The cycle of bad news continues from Anfield
Their Champions League hopes practically extinguished, the end of Liverpool’s season looks set to be a rancorous one if the latest reports of dressing-room unrest are to be believed.
The Daily Mirror have revealed that Rodgers held a stormy meeting at the club’s training facility yesterday following the 4-1 hammering at Arsenal that all but ended Liverpool’s interest in a top-four finish to the Premier League season.
The Irishman was highly critical of his side’s performance at the Emirates and ‘accused several players of not playing for him’, provoking an angry response from several important players.
With uncertainty over the contract status of Raheem Sterling and club-captain-in-waiting Jordan Henderson, Martin Skrtel and Emre Can suspended and Daniel Sturridge’s ongoing fitness problems, tomorrow’s night’s FA Cup replay at Blackburn – which represents Liverpool’s last chance of success this term – comes at the worst possible time for Rodgers, who is now ‘facing the biggest test of his reign at Anfield’.
UPDATE: Rodgers has denied having any ‘crisis’ meetings, insisting there was nothing unusual about his discussions with his squad following Saturday’s defeat.
At a press conference ahead of tomorrow’s FA Cup quarter-final replay, Rodgers said: ‘I’ve heard that this morning. It is something you can’t help. We have lots of meetings here in terms of analysing performance and it was no different to a whole host of meetings we have all year.
‘Those meetings helped us recover from the bad start we had to win 10 games out of 13. It was nothing really; it was just analysing performance, analysing where we are at and then feeding forward to the players. It is just unfortunate something else was made up.’
Rodgers also insisted his side would not be giving up the fight for a top-four finish, despite appearing to concede that was beyond them after finding themselves seven points behind fourth-placed Manchester City, who play Crystal Palace tonight.
‘After the game I gave an answer which was logical, mathematics really, in terms of the difficulty we have but it is not certainly a mindset,’ Rodgers said. ‘Our attitude is to go right to the end. It is going to be difficult for us if the teams above us don’t drop points. We would have to win our seven games but it is certainly something we will go into in order to do that.’
