Liverpool's development over the last 18 months

I think even the most optimistic within our ranks would even think the rise has happened quicker than antisipated over the last 18 months, we were a club still coming out of the mess that Hicks and Gillette caused here, we were consistently finishing around 6th-8th in the league and finding our feet again.
Everything that happened post the Hodge has been a part of us moving forward and bringing the club together, but i dont want to bring in arguments about what happened pre Brendan into this, lets simply concentrate on this past 18 months.

Since Brendans first day he has brought into us and what makes us tick and for that he got my respect immediately, last season was a tough one for him, but he had a vision of how he wanted us to move forward, he may have developed it over this time, in terms of fitting that vision around our players as well as getting them to adapt to him and belive in him.. He wants us to pass the ball, dominate the football, the talk of dealth by football has developed, as well as being misconstrued by some, its about working openings and if thats 20 passes or 4 and then the opening comes and its a longer ball to get in behind he will get the players to see that opening and get the ball to the areas we can hurt the opposition.
The players have become more comfortable in it as well, at the start the defenders especially looked really uncomfortable but they through constant training look different players on the ball over the last couple of seasons, of course there will still be errors in it, like there was at the begining with Skrtel against City or Toure against West Brom, but those we should accept as part of the way we are playing now rather than utterly slaughter them for the mistakes.. With no risk there is little reward. The most recent game against Spurs is a case in point very fresh in all our memories, Coutinho's goal was started at the back and brought through all the way to him, no panic, no rush, work the space then work the chance.

Ive always been a massive believer that confidence plays a big part in the game, that when players are full of it then you will ultimately see them play with a freedom and being top of the table and flying like we are they are full of confidence and belief and we are seeing the results, but what comes first? Chicken and egg situation here.
What comes first for me? Hours and hours and hours on the training field, everyday working on what they are taking on the pitch, different things they may encounter on the pitch is being worked on and the confidence the gaffer is giving them to go out there and do what they do everyday and if it doesnt work to keep doing it.. That all part of it, the gaffer and his team filling them with that confidence and solid hours on the training field doing it day in day out, week in week out, repetition, second nature.

He has them all working together, the team spirit looks first class, look at two incidents in recent games, where Luis didnt square it to Raheem at Cardiff (rightly so for me)... But did that make Raheem think twice about squaring it to Hendo in the Spurs game on Sunday when he was in a position to shoot? No, they all work for each other, they look they they are a really tight unit who enjoy winning together.

The training aspect as well interests me, what the gaffer is instilling in them is making them very clever players, they seem to do thing tactically automatically, again the Spurs game on Sunday, they changed tactically all the way through it, starting by pulling them wide, picking clever positions up in the gaps, then pulled them out to a higher line to pick up the movement of the front players, when Spurs did that they pushed them back again with using longer balls in behind the high line using Danny and Raheems pace to again push them back. When Dawson came on they automatically targeted him and his lack of pace in behind him.. Its remarkable how adaptable in games they are, the manager often pulls the likes of Hendo and Stevie over to him for little bits to take back on to the pitch.. The whole thing strikes to me as a well oiled, well trained confident unit.. Full credit to everyone involved in that.

Within that as well is the individual player development, the improvement that the likes of Sterling, Flanagan, Henderson have shown is almost unbelieveable in the period, Flanagan looked on his way out 5 months ago, now looks like a full back we could be seeing for the next 8-10 years, Sterling was a pace merchant with a lack of football intelligence 6 months ago, now he has the ability and the brain to play as a 10. Martin Skrtel, who its safe to say i have never been his biggest fan has developed his game, he looks confident on the ball now, he is even not giving daft free kicks away in dangerous areas now which he used to do 3 or 4 times a game.

When the gaffer said at the begining of the season about adding goals to us i never thought he could just flick a switch, we have scored 88.....88.. goals this season, in 32 games, we didnt bring in a player who has added those goals individually last summer, we have worked around what we have to an extent and the ethos of the side now is to punish sides, to take away their ability to dominate us, to get a foothold in the game and come out at us at any time as we are so dangerous as a side it pushes teams back. The way we have turned Anfield into a fortress again is key, teams felt they could come here and have a go, they felt confident they could come to the famous Anfield and get a point or 3,but now we are making the old place feared again, that teams cant come here and take th sting out of the game and the crowd because frankly we are the best team in the league right now and we will batter you, teams are scared to try to play against us. We have a fear factor again, especially at home, its great, its what i grew up with.


People are annoying me with all this talk that its the best season to win it and all that.. Bollocks, dont talk it down, its just as tough tis year as any other, there is still the need to be the best over38 league games, there is still Man City who have spent a fortune and have a squad of more depth and quality than most in eurpoe, there is still Chelsea, who for some reason just because Mourinho is constantly telling everyone that he doesnt have the players and that they are well behind the big spenders around.. F**k off Jose, you dont belive that because if you do then you are a bigger mug than i gave you credit for, you have a massive squad, you have 3 expensive strikers in your squad, you have one you farmed out on loan.. Its down to you to get more from them.. Anyone believing his rubbish needs to really look at themselves. Arsenal are Arsenal, so its just Utd who are below par? Not that easy as far as i can tell.. At the start of the season bridging the gap to the top 4 was a challenge, if we win the league it will be probably the best achievement in PL history.
Easy my arse.

Whatever happens now at the end of the year the progrress we have made is remarkable, and its great to see that we are back on our F***ing perch.

Well in gaffer, you deserve a massive amount of credit.

A lot to take in on that post , and will need to re-read it again.

I'll hold my hand up, and say I wasn't convinced that Brendan was the right manager, and felt that he was too rigid last year in his playing ethos. he has proved me (and probably countless fans and critics wrong) this season with his flexibility and adaptability.

Someone i 'know' on twitter knew Rodgers (think he may have played under him) as a youth coach, and he was telling me last season how good a coach he was.

I was reading an article / interview on Rodgers the other day, where it said that after being sacked by i think it was Reading (reflect on that for a moment....) he went away on holiday, and wrote down a list of things he would do differently if he had the chance to manage again.... list came to 11 pages of A4.

Overall impressions recently :-

He's a lot more 'calmer' with the media now, less prone to grandiose comments - far more restrained.

Has really developed the 'team' ethos - yes individual players want to score, perform well, and are dissapointed when they don't - but look at our goal celebrations - they ALL get involved (exception being Mig)

Flexibility, As pointed out by PD, he has modified his 'possession football' style, and we can play a few different ways now, tailored to the opposition, which has the overall effect of confusing the opponents as they dont know which liverpool will turn up.

Pace. With the likes of Sturridge & Sterling, we have genuine pace going forward, probably something we were lacking

Mental strength. My thoughts on Dr Peters I have posted here a few times, so wont repeat myself, but if you look at the team, they are mentally strong and focused from the outset.

I'm still nervous as heck about the run in, and having been brought up on Paisley, Fagan, Dalglish etc, the mantra 'first is first, second is nowhere' runs deep - but we have made huge strides forward this season. But isnt over yet - and we have still to confirm - mathematically - a CL place.

win the next match. thats our sole goal right now. everthing else is not as important

Its developed into a very good relationship between Brendan's ability  and the courage to play two strikers. Two strikers who had they played all season together might well have had the league sewn up by now.
You can have the finest ingredients available to make a wonderful meal and it can still turn out a disaster. Brendan has made sure he fields teams built around the strength he has so much so that conceding goals is no longer an issue.
For me he has re-invented Stevie brought on players like Sterling,Couthino and Henderson whilst creating a team that can unleash Suarez and Sturridge.
We have all been aghast at some of our signings the past few years but now I think it may be even harder to sign players because when you can score 3 or 4 at home or away who are you going to drop.

Fantastic OP mate and the part about Skrtel I have to agree %100 with , I thought he would be getting the bullet at the end of the season but there's no way we could see that now , no more shirt pulling silly free kicks a completely different player he is .

I had hoped originally that Brendan would produce within a couple of years, in fact I think I'd made the comment in Brendan's thread a few times that there needed to be good progress shown by the end of this season or even I would have a hard time seeing a long term way forward for him at the club. But holy crap did he blow right by even my expectations! I really expected the best he'd be able to do (especially after the winter transfer debacle) is get us in the top 4 and I was of the mind that even that was going to be tough but if he'd at least have us fighting for it at the end of the season that would be decent progress.

That's all out the window now, I'm thrilled with what he's done for this team and this group of players, he seems to understand how to get them playing their best or at least understands what components are necessary (Dr. Peters for instance) that help get them playing their best.

Imagine what he could do if the owners would actually give him a good amount of money to spend on the transfers that HE wants.

I always backed Brendan to do well from the moment he was appointed. His training is like learning a new language - it's very complex, a lot to take in, but if you keep at it time and time again, you become more fluent and it becomes second nature. If you look at the Barcelona model, this is what they do, as the training methods and tactics are instilled at youth level, so when young players eventually make it to the first team, they know their lines.

This is a great, because Brendan is also doing this with the youth team. The chances of youngsters slotting straight into our first team in a few years will be high. They won't need time to adapt to specific training methods as such.

Thus, teething problems were always inevitable so I was patient with the struggling start he had. But as paisleydalglish said, with no risk there is little reward - we lost at the start of last season so we would win this year. Brendan's no bullshitter, and he quite clearly stated this in his first press conference that 'it would take time'.

But I could never forsee a situation like this where teams are actually terrified of coming to Anfield. It's not just a fortress where we win, it's a fortress where we annihilate opposition. It's not a case for the opposition that 'we're going to struggle and most likely lose' like Stamford Bridge, it's a case of complete resignation and 'lets just try and not concede that many'.

Again, we have to refer ourselves back to that first press conference in June 2012. Rodgers said something along the lines of wanting to make it a living hell for teams coming to Anfield - and that is exactly what he has done. I remember being unsure of Rodgers prior to his appointment - I mean, teams like Liverpool shouldn't be hiring unproven managers? But only being born in 1990 and living on a diet of Premier League football where instant success is expected and clubs hire proven legends from other clubs, it was easy to feel like this. Perhaps if I was 30 years older I may have been more acceptant to the idea of hiring an unproven manager.

But it was that first press conference that made me believe and washed away any doubts. For me, being a natural pessimist, I have never - ever - been convinced by one man's credentials in one foul swoop like I was that day. He had a cool authority about him but not dictatorial, and he was supremely confident without any arrogance. Compare and contrast that with Roy Hodgson who - well, looked like a fish out of water ('I hope this doesn't damage my relationship with Ferguson' was his main concern that day). I am as excited - in fact more - that day he was appointed. I can only imagine what he would be able to do with a great side at his helm.

Good threat PD and I generally agree with all that you've said. Some aspects of our improvement are truly unbelievable.

I was already a huge Brendan Rodgers fan but never for an instant thought we would be talking about winning the league in his 2nd season here. I would be happy with far slower progress, but I'm pleased that he has surpassed all expectations.

Rodgers can "deliver football Liverpool fans grew up with"

Interesting video from when Rodgers was appointed - they discuss what the future may bring under Rodgers, and the two male pundits get it spot on. That woman pundit doesn't know what she's talking about (no, it's not because she's a woman) but she seems really arrogant and spiteful towards Liverpool.

Likewise, these guys seem to get it spot on.

"Getting Rodgers is a sign Liverpool have been left behind"

A stat that I had read which if correct sums up our development in the 18 months for me is we have scored more then that awesome 87/88 team and we still have 6 games to go!! We are now an awesome attacking force. And weve become it while developing young players along the way

Other then that the mere fact were in a title race after 3 years of 7th/8th is quite frankly astonishing

I was thinking on the way to work today, that at the start of the season you had offered top 3 and finishing 20 points above Utd, I would have taken it no questions.

For me a sign of the development and strides we have made is that while that would still be a great achievement given our position 12 months ago, we would be disappointed given the position we find ourselves in at this moment.  I think that this season has probably surpassed what pretty much all of us expected (not hoped for), and that is a testimony to the transformation that we have seen.

I am enjoying watching a group of players who are enjoying playing and playing together as a team.  We don't have a plan B, because there is a well founded belief in the team that plan A will be good enough to beat anyone.  We are at times relentless and ruthless in the way we play. 

Early last season a link was posted of Neville on Sky talking about Barca.  He was highlighting the way they played (in particular how the central defenders often took up full back positions when in possession).  They gave away a very soft goal in the first few minutes, but did not change anything they did - confident that they were good enough to win the game playing their way (and they did of course).  This is how I see us at the moment.  We are confident that if we stick to our way of playing we are good enough to beat anyone - the only real changes we are making is a slight tinkering to the formation, but we still play the same way.

The progress is so good that I think we would currently give anyone in Europe a real game, and I am sure that nobody will relish playing us next season - something I did not think I would be saying at the start of the season.