Rodgers: The view from the press

Here is a selection of views and opinions that have been expressed about the Ulsterman over the past few days...

"Rodgers' gospel is a seductive one. Having spent more than 20 years on training pitches all over Europe since his playing career was ended by a chronic knee injury, he passionately believes that all footballers can be substantially improved through a combination of technical coaching and shrewd man-management, particularly a group he considers to have been unfairly aligned: home grown English players. Rodgers treats the disciplines of coaching and man-management with equal importance and is excelling at both. Rodgers has the Mourinho-like knack of raising confidence to improve performance - Swansea players rave about how he made them feel 'a million dollars'. 
Matt Hughes, The Times

"Rodgers put together a team who played the game in a way that patrons of the Camp Nou would recognise, pursuing an ideal of composed interplay that maximised the potential of a set of players who arrived in the top flight without fanfare but enhanced their reputations individually and collectively. On their day, no midfield in England provided more of a treat for the eye than the one consisting of Leon Britton, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Joe Allen. Up front the combination of Nathan Dyer, Danny Graham and Scott Sinclair posed a threat to the very best defences. The team drew praise from all quarters, including other managers, for the purity of their football."
Richard Williams, The Guardian

"For 20 years, Brendan Rodgers has been preparing for the moment when he is appointed by one of the biggest clubs in Europe. Liverpool's new manager is leading edge, one of Britain's brightest young coaches with the confidence to match the qualifications. This is his time. At 39, he is all about forward thinking and flexibility, conveying top-class coaching habits that he has picked up on a fascinating journey all over the continent. Soon Steven Gerrard, Martin Skrtel and Luis Suarez will be skimming the ball across the surface, feeding off his enthusiasm and enjoying the opportunity to express themselves. This will be the Anfield way from now on, trading on Rodgers' tactial acumen and taking the culture of passing and possession football to another level. In a typical match Barcelona make around 1,000 passes and Liverpool players will be expected to dominate their opponents by producing similar statistics."
Neil Ashton, Daily Mail

"A re-education is required, building blocks put in place and the appointment of one of the best up-and-coming British managers to oversee that process makes sense. Rodgers' footballing values, based on possession, passing and moving, fit neatly with the Liverpool of old. Back in the Sixties when black and white TVs were the order of the day, there was once a banner on The Kop which screamed: "For those of you watching at home, Liverpool are the ones with the ball."
Paul Joyce, Daily Express

"In the simplest terms, Rodgers wants his team to get hold of the ball as quickly as possible and then keep it. I spent a couple of hours in his office at the Liberty Stadium last season when he talked me through the logic behind his tactics, derived from various sources but especially inflected with the Barcelona way. When going forward, the best way to move the ball up the field is to create angles of diagonal pass. If you have two banks of four across defence and midfield there are no diagonal passes on. The system needs to be more fluid. So Rodgers seeks to create as many 'lines' across the field as possible. In his system you have a minimum of seven lines. He wants his goalkeeper to be part of the play, then the centre-backs, then what he calls the 'controller' (a deep-lying playmaker), then the full-backs pushed on, the two attacking midfielders, the wingers and then the centre-forward. That allows you to draw seven horizontal lines across the pitch. Through coaching, Rodgers ensures that every player knows his place in this system. When a player receives the ball he should always have at least two options for an 'out' pass. He gives the players confidence to make those passes by taking the blame on himself when it does not come off."
Duncan White, The Telegraph

"A fiercely confident individual, with a refreshing and relentless thirst for learning and self-improvement - he spent four days studying the work of Spanish national coach Vicente Del Bosque earlier this month, for example - Rodgers has earned plenty of admirers during two hugely successful seasons with Swansea. His coaching style, based loosely on the model of the Spanish national team but truly refined at Swansea, where he found a chairman willing to back him and supporters willing to support him, is exciting, dynamic, progressive. His teams run hard, they pass the ball with confidence and imagination, they defend from the front and attack from the back. They also know how to set, and up, the tempo in games, especially on home soil."
Neil Jones, Liverpool Echo