

http://www.goal.com/en/news/596/exclusive/2012/05/30/3136920/martinez-turns-down-liverpool-over-plans-for-three-sporting

so to clarify, its gonna be Rodgers?

This article was posted in Jan 13

Swansea manager Brendan Rodgers aims to convert long-ball believers

“This is the crusade,” says Brendan Rodgers. He is out to convert you — yes, you — to the enlightened path, preaching the gospel of tiki-taka in the South Wales valleys.
By Duncan White

10:00PM GMT 13 Jan 2012


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

----

Well you know what, he is better than Woy

Greavesie » Wed May 30, 2012 2:16 pm wrote:so to clarify, its gonna be Rodgers?

Might be    bring on Friday. I bet between now and Friday, there'll be another twist and turn with a step over....

Greavesie » Wed May 30, 2012 2:16 pm wrote:so to clarify, its gonna be Rodgers?

90%

metalhead » Wed May 30, 2012 2:10 pm wrote:AH here you go the article is from goal.com regarding the 3 directors.. so it's BS

EXCLUSIVE
By Greg Stobart & Wayne Veysey

Roberto Martinez ruled himself out of contention to manage Liverpool because of the club’s plans for an inflated new management structure, Goal.com can reveal.

The Reds want a tier of three directors to take up the duties performed by former director of football Damien Comolli in a pioneering plan to make their operations more effective.

Martinez, however, was not willing to work under three men, plus managing director Ian Ayre, and the Wigan boss informed Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) on Tuesday that he would not join the club.

Rodgers is prepared to work within Liverpool’s proposed structure and fits FSG’s vision for a young, dynamic manager


It leaves Brendan Rodgers in line to take over at Anfield, with a fresh approach for the Northern Irishman expected in the next few days.

The Swansea manager is prepared to work within Liverpool’s proposed structure and fits FSG’s vision for a young, dynamic manager who is capable of introducing a footballing ethos which runs through all levels at the club.

Goal.com understands Liverpool’s groundbreaking plan is to employ one executive to oversee statistics, another whose role will be to conduct negotiations and a third ‘football man’ with contacts within the game.

FSG has already interviewed four candidates to take on the duties, with current Head of Analytics Michael Edwards set for a promotion to take charge of the ‘Moneyball’ concept of finding value in the transfer market based on statistics. Edwards was previously a performance analyst at Tottenham and Portsmouth.

Louis van Gaal remains the outstanding candidate to take on the more traditional sporting director duties given his wealth of experience, his knowledge of players and his worldwide contacts.

Rodgers is believed to have told Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins that he would like to take over at Anfield during a two-hour meeting on Tuesday.

That came shortly after Martinez turned down the job, believing his power and control over the football side of the club would be too diluted for him to realise his vision to bring regular Champions League football back to Anfield.

Martinez, 38, still feels ready for a new challenge and remains a leading candidate for the vacancy at Aston Villa.

http://www.goal.com/en/news/596/exclusive/2012/05/30/3136920/martinez-turns-down-liverpool-over-plans-for-three-sporting

so martinez was first choice and rogers was second choice ?
who is rogers btw? what type of football does swansea plays?

just like Real Madrid

You never watched Swansea play last season Ocstky?

I read an article a few months back that they had the most passes or passing success rate after Barcelona or something like that. His side loved to keep the ball and pass it around, no long ball, no counter attack, just pressing and playing the ball from the back.