It became trendy on Merseyside to berate the Northern Irish manager for tactical inconsistency and an overreliance on possession-based football. However, underneath all this is a manager who still has solid potential, and the ability to make good in difficult situations.
Firstly, at Watford the Northern Irishman managed to turn around what looked destined to be relegation into a solid mid table finish, getting the best out of ball playing defenders such as Adrian Mariappa. Then after a difficult spell at Reading – he took over Roberto Martinez’s legacy at Swansea and made a team that could compete at the highest level.
Truth be told you can make many criticisms of the 42-year old, however, you can’t say he doesn’t lack ambition and the drive to make it happen. When he got the gig of his career at Liverpool he even received the Mourinho seal of approval; at the time of his appointment the Chelsea manager stated to the BBC that: “”I like everything in him. He is ambitious and does not see football very differently from my self. He is open, likes to learn and likes to communicate”.
What then followed was the exponentially paced rise and meteoric fall of the Merseyside club that came close to ending a 24-year title drought in 2014. His career is as fascinating as it is polarising, and whether he would be a success at Villa Park depends on which Rodgers turns up.
At Swansea he had the motto “through adversity to the stars”; it’s the kind of motto that is much needed Villa, because for all the passion and drive Tim Sherwood possesses, there seems to be a clinical disregard for any long term planning or process.
If he was to become Villa manager, that philosophy would be flipped on its head, when appointed at Liverpool and Swansea he talked about the “building process” and “working on the years to come”. For me personally, it’s something that would suit The Villans much better in comparison to our current manager.
Sherwood is a superb situational gaffer, give him a team in the relegation zone and he’ll get you out of it, give him a team in mid-table that should be challenging for a top four finish and he’ll do it. But this season so far has shown that when it comes to “what comes after?” Sherwood is lacking. Granted losing Delph and Benteke didn’t help, and the fact that he’s still very green to management means to many the jury is still out. But from what we’ve seen of him so far, Sherwood still has a long way to go before being called a top class manager.
And if we we’re Wigan Athletic from a few years ago, that sort of situational management would suit us fine. But we’re not, we’re a lot bigger than that and need a manager that can realize the potential in the squad and get it back to fighting for Champions League places (because it wasn’t all that long ago we were). That idea is another tick in the Rodgers column over Sherwood, what the former Liverpool manager proved with his time at Anfield, is that he can spot the players no one else can and make them stars like no one else would. Philippe Coutinho was seen by Italian writer Andrea Ramazzotti as a player who: “just showed flashes of his potential and I fear the way of playing in England, which can be very physical, will not suit him because he has a slight frame.” Within three years he became arguably Liverpool’s best player. The same can be said for Sturridge and even Mignolet to a lesser extent. And if he do the same at Aston Villa then the club could have a very bright future. Whilst some of his transfers at Liverpool were notoriously disastrous (Balotelli, Lovern, to name a few) the hits and their impact outweigh the misses.
But it’s not all rainbows and the promised land with the young-ish manager, and his time at Reading proved that, and is summed up very well by Hugh Fort when writing about Rodger’s eexit: “There was endless tippy-tappy short passing, carried out by players like Brian Howard who were not really equipped to play that way.” It’s easily the biggest concern when appointing a manager like Brendan Rodgers who is incredibly stubborn in terms of philosophy.
We do have some players who would be well equipped for a Rodgers style of play; Jordan Veretout and Ashley Westwood are two likely candidates to flourish under a possession game, but would Agbonlahor, or Sinclair, or Amavi who has been our best player so far this season? That quote in getReading could easily be in the Birmingham Mail come February if Rodgers was appointed, since he has a track record of struggling with players that don’t fit his style. Look at what happened to Jonjo Shelvy, Dirk Kuyt and Jose Enrique; all solid players at Liverpool under Kenny Dalglish, all shown the door by Rodgers. His first season at Liverpool was just about passable because of the talents of Luis Suarez, but with hindsight it showed a manager who just isn’t adaptable. And adaptability is what he would need to get the best out of this Villa team. It’s the exact opposite to Sherwood, who was parachuted into a precarious situation and made good on it with the players he had, didn’t come in with many philosophies and didn’t underpin his team on them. Rather he just saw what we were good at i.e hoofing it up to Benteke and see what happens and exploited it to Premier League survival. and whilst this season hasn’t started out great it would seem stupid a replace him with a manager who would only believe in the abilities half the squad, no matter how much potential he has.
If Rodgers is still availablecome the summer though and Villa’s season doesn’t or even only slightly gets back on track then it would be a solid appointment, and one that would see Villa thinking with the next few years in mind rather than the here and now. It would also be reasonable to expect him to still be available since he’s not a manager you appoint mid-way through a season; he would need a summer and a transfer kitty to mould a squad in his image; because it’s ok to have the idea of building “through adversity to the stars” but our current situation means we don’t have much of a toolkit.
