Realism Not Barcelona-ism

As a Liverpool fan, I am very interested and hopeful about our new man in the hot seat Brendan Rodgers. He's a relatively unproven manager, despite his time spent under the tutelage of Jose Mourino at Chelsea and at lower league clubs, and replaced the popular King Kenny. So he has plenty to prove. He seems to have landed the job after impressing the current US owners with his personality, plans for the future and philosophy. He's been billed in the press as a new breed of `tiki taki' manager, who understands, analyses and prepares with a modern information driven meticulousness; one that reveres Barcelona and Spain and the possesion football they play.

All sounds good, doesn't it?

But a few things worry me. One, I think branding Brendan and other like him as a sea-change in management is dangerous and naive. Things are clearly not as black and white as the press would have us believe. Roy Hodgson is reknowned for his detailed planning, attention to detail and high quality of training. We should not expect radical changes, however appealling this idea seems.

Secondly, will tiki-taki worki-worki when transfered into other contexts. This passing style of play has not been proven to be successful in England, where the game is generally more physical and the opposition teams play different tactics. Swansea had a fun first season back in the top flight but this was hardly a demonstration of the merits of this style over others.

Thirdly, I'm concerned that there may not be a plan-B in the Liverpool locker. Getting rid of Carrol, as now seems imminent, to my mind narrows the options available to the manager. Carrol can be a dangerous and effective player, whose style will worry particular sorts of opposition. He is clearly not a bad player and wants to prove himself at Liverpool. As the military say, always plan for the worst and expect these plans to not stand up to first contact. That is, have a plan B up your sleeve and a plan C and D, just in case.

Finally, I've read in several papers the following Rodgers quote

"...if you were better than your opponent with the ball, you have a 79 per cent chance of winning the game."

The blatant naivety in this statement worries me if he is making decision by it. Perhaps its is just a simple sound bite for the media hounds. To be so vague about the context and assumptions and so precise about the statistic renders this statement in isolation nonsense. It's a bit like a politician rolling out some cherry-picked statistic to back up his policy. I hope we get to hear an expanded version of this, at least to help me sleep at night.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not on Rodgers' back already. In fact, I'm really looking forward to the new season with a tempered optimism. It seems that people are prepared to give the new man some time to prove himself and his "new" philosophy too which I believe is the right thing to do. No-one talked about giving Roy time to implement his new philosophy but it seems like his days were numbered from the off. As a football fan its so easy to lurch from one extreme to the other. As Rodgers said himself, everyone makes mistakes. Lets just hope that one of them wasn't the choice of manager.