but a player’s mum.’
In early 2014, Rodgers had learnt that a club employee based at Liverpool’s city centre offices in Chapel Street was due to undergo a kidney transplant. The night before surgery, the manager called to wish him the best, encouraging the patient to focus on the betterment of his life after the procedure. It had an uplifting effect that hasn’t been forgotten.
When Raheem Sterling was continuously transgressing off the pitch in his teenage years, Rodgers helped him steer away from trouble and towards making the game his life. ‘He helps me a lot with not just my football but if I need someone to talk to about off the field then he’s there for me,’ the England international would admit. ‘He’s helped me massively, especially on the pitch as well, so I have to give credit to him and thank him a lot.’
As Christmas neared in 2013, Jordan Henderson’s father, Brian, was diagnosed with throat cancer. When the former policeman eventually shared the devastating news with his son, the midfielder leaned on Rodgers for support. The manager himself had been through the turmoil of learning his dad had the same illness and could relate to the struggle of trying to balance personal torment with excelling professionally. Henderson was granted extra time off by Rodgers while Brian went through successful treatment to remove lymph nodes from both sides of his neck and a tumour from his tongue.
Rodgers was a rock and encouraged the England international to leave everything out on the pitch for his father. In the next four out of five fixtures Henderson played, he was man of the match. That period still lingers in the player’s memory and is perhaps partly why there was a great sense of guilt when Rodgers was ultimately relieved of his duties at Liverpool on 4 October 2015 following a 1–1 away draw with Everton.
‘When Brendan left, as a player you feel a responsibility that we all haven’t done our jobs properly and someone loses theirs because of it – someone who I thought was a very good coach and a very good manager,’ Henderson says. ‘And when someone loses their job, it’s really not a nice feeling, it’s horrible. When Brendan got sacked, it was difficult news to take. I personally believed I should have done more on the pitch to help him.’
In truth, there was no reason for Henderson to feel that way. The relationship between Liverpool’s owners and Rodgers was doomed from the outset as it was founded on an unhappy compromise in 2012 that neither wanted.
After bringing to an end club legend Kenny Dalglish’s second spell as Liverpool manager, FSG wanted to fully revolutionise the club. Intent on following the European model, they were keen to hire a director of football to oversee operations, including transfers, in order to holistically shape the club moving forward.
At the time, FSG made loose enquires to ascertain whether Jürgen Klopp could be prised from Borussia Dortmund, but the answer was emphatically negative. Rodgers emerged as their first-choice option, but he favoured the old-school, autocratic route of managers being in sole control. He refused to accept the job if a director of football position was established.
What followed was a patchwork of both preferences, that made little sense as neither party fully bought into it. On 31 May 2012, Liverpool’s official statement on the appointment declared: ‘Rodgers’ primary focus will be the first team but he’ll also work extensively in collaboration with the new football operations structure as the team adheres to the continental football Sporting Director mode.’
However, at his first opportunity to speak on the matter, their new managerial recruit was quick to state, ‘One of the things you need to do is to know yourself, and I know myself. I know what makes me work well and that wouldn’t have been a model I would have succeeded in. It’s absolute madness if you are the manager of the club and someone else tells you to have that player. It doesn’t work.’ Already, the men in the boardroom and the man in the dugout were at odds over a crucial point: how to actually run the operation.
What Liverpool settled on was ‘a collaborative group of people working to help Brendan deliver the football side of it,’ as Ayre termed it.
The transfer committee was born with the correct idea, but under the wrong circumstances and leadership. The chief executive was part of the brains trust, which also featured Michael Edwards (then the director of technical performance), head of recruitment Dave Fallows and Barry Hunter, the chief scout. Rodgers was a key component of the committee and had ‘the final say’ on all incomings and outgoings at Liverpool, but to his chagrin, the decision-making process was collaborative.
‘I wanted to make sure that I would be in charge of football matters; that I would control the team,’ Rodgers said at the time. What he failed to understand was that he could do that while accepting the suggestions from some very sharp minds and a leading analytical research team on how to build a balanced squad for the long-term.
From the off, there were issues. During the first summer window under Rodgers in 2012, Liverpool were on the verge of signing Daniel Sturridge from Chelsea only for the manager to tank the deal because he wanted Clint Dempsey from Fulham instead and was willing to offer Henderson in part-exchange. The club had already offloaded Andy Carroll to West Ham on loan and FSG emphasised the need to bring in a striker to fortify the attack, but their advice was ignored.
Rodgers went all in on the USA international, whose valuation of £7 million at the time did not tally for a player in his late twenties entering the final year of his contract. The owners did not want to sanction a deal for Dempsey that screamed of short-termism and they were privately annoyed that the transfer of Sturridge, who would eventually switch to Anfield in January 2013, was derailed.
What really incensed them, however, was when Rodgers told the press that letting Andy Carroll go was ‘probably 99.9 per cent finance. If we’ve got a choice, then he’s someone around the place who you could use from time to time. He would have been a good option’. Rodgers would later contradict himself by stating he had the courage to get shot of the Geordie, who was Liverpool’s record signing at the time, because he didn’t fit the club’s ethos. He went further still when that window closed to fuel talk that he wasn’t being financially backed by FSG.
‘I was very confident I had a deal sewn up, but it has gone and I can’t do anything about it,’ he said on the negotiations for Dempsey, who joined Tottenham instead. ‘There’s no point me crying about it or wishing we had or hadn’t done this or that.’
Those public declarations drove John W Henry, the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool principal owner, to pen an open letter to the club’s fans explaining their methodology. ‘The transfer policy was not about cutting costs,’ he wrote. ‘It was — and will be in the future — about getting maximum value for what is spent so that we can build quality and depth.
‘We are still in the process of reversing the errors of previous regimes. It will not happen overnight. It has been compounded by our own mistakes in a difficult first two years of ownership. It has been a harsh education, but make no mistake, the club is healthier today than when we took over.
‘Spending is not merely about buying talent. We will invest to succeed. But we will not mortgage the future with risky spending. After almost two years at Anfield, we are close to having the system we need in place. The transfer window may not have been perfect but we are not just looking at the next 16 weeks until we can buy again; we are looking at the next 16 years and beyond. These are the first steps in restoring one of the world’s great clubs to its proper status.
‘It will not be easy, it will not be perfect, but there is a clear vision at work. We will build and grow from within, buy prudently and cleverly and never again waste resources on inflated transfer fees and unrealistic wages. We have no fear of spending and competing with the very best but we will not overpay for players.
‘We
