Before being fired on Sunday, the former manager of Liverpool oversaw a period of feast and famine at the King Power Stadium.
Brendan Rodgers will be remembered as one of Leicester City’s greatest managers in history. The statement that surfaced after the former Liverpool manager’s firing on Sunday made clear how warmly the club’s owners felt about him.
The team’s accomplishments under Brendan’s leadership speak for themselves; we had some of our best footballing moments under his direction and will always be appreciative of him and his staff for the heights they assisted us in achieving on the field, it said.
“Off the field, Brendan embraced the club’s ethos and contributed to creating a great atmosphere for development, especially during the transfer to Seagrave. He also showed strong leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, which presented an unprecedented challenge. He will go down in Leicester City history.
Rodgers was perhaps given too much time to turn things around this season because of his prior success, and the Foxes have had a very miserable season.
With the club in full crisis mode, he departs. Leicester is stuck in the relegation zone following their loss to Crystal Palace on Saturday, and James Maddison and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall have even responded to the team’s supporters online.
Although Rodgers is no longer responsible for fixing these problems, his team’s dismal season-long performance raises severe doubts about his future as a manager.
In February 2019, Rodgers took over for the depressing Claude Puel. Back then, the Premier League appeared drastically differently. In the Chelsea bench, Maurizio Sarri was smoking a cigarette, Mauricio Pochettino was still in charge at Tottenham, and Huddersfield Town was still loitering.
Leicester appeared to be without direction when he took charge; they were as close to the drop zone as they were to seventh place. The team desperately needed an energy boost because the players were sick with Puel’s man management and safety-first strategies.
By the time the season came to an end, Rodgers had brought them to within seven points of the top spots in Europe.
However, the next season was when things really took off. Leicester sprinted into Champions League contention during the first half of the season, famously thrashing Southampton 9-0 en route to a mid-campaign points tally of 39 – good enough for second place behind a dominant Liverpool. This was aided by the permanent arrival of Youri Tielemans, the cunning of Maddison, a rock-solid defense, and a revitalized Jamie Vardy.
Rodgers had Leicester playing the best football of their modern period, and there was more triumph to come, even if they would heartbreakingly miss out of the top four on the final day of the season.
The next season, Leicester was once again in with a chance of making the Champions League cut on the penultimate day of the regular season, despite the added stress of playing on Thursday nights. The fact that they won the FA Cup, a trophy that had eluded the Foxes since their founding in 1884, substantially lessened the blow of their second defeat.
Rodgers’ accomplishments were nothing short of amazing in a league where the ‘Big Six’ dominate in terms of spending power.
The ability of Rodgers to develop players and adjust to the departures of important players was one of the major themes of his enormous first two full seasons as the head coach.
Prior to finishing fifth, Leicester traded Harry Maguire to Manchester United for a record-breaking price in the summer. Prior to his departure, Maguire was practically always present, but Rodgers found the perfect solution by elevating Caglar Soyuncu, who was then a bit player, to the first team.
Maguire was having trouble by the end of that season, whereas Soyuncu had been named to the PFA Team of the Year.
Depending on where other free agents Mauricio Pochettino and Julian Nagelsmann end up, Tottenham could do much worse than to turn to him in the summer. Additionally, there is the Chelsea connection, and Todd Boehly and company may consider Rodgers as Graham Potter’s replacement due to his track record of developing young players to the top of their games.
But Rodgers could prefer waiting a few months. It’s been a challenging season, and in reality, he lost his managerial zeal a while ago.
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