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Last season was a tough one for Liverpool fans and their manager Brendan Rodgers. Losing Luis Suarez to Barcelona pretty much ended their title hopes before the league had even started.
However before Suarez left there was a sense of optimism around Anfield, throughout the 2013/2014 Premier League season as Liverpool had announced themselves as title contenders, with a great leader in Steven Gerrard and a clinical striker in Suarez, but sadly the loss to Chelsea at home and the 3-3 draw away to Crystal Palace resulted in them finishing second behind Manchester City by two points, this then lead to Liverpool losing their key man upfront Luis Suarez.
Replacing Suarez was never going to be easy, but was Mario Balotelli ever going to slot into the high pressing role that Suarez played? Unfortunately for Brendan Rodgers, this is not the only poor signing he has made in his three years at the club. Rodgers has spent roughly £216 million in his time at Anfield which is a phenomenal amount of money considering Liverpool are yet to win a trophy under his guidance. However looking at the signings that have been made it is no surprise as to why they haven’t been performing how many expect them to, with signings such as Lallana, Lovren and Sakho it is clear as to why Liverpool struggle to compete with the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City.
Clearly Brendan Rodgers must start making better decisions when it comes to making big money signings to ensure that he gets better results on the pitch. To add further difficulty to the Nothern Irishman’s job, Raheem Sterling has recently joined Manchester City which leaves a large gap in the Liverpool team and suggests that Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers are unable to keep hold of their best players.
This is clearly crunch time for Rodgers at Liverpool. Champions League football is essential and winning trophies is in the make up of Liverpool football club, so can he improve the squad sufficiently to get to the next level?
Some would say that he should bring in a big name signing, but in recent years it has been clear big name players are reluctant to join Liverpool and end up moving to one of their rivals, which leads to Liverpool spending over the odds for an average player, which simply has not worked.
The other option for Rodgers is to work with the players that he has and try to improve and develop them which will hopefully lead to them finding the winning formula to progress up the league table. Nevertheless, this could potentially be a long and very risky process which could lead to the team declining even further and putting his future as Liverpool manager at risk.
If Rodgers is to turn Liverpool around it is going to take a lot of hard work and time, however I fear he missed his best chance to win silverware when he had Luis Suarez and Steven Gerrard at the heart of the Liverpool team.
