The Irish manager felt defeat at Crystal Palace was going to bring an end to his Anfield tenure
Since Christmas, Liverpool have been in sensational form in the Premier League. Eight wins and two draws mean they are unbeaten since then and you have to go back to the 3-0 loss at Old Trafford in mid December for the club’s last pointless outing.
However, after a defeat in November, to Crystal Palace 3-1, Brendan Rodgers felt he might be about to get the heave-ho by the owners of the club.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Rodgers said: “After that Palace game I felt that it doesn’t matter how much support you have, the team is not functioning and it could not go on really.
“But I certainly wasn’t going to roll over and die. I will always fight for my life. I love it here and I want to be successful here.
“I understood the situation. My experience at Reading told me that. That’s what I learned from my sacking there. I went in to Reading with the full backing of the chairman, who was great to me, and I got 20 games.
“Even though it was a three-year project and I was the guy who knew the club more than anyone, I got the sack after 20 games. Funnily enough it had just started to pick up but they lost their patience.
“What I learned was it does not matter how much support you have in the boardroom, from the directors, the executives, you have to get results and you have to win.”
In early December rumours did circulate about his job being in danger so perhaps there was some truth to it. However, as we now know, things have turned around and Rodgers, as always, expanded on the point to explain how.
“I needed to make decisions that would allow us to get back to somewhere near what we had been and the transformation of the team, with everyone talking about the system and how dynamic it is, has been good to see. I should have done it earlier!
“We had no identity and everyone could see it. We just weren’t the team I had built over a couple of years. It was not working and of course that can eat away at you.
“I knew I had to do something radical because I had seen enough of the players to know we were not going to shape up and work as we had done for the previous couple of years with what we had got.”
