Meetings with Brendan Rodgers are usually unrelentingly positive. Liverpool’s manager does not dwell on negatives and, invariably, will always seek to find the best of a bad situation.
That was until Monday. As he sifted through the wreckage of a ruinous 3-2 FA Cup defeat by Oldham, a loss that has turned scrutiny’s spotlight back on Anfield, there was no mistaking the darkness of Rodgers’s mood.
His first season in charge at Anfield was never going to be straightforward but when days unfold like the calamitous one that Sunday became, no punches are pulled on Merseyside. The headline on the back of the Liverpool Echo succinctly described Liverpool’s efforts at Boundary Park — Shocking.
New manager or not, being left embarrassed in front of a televised audience means no sympathy is afforded and Rodgers has immersed himself sufficiently in Liverpool’s history to realise soft-soaping this issue would not wash.
Even so, it came as a surprise to hear how powerful his words were. The Northern Irishman is not a shouter or a bawler but his message was loud. He felt bitterly let down by those whom he had selected to start at Oldham and this was their wake-up call.
‘This was a tournament we focused on doing well in and I thought we were past this stage,’ said Rodgers. ‘To go out, having played how we did, was bitterly disappointing. It’s another competition we have failed to progress in.’
Rodgers is prepared to off-load those who don’t learn from what happened at Boundary Park and, despite spending more than £40million to reshape his squad, feels Liverpool still lack depth.
‘If they are bright, they will learn,’ he said. ‘If they don’t, they will find themselves playing in League One regretting the opportunity they have missed.’
To put things brutally, this is now, unquestionably, a worse season than the one just gone. On this day 12 months ago, for instance, Liverpool had awoken having just dumped Manchester United out of the FA Cup after just securing a trip to Wembley in the Carling Cup.
Those two games epitomised everything about the club, with big players performing when the stakes were at their highest, but now a common criticism of Liverpool is that they are unable to cope with the mental and physical demands that come from duelling with the best.
‘There are certain question marks (over Liverpool’s mentality) but I don’t think that’s just over this period,’ said Rodgers. ‘It’s something which goes beyond that. It’s something I am finding out about. That’s where this season is —it’s a great season for learning in terms of what we have here.’
But do his players actually care? To see the way certain members of the travelling squad acted in the aftermath of the defeat by Oldham — and, indeed, after other defeats this season — has suggested they are unaware of the responsibilities that come with playing for Liverpool.
Others, simply, have not been up to standard and a few of Rodgers’s signings have failed to deliver
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