The Quiet Man Excellent argument Wimb but I think you are wrong in your assumptions.
Football management, as opposed to coaching/managing Academy sides, is a very very tough business where you are either good enough or you're not based on results on the pitch, and there is no room for sentiment either side (you are also well paid for the pressure).
Plenty of managers have taken over good sides and run them into the ground and plenty have taken bad sides and made them better, some times you are the right guy at the right time, other times you could be the best manager in the world but you are at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I don't doubt BR's heart is in the right place but the championship is an unrelently grim struggle where there are no absolutely awful sides (although we are certainly trying to nail this one at the moment) and you get results based on how consistently you compete and win close fought games. You simply don't have the time to d*ck about finding your best side or best suited tactics you need to go in with a game plan that reflects the assets you have got, not the fantasy team you would like to create.
BR has failed to produce a consistent team selection, a recognised tactical strategy that makes the most of what he has got (i.e. don't play premier league passing football in the champ, don't play one up front when you have no one in the side who has pace and is good at it), and has never shown a sense that he knows where the remedy is (his transfer policy has been absolute toilet bringing in players that are actually worse than we have at present).
RFC used to have as one of its key motivators - we may not have the best players but we will have the fittest and most competitive to make up for that - can you say the same now. We have one of the most uncompetitive midfields I've seen at Reading, we look unfit, we have used over thirty players, 5 or 6 different tactical formations, and have no discernable shape when things go against us. In other words BR has built a classic relegation side that starts brightly and fades badly, often completely falling apart when put under pressure.
Sacking him and appointing someone new may or may not be the answer, I'd see it as a acknowledgement of just how far wrong SJM and hapless hammond have got this season (and the last two in terms of team building), and I'd fully expect that relegation may only be avoided by a whisker anyway as a result of the strategy they have pursued. This should not be BR's fight anymore because he is clueless about the answers and has now lost many of the players and most of the travelling support, neither of whom have much faith that he, or the rest of the coaching staff know what they are doing.
I'd go for change while we still have a chance to reshape the team under someone who knows what championship football is about and we still have the majority of the relegation 6 pointers to play (we have only really screwed up Peterborough away so far). It will not be pretty passing football that will get us out of this mess but physical hard work, ugly football (stopping the opposition) and defensive solidity (we do not have many goals in us) that will allow us to escape division one. Rodgers time has come and gone and so should he.
Very valid points good sir,
I think in a way BR is a victim of his own job interview and ambitions. He honestly thought he had the players and could bring in those players to make his 'systems' work. Tommy Smith is obviously the biggest case of missing out on a key player and there really is no telling how differently things might be with him. We also don't know what other targets we missed out on while the purse strings were tight while we waiting for Shunt to shunt off and for any Bikey bids to come in. For all we know he lost out on 2 or 3 more, I know he wanted Stoch as well.
In this respect you can't help but get the feeling Rodgers played 2 formations in those first 5 or 6 games with a view to prepping some players (gunnar, cisse, kebe, bertrand, church etc) to play in his new model, on the assumption that he'd be able to bring in faces to make it work. It's fair to say that despite the dross the names I've mentioned above have actually done ok but the whole side is being let down by individual errors game after bloody game
Cummings at WBA, Fedders at home to Sheff, Hunt wasting good chances at home to Cardiff, Ivar getting sent off at QPR and so on. I think that Rodgers has indeed just started to panic a little because he realises his entire blueprint cannot work right now (as you alluded too, passing style in the CCC etc) and is struggling to settle on a plan B. Once again, without making too many excuses he seemed to have a settledish 14-15 and then O'Dea, Bertrand and NHunt get crocked, 3 of our best players.
He's clearly messed around and tried to be too fancy but I think he's actually learned from that without doing TOO much damage to the season. I've posted in the perspective thread, but he hasn't lost to the teams at the bottom aside from Boro and really had we put away chances and had a slice of luck we could easily have 6-8 more points. I honestly don't care when we're getting ripped apart at West Brom, by Boro or even at QPR where Rodgers HAS to get results from now is those matches against bottom 8 sides. It's what oxf*rd is in the PL and what will doom us again.
There's clearly been a change of heart from the guy in releation to his 'big book of tactics' and reading in and on the lines of his interviews you can see that he's prepared to look like a fool, admit he cocked up and do what's neccesary to get points. I just hope he's given time to do it. I won't forget the entire reason I was pleased with BR being appointed in the first place and that was to build a side over 2 or 3 years that could entertain us. The second half of last year showed that hoofball can still get you to the playoffs but was it fun to do so? It clearly wasn't that fun for many as thousands couldn't be arsed for the 5th biggest playoff game in the clubs history.
Anyways thanks for the kind words from posters above and its good to get some decent opinions rather then kebe is shit
