It’s no secret that Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers initially spurned the advances of the Reds ownership group when they were looking for a replacement for Kenny Dalglish, but it’s just recently come to light that he was in fact talking to them prior to publicly distancing himself from the job and only walked away — albeit briefly — due to the competition for the spot.
“I was brought in and told that I was the number one choice for Liverpool. How it developed it seemed that the club were then speaking to a number of candidates for the job and at that point I then pulled out of it” he told Anfield FM in a recent interview.. “I didn’t want to be one of a number of people and if you remember back at that point I said I wasn’t interested in the job because I felt that if I was the one to be asked then I should have been the only one. A week or so later I got a call again and Swansea received a call to say that I was the candidate they wanted to speak to in reference to the job.”
The rest, as they say is history, but there could have very easily been another manager in the Reds hot-seat had Fenway Sports Group not been so impressed with the then Swansea boss. “For me it wasn’t just about ‘any’ club I needed to go to somewhere that I felt I could be for a number of years as long as I was successful,” said the Northern Irishman before going on the explain the infamous document that outlined his vision for the club. “The story behind the document was simple – I took it with me to the owners, not the first meeting, but in one of the later meetings, once we had spoken about the vision of the club. I gave them the document purely on the basis of how I would work from the academy right the way to the first team.”
This method of ground up training and growth was quickly implemented following his appointment with Rodgers vision for the club stretching throughout every facet of football activity. “Even though I may not myself get the benefits for that, depending how long I was going to be here, but I still wanted to be able to influence a philosophy at the club and I felt the club was in need of that” continued the boss. “It allowed the people here to understand how I would work and I thought it was a short cut to save time, money and effort. It was difficult at the beginning because it was radical change but it started to evolve and develop and now everyone is now in tune with how I want the club to run.”
