Managers - Brendan Rodgers

Brendan Rodgers
Birthdate: 26 January 1973
Birthplace: Carnlough, Northern Ireland
Other clubs as manager: Watford, Reading, Swansea City, Leicester
Arrived from: Swansea City
Signed for LFC: 1 June 2012
LFC league games as manager: 122
Total LFC games as manager: 166
First game in charge: 02.08.2012
Contract Expiry: 04.10.2015

Manager Profile

In being officially unveiled on 1 June 2012 as the man to replace Kenny Dalglish as manager of team affairs at Liverpool Football Club, 39-year-old Ulsterman Brendan Rodgers became the club’s youngest appointee to that position since Graeme Souness arrived as a 37-year-old in 1991. On taking up his new post Rodgers, however, despite a growing reputation and a managerial apprenticeship earned at Watford, Reading and Swansea, did not possess the experience or abrasiveness of the Scot who had previously been chosen to replace the Liverpool legend 21 years earlier. Although seemingly settled and happy in south Wales, having steered Swansea into the Premier League as the Championship play-off winners in 2011, what he had achieved at Swansea and the way he had achieved it made him an inevitable target for bigger clubs. It was probably more a question of when rather than if this next move would happen. After initially turning down the opportunity to talk to Liverpool’s owners in the middle of May about the vacant manager’s position at Anfield, it seemed that Wigan boss Roberto Martinez had become the American owners’ new target. But only days after Martinez had met representatives of Fenway Sports Group in Florida, attention turned again to Rodgers, who felt unable to turn down a second request from Liverpool to discuss the prospect of taking over the chair vacated by Dalglish.

Rodgers did not take up football seriously until he had become a teenager. He was a youth player with Ballymena United in his home county of Antrim but only played a dozen or so matches as a senior there before moving to England to further his career with Reading, then in the Third Division of the Football League. Unfortunately, a genetic knee condition forced him to terminate any ambitions of becoming a professional footballer before he had even appeared in a first-team match for the Berkshire club. Putting aside his disappointment at not being able to play on a full-time basis, Rodgers worked hard at pursuing a career as a coach. He became Reading’s Academy manager at the young age of twenty-two. Soon after arriving at Stamford Bridge in 2004 José Mourinho offered him the opportunity to manage Chelsea’s Academy and he impressed enough to be offered the reserve team’s manager’s job in 2006. Born exactly ten years to the day before Rodgers, Mourinho saw other characteristics which mirrored his own. "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."

In 2008 Watford, then in the Championship division, gave Rodgers the chance to manager a first team. Arriving at a time when the Hertfordshire club had made a dreadful start to the season, Rodgers steered them to mid-table safety after they had been in the relegation-zone in January. Rodgers likes to think his teams reflect 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."

Rodgers’ first English club were obviously monitoring the Irishman’s progress. When Steve Coppell stepped down after failing to take Reading back into the Premier League they had left at the end of the 2007/08 season, Rodgers was appointed to replace him. But it was not a happy return to the Madejski Stadium and shortly before the end of 2009 he was sacked by the Berkshire club. For six months he said he couldn’t even get an interview with a League 2 club but Swansea Chairman, Huw Jenkins, recognised the superb job he had done working with youngsters at Reading and Chelsea and appointed him to the post of Swansea manager in the summer of 2010.

In a sensational first season based in south Wales, Brendan Rodgers led the Swans into the promised land of the Premier League, although it took a dramatic play-off final victory against his old club Reading at Wembley to achieve this. Tipped by many to make an immediate return to the Championship, Swansea impressed throughout the season and finished in a comfortable eleventh place with their home form being particularly strong. Rodgers’ team also took four points out of six from Liverpool, who ultimately finished only three places and five points above them. This might have been a factor, although possibly not a major factor, in Liverpool’s American owners seeing Rodgers as a potential manager of their own club.

Rodgers revealed to the Daily Mail in 2011 the reason behind the playing style of his teams. “I suppose I’m in a new breed of coaches coming through and the one thing I have is confidence in players. I had a timeline to be a good coach and nearly 20 years in the game at that level has given me that," Rodgers told Daily Mail's Neil Ashton. "People like Roy Keane, Gareth Southgate and Gary Neville all had unbelievable careers and they have done their coaching badges, but I didn’t have the playing career. I was brought up in a traditional 4-4-2, kick the ball up the pitch, but when I was a youth international with Northern Ireland we would play France, Spain and Switzerland and we would chase the ball. I wanted to play in their team, I liked the ideology. I educated myself by studying, watching and learning. I worked with top British managers, Champions League winners and World Cup winners. At Chelsea I worked with some of the top players in European football."

Mister Rodgers’ lack of success or experience as a player need not necessarily be seen as a disadvantage because both Gerard Houllier and Rafael Benítez took the club to domestic and European honours despite very modest playing careers. Rodgers knows he has joined a special club and both he and his employers made all the right noises on the day his appointment was confirmed in front of the media circus that the new manager will have to get used to and which to be fair he has already some experience of with his other clubs.

Tom Werner, Liverpool’s Chairman emphasised that Rodgers will offer “relentless, attacking football” and was the owner’s first-choice and the only man offered the manager’s job. Rodgers, who is the first Ulsterman to manage Liverpool since John McKenna in 1892, is a visionary who has studied coaching techniques in Spain (Rodgers is fluent in Spanish) and Holland where he spent time with the legendary Rinus Michels. "My big dream is to be a highly successful football manager whose methods provide innovation for youth and senior footballers and coaches. I started coaching for one reason and that was to make a difference for people, not just as footballers but as human beings. I'm learning lessons all the time. 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. When we have the football everybody's a player. If you are better than your opponent with the ball you have a 79% chance of winning the game." He is very passionate about his new appointment. “I promise I'll fight for my life and for the people in this city, We might not be ready for the title now but the process begins today.” Rodgers was quickly rewarded for taking his team directly into the 2014/15 Champions League group stage when he agreed a new four-year contract that would last up until the summer of 2018. A terrible 2014/15 season and dismal performances at the start of the next eventually cost him his job in October 2015.

Rodgers has since had considerable success at Celtic and Leicester.

Statistics
Competition Total Won Draw Lost Goals for Goals against
Grand totals 166 85 39 42 293 201
League 122 63 30 29 232 151
FA Cup 12 7 2 3 17 11
League Cup 10 6 1 3 16 14
Europe 22 9 6 7 28 25
Other 0 0 0 0 0 0
Matches that are won or lost in a penalty shoot-out are counted as a win/loss not as a draw.
Related Articles
Rodgers, Barca and 'Tiki Taka'

Football coach and blogger Jed Davies examines the 'Tiki-Taka' philosophy deployed by Barcelona under Pep Guardiola and Swansea under Brendan Rodgers. From 25 June 2012.

Boss shares secret to Stevie fitness

Brendan Rodgers on captain fantastic on 13th September, 2013.

Liverpool's thrilling football excites Keegan

Kevin Keegan believes Brendan Rodgers has returned the club to the attacking football played by Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley. From BBC Radio 5.

Liverpool's Latin Americans

Declan Sloan has put together a complete record of every South American player to wear the famous Red Jersey, from Mauricio Pellegrino in 2005 to newly recruited Roberto Firmino.

Being Liverpool Manager

"At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters." - Bill Shankly

Related Quotes

“In this country we pay them to fail. We don’t want to give them the contracts. I had the situation last year with Raheem. He was brilliant the first six months. I was hanging off [giving him a new contract] because I know the consequence. You are 17 or 18, you are handed that contract, and you think you don’t have to work any more. It’s only natural as a human being – you just cruise, and before you know it, he didn’t play as much in the second half of the season.”

Brendan Rodgers on 26 January 2014 on how he managed Raheem Sterling

Players bought
Player Club Fee Date
Fabio Borini Roma £10,400,000 13 July 2012
Joe Allen Swansea City £15,000,000 10 August 2012
Oussama Assaidi Heerenveen £3,000,000 17 August 2012
Nuri Sahin Real Madrid On Loan 25 August 2012
Samed Yesil Leverkusen £1,000,000 30 August 2012
Daniel Sturridge Chelsea £12,000,000 2 January 2013
Philippe Coutinho Inter Milan £8,500,000 30 January 2013
Luis Alberto Sevilla £6,800,000 22 June 2013
Iago Aspas Celta Vigo £7,000,000 23 June 2013
Simon Mignolet Sunderland £9,000,000 25 June 2013
Kolo Touré Free Transfer Free 2 July 2013
Aly Cissokho Valencia On Loan 20 August 2013
Mamadou Sakho Paris St Germain £15,000,000 2 September 2013
Tiago Ilori Sporting Lisbon £3,500,000 * 2 September 2013
Victor Moses Chelsea On Loan 2 September 2013
Rickie Lambert Southampton £4,500,000 2 June 2014
Adam Lallana Southampton £25,000,000 * 1 July 2014
Kevin Stewart Free Transfer Free 2 July 2014
Emre Can Leverkusen £9,750,000 3 July 2014
Lazar Markovic Benfica £19,800,000 15 July 2014
Dejan Lovren Southampton £20,000,000 * 27 July 2014
Divock Origi Lille £9,800,000 * 29 July 2014
Javier Manquillo Atletico Madrid On Loan 6 August 2014
Alberto Moreno Sevilla £12,000,000 * 16 August 2014
Mario Balotelli AC Milan £16,000,000 25 August 2014
Joe Gomez Charlton Athletic £6,000,000 * 20 June 2015
Adam Bogdan Free Transfer Free 1 July 2015
Danny Ings Free Transfer £8,000,000 * 1 July 2015
James Milner Free Transfer Free 1 July 2015
Nathaniel Clyne Southampton £12,500,000 1 July 2015
Roberto Firmino Hoffenheim £29,000,000 * 6 July 2015
Christian Benteke Aston Villa £32,500,000 22 July 2015
Allan Rodrigues de Souza Internacional £500,000 2 September 2015
Players sold
Player Club Fee Date
Fábio Aurélio Free Transfer Free * 1 June 2012
David Amoo Free Transfer Free * 1 June 2012
Stephen Darby Free Transfer Free * 1 June 2012
Dirk Kuyt Fenerbahce £1,000,000 3 June 2012
Maxi Rodriguez Newell's Old Boys Undisclosed 13 July 2012
Alberto Aquilani Fiorentina £7,000,000 3 August 2012
Craig Bellamy Cardiff City Undisclosed 10 August 2012
Charlie Adam Stoke City £5,000,000 * 31 August 2012
Nathan Eccleston Blackpool Unknown 31 August 2012
Joe Cole West Ham United Free 4 January 2013
Nuri Sahin Real Madrid Returns from loan 11 January 2013
Alexander Doni Botafogo Free 31 January 2013
Peter Gulacsi FC Salzburg £0 7 June 2013
Andy Carroll West Ham United £15,000,000 19 June 2013
Danny Wilson Free Transfer Free * 1 July 2013
Jonjo Shelvey Swansea City £6,000,000 3 July 2013
Jay Spearing Bolton Wanderers £1,700,000 9 August 2013
Stewart Downing West Ham United £6,000,000 13 August 2013
Dani Pacheco Alcorcon Free 2 September 2013
Adam Morgan Yeovil Town Undisclosed 2 January 2014
Luis Suarez Barcelona £65,000,000 16 July 2014
Conor Coady Huddersfield Town £375,000 6 August 2014
Pepe Reina Bayern Munich £2,000,000 8 August 2014
Martin Kelly Crystal Palace £1,500,000 14 August 2014
Kristoffer Peterson Utrecht Undisclosed 27 August 2014
Jack Robinson QPR £1,000,000 28 August 2014
Daniel Agger Brøndby £3,000,000 30 August 2014
Oussama Assaidi Al Ahli £4,700,000 12 January 2015
Suso AC Milan £920,000 17 January 2015
Iago Aspas Sevilla £4,400,000 12 June 2015
Sebastian Coates Sunderland £4,000,000 1 July 2015
Brad Jones Free Transfer Free * 1 July 2015
Steven Gerrard Free Transfer Free 1 July 2015
Glen Johnson Free Transfer Free * 1 July 2015
Raheem Sterling Manchester City £49,000,000 * 14 July 2015
Rickie Lambert WBA £3,000,000 31 July 2015
Fabio Borini Sunderland £10,000,000 * 31 August 2015
Players used
Player Appearances Minutes Goals Assists
Jordan Henderson 140 11001 18 28
Martin Skrtel 129 11418 10 1
Steven Gerrard 126 10546 37 26
Raheem Sterling 126 9265 23 17
Philippe Coutinho 112 8385 17 21
Simon Mignolet 104 9464 0 0
Glen Johnson 101 8442 3 7
Joe Allen 99 6806 4 0
Lucas Leiva 98 7008 0 1
Luis Suarez 81 6969 61 20
Daniel Sturridge 70 5363 42 11
Daniel Agger 62 5170 5 1
Jose Enrique 53 4012 2 6
Mamadou Sakho 51 4241 1 0
Emre Can 51 4001 1 1
Alberto Moreno 51 3933 2 2
Adam Lallana 48 3195 8 5
Kolo Touré 47 3385 0 2
Stewart Downing 45 3498 5 7
Dejan Lovren 44 3528 1 0
Pepe Reina 39 3510 0 0
Jamie Carragher 38 2713 0 1
Fabio Borini 38 1600 3 3
Rickie Lambert 36 1245 3 2
Lazar Markovic 34 1883 3 1
Jonjo Shelvey 32 1852 5 2
Mario Balotelli 28 1512 4 0
Jon Flanagan 27 2107 1 1
Jordon Ibe 25 1408 0 2
Brad Jones 23 1996 0 0
Andre Wisdom 22 1741 1 2
Victor Moses 22 856 2 0
Suso 21 938 1 1
Javier Manquillo 19 1515 0 1
Aly Cissokho 19 1340 0 1
Martin Kelly 15 853 0 0
Iago Aspas 15 469 1 1
Sebastian Coates 12 863 1 0
Nuri Sahin 12 827 3 2
Oussama Assaidi 12 584 0 1
Luis Alberto 12 258 0 1
Nathaniel Clyne 10 851 0 0
Joe Cole 10 388 2 1
James Milner 9 840 1 2
Danny Ings 8 510 3 0
Joe Gomez 7 618 0 1
Roberto Firmino 7 274 0 0
Jack Robinson 6 512 0 0
Christian Benteke 6 496 2 0
Divock Origi 4 265 0 1
Jordan Rossiter 4 262 1 0
Dani Pacheco 3 172 0 0
Jay Spearing 3 162 0 0
Adam Morgan 3 123 0 0
Jerome Sinclair 3 34 0 0
Samed Yesil 2 127 0 0
Charlie Adam 2 104 0 0
Conor Coady 2 62 0 0
Andy Carroll 2 17 0 0
Adam Bogdan 1 120 0 0
Pedro Chirivella 1 63 0 0
Jordan Williams 1 41 0 0
Brad Smith 1 30 0 0
Cameron Brannagan 1 11 0 0
João Carlos Teixeira 1 8 0 0