Brendan Rodgers
What Should Happen to the current season
Brendan Rodgers said “They have been the best team in the country, (Liverpool) I think they deserve it. They have been first class. the level of consistency and the level they’ve played at, it’d be an absolute crying shame if they weren’t awarded the title. They have got two games to win it, if we get back playing I’m sure they will do that. I’ve no doubt they deserve it. It’s just a real, real shame that if they do get the title that they can’t share it with the supporters how you normally would because they’ve waited so long.”
On Managing Liverpool
Brendan Rodgers said “It’s interesting because in terms of, especially for my journey, I arrived at 39 as a manager and straight away the spotlight is huge, At the time I went in there Liverpool had just finished eighth in the Premier League, they’d been out the Champions League for five seasons. There was a real big hope that we could build something that we could get the club back into the Champions League again. And if you’re one of the big clubs and you’re out the Champions League for that length of time, of course your budget starts to be affected and that’s how it was. When I arrived we had to cut the budget and some of the players had to be moved on. The spotlight is huge. Wherever you travel around the world,it’s an iconic club. I never forget going to Melbourne in pre-season and going to the MCG and it was phenomenal. 96,000 supporters there and every one of them was Liverpool. It was incredible.Incredible club with big pressure. You have to win every game.”
On the Gerrard Slip and match against Crystal Palace
Brendan Rodgers said “We went into that game on an 11-game winning run, Confidence was high and for 70 minutes of that game we’d played very well. We just couldn’t get the goal. It wasn’t a case of chasing it. It was the type of team we were. We were a front foot team. We were aggressive, that was our strength.If you look at that season it was the first time in the top flight that Liverpool had scored over 100 goals. So that’s what gave us the opportunity. It was really unfortunate what happened with Steven [a slip allowed Demba Ba to score the opening goal] just before half-time. And then probably as the game went on from 70 minutes onwards we just needed a goal, we could have drawn the game, but of course with that anxiety, the team was very young and we couldn’t make the breakthrough. The Crystal Palace game was, with all due respect, irrelevant. The Chelsea game made the difference. Going into the Palace game, we played well in the first half but I sensed we were trying to chase the goals because now it was all going to be about goal difference. I mentioned at half-time, we win this game, forget about chasing goals, win the game. Then very quickly in the second half it went two nil then three nil, and you just sensed the momentum of the team was looking to get the goals. We were really comfortable and played well, then the last 10 minutes was crazy. But that wasn’t the game that cost us, it was the Chelsea game at home.”
