We’ve been the form season since the end of 2014, what a turnaround…
Brendan Rodgers admits he feared he could’ve lost his job as Liverpool manager before the installing of radical changes that turned around our Premier League season.
The picture is a whole less bleaker than that fateful day at Selhurst Park in November which left us 12th in the table after a 3-1 loss to Crystal Palace.
But the Boss said it was this lagging position in the league, and terrible performance, that ultimately made him devise a new way to get Liverpool winning.
“After that Palace game I felt that it doesn’t matter how much support you have, the team is not functioning and it could not go on really,” Rodgers said, reports Guardian.
“But I certainly wasn’t going to roll over and die. I will always fight for my life. I love it here and I want to be successful here.”
“I needed to make decisions that would allow us to get back to somewhere near what we had been and the transformation of the team, with everyone talking about the system and how dynamic it is, has been good to see. I should have done it earlier!”
Rodgers made the comments ahead of our clash with Burnley, which could see us collect 29 out of the last 33 points available if we win at Anfield tonight.
A record only bettered in terms of points-to-game ratio by Bundesliga side Wolfsburg in the top five European Leagues in 2015.
“I understood the situation. My experience at Reading told me that. That’s what I learned from my sacking there. I went in to Reading with the full backing of the chairman, who was great to me, and I got 20 games.
“Even though it was a three-year project and they wanted me there and I was the guy who knew the club more than anyone, I got the sack after 20 games. Funnily enough it had just started to pick up but they lost their patience.
“What I learned was it does not matter how much support you have in the boardroom, from the directors, the executives, you have to get results and you have to win.”
Rodgers seemingly had the support of FSG during that tough time despite the early exit in the Champions League.
It was disappointing defeats such as this, though, that saw the Boss employ the kind of tacts that seem commonplace now.
Just a handful of games after saw us institute the wildly successful 3-4-3 system – our defeat at Old Trafford on it’s inception remains our only defeat when using it.
“I was looking at it then and used it in the cup games so I knew what I wanted to do earlier, but after Newcastle we had Real Madrid and I wasn’t going to go into a game of that magnitude with a system that I knew needed more work on,” said Rodgers.
“It was just about the timing and the timing was right for the Manchester United game. By that stage I was comfortable that we had the players to make it work.”