In football they say that when it turns, it turns for the worst - this is because heaven knows how many managers have rushed too quickly to greet a false dawn. And did anyone do it with more shattering consequences than Liverpool's now desperately besieged manager Brendan Rodgers?
Certainly in this forlorn table of misadventure there can be no doubt he is the runaway leader before the Premier League reaches the halfway stage.
After this week's shattering dismissal from the Champions League the charges against him are accumulating faster than one of those Luis Suarez initiatives which in the wide sweep of Liverpool's fast deteriorating situation have come to represent nothing so much as sublime but illusory statements about quite where the team was heading.
The most serious is, of course, the one that says that when Suarez left, as his record suggested he was likely to sooner than later, the much trumpeted team building of Rodgers was exposed as one of modern football's most insubstantial myths.
Damaging
It fell away before our eyes and to an extent that even the admittedly damaging injury to Suarez's sorcerer apprentice Daniel Sturridge cannot begin to disguise.
Rodgers bought or, just as grievously, allowed to be bought without public protest, more than £100m worth of resolute mediocrity. On the touchline he looks progressively dismayed and bewildered, and in an example of truly savage fate, at Sunday lunchtime he has to take his pain and his confusion over poor league form and the Champions League exit to, of all places, Manchester United.
There, not only the callous of nature will surely recall that it is still less than six months since Rodgers reacted to a summer tour defeat by United with a full-blown lecture to Louis van Gaal on the difficulties he would face in his first season in the Premier League.
The audacity of his warnings to a man who won La Liga and Bundesliga championships at his first attempts - and, along with a Champions League win for Ajax and a World Cup third place with an ill-considered Dutch team, could claim eight national titles in three separate countries - is only magnified by subsequent events.
At the time Rodgers was also talking up his chances of stepping beyond last season's closely run title challenge. It was in this buoyant mood that he declared: "I think what he (Van Gaal) will find is that the competition in this league will be different to any other he has worked in.
"In a lot of the other leagues there are one or two teams and those are the ones who are expected to win. This is a league where the top team plays the bottom team and on any given day can lose.
"You don't get that a lot in the other leagues. I think the competition will probably take him by surprise and that's from foreign managers I have spoken to over the years. I've worked closely with foreign players who have come in and that real competitive nature will be different to anywhere else he has worked before."
The inherent presumption of Rodgers while addressing a man of such proven achievement was stunning then and is bathed in an even harsher light by recent events.
What is also provokes is a question about the Liverpool manager's basic understanding of the dynamics of football at its highest, most demanding level.
He came to Anfield from Swansea with an enviable reputation for coaching a superior style of football, a passing game that carried forward values established by his predecessor Roberto Martinez. A difficult time at Reading with poor results and a parting by mutual consent after six months was consigned firmly to the past.
At Liverpool he was seen, by no less than Ian St John, as someone to straighten out the ultimately meandering years of Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez and Roy Hodgson and the ambush that came to Kenny Dalglish's reputation with his slavish support of the worst of Suarez's behaviour.
Now Rodgers' has the clammy sense of being mired in the same dangerous terrain.
It has become that much more perilous in the wake of Tuesday's essentially dysfunctional performance against Basel, an effort so leaden it was beyond the redemption of the brilliant bolt that came from the most spectacular and accomplished of Steven Gerrard's past.
At the finish Gerrard wore an expression reminiscent of the one worn by the injured Cesc Fabregas when he watched Arsenal lose a League Cup final to the relegated Birmingham City - and promptly defected to Barcelona. Here on Gerrard's face was the same indication of a man who sensed that he had become part of a lost cause.
What is certain is that the patience of the American ownership is moving towards breaking point. There are already reports that they are looking elsewhere and inevitable speculation that even the brilliant Jurgen Klopp's devotion to Borussia Dortmund might be challenged by the prospect of re-making a major European club without the regular need to sell his best players.
The case for giving Rodgers, after the high promise of his first two years, more time is less compelling when you examine his work since the departure of Suarez. Apart from Sturridge, and maybe the Adam Lallana, who was so mysteriously absent from this week's action, the new men have simply failed to suggest they can contribute significantly to a vibrant new Liverpool.
Raheem Sterling's confidence is draining away. The defence remains an area of desperate hope and speculation. The manager's Swansea protégé, Joe Allen, is a peripheral presence.
It was thus hardly surprising that Steve Nicol, a European Cup winner hardly notorious for sniping at his old club, has been forced to a reluctant conclusion.
He says: "If things don't change, then Brendan will ultimately pay the price. The team is completely rudderless. This is a desperate time. He has tried to add to the squad to make things better but somehow it has turned the other way. If the team keeps performing the way they are now I just don't think the owners will have an option."
By comparison Gary Neville's criticism of his old club United is relatively benign. Yes, he said, United got away with murder when they scored their fifth straight win at Southampton but he did allow that under Van Gaal they appeared to have found a "bit of resilience."
That wasn't quite enough to prevent a little cuffing from the man so recently lectured by Rodgers. "Gary Neville is an ex-legend," Van Gaal sneered.
By Sunday afternoon, for Rodgers such a put-down might well be among the least of his hurts.
Irish Independent
No comments: