Brendan Rodgers' three years as Liverpool manager reviewed

Brendan Rodgers was appointed Liverpool manager three years ago on Monday, but how has the Northern Irishman’s time in charge at Anfield gone?

Rodgers replaced previous boss Kenny Dalglish on June 1 2012 and with the club’s American owners Fenway Sports Group due on Merseyside this week to review how the Reds performed last season, we assess his three years at the helm…

PLAYERS BOUGHT

2012
Fabio Borini (Roma, £10.4m), Joe Allen (Swansea City, £15m), Oussama Assaidi (Heerenveen, £3m), Nuri Sahin (Real Madrid, loan), Samed Yesil (Bayer Leverkusen, £1m)

2013
Daniel Sturridge (Chelsea, £12m), Philippe Coutinho (Inter Milan, £8.5m), Luis Alberto (Sevilla, £6.8m), Iago Aspas (Celta Vigo, £7m), Simon Mignolet (Sunderland, £9m), Kolo Toure (free), Aly Cissokho (Valencia, loan), Mamadou Sakho (Paris Saint-Germain, £15m), Tiago Ilori (Sporting Lisbon, £7m), Victor Moses (Chelsea, loan)

2014
Rickie Lambert (Southampton, £4.5m), Adam Lallana (Southampton, £25m), Emre Can (Bayer Leverkusen, £9.75m), Lazar Markovic (Benfica, £19.8m), Dejan Lovren (Southampton, £20m), Divick Origi (Lille, £9.8m), Javier Manquillo (Atletico Madrid, loan), Alberto Moreno (Sevilla, £12m), Mario Balotelli (AC Milan, £16m)

*24 players bought for £211.55m

Hits

Philippe Coutinho

Coutinho has been a revelation since signing from Inter Milan for just £8.5m in January 2013, his arrival a major coup for Rodgers just a few months into his tenure at Anfield.

In fact, the Brazilian is now considered to be the club’s most important player after another impressive campaign on Merseyside, culminating in the 22-year-old being voted into the PFA Team of the Year and winning the Reds’ Player of the Year award.

Daniel Sturridge

Despite Sturridge’s ongoing struggles with injury since joining Liverpool from Chelsea in January 2013, the striker has still managed to score an impressive 41 goals in just 67 matches in all competitions for the club.

And given the England international cost the Reds only £12m, his purchase still represents a brilliant piece of transfer business by Rodgers.

Misses

Mario Balotelli

Whether Balotelli’s signing was Rodgers’s idea or not, the controversial forward has nonetheless proved to be an unmitigated disaster since arriving at Anfield from AC Milan in August for £16m.

And with just one Premier League goal to his name all season long, the Italian could now be on his way out of the club less than a year after joining the Reds, although his agent Mino Raiola insists Balotelli will stay.

Dejan Lovren

From the moment last August when Rodgers claimed Lovren was “what I've been looking for since Jamie Carragher left”, question marks have been raised about the wisdom of spending £20m to lure the centre-back from Southampton.

Lovren’s forgettable debut campaign at Anfield was best summed up when the Croatian skied his spot-kick over the bar to hand Besiktas victory in a penalty shootout in their Europa League round-of-32 tie in Istanbul last February.

PLAYERS SOLD

2012
Fabio Aurelio (free), David Amoo (free), Stephen Darby (free), Dirk Kuyt (Fenerbahce, £1m), Maxi Rodriguez (Newell's Old Boys, undisclosed), Alberto Aquilani (Fiorentina, £7m), Craig Bellamy (Cardiff City, undisclosed), Charlie Adam (Stoke City, 5m), Nathan Eccleston (Blackpool, unknown)

2013
Joe Cole (West Ham United, free), Nuri Sahin (Real Madrid, end of loan), Alexander Doni (Botafogo, free), Peter Gulacsi (Red Bull Salzburg, free), Andy Carroll (West Ham United, £15m), Jonjo Shelvey (Swansea City, £6m), Jay Spearing (Bolton Wanderers, £1.7m), Stewart Downing (West Ham United, £6m), Dani Pacheco (Alcorcon, free)

2014
Adam Morgan (Yeovil Town, undisclosed), Luis Suarez (Barcelona, £75m), Conor Coady (Huddersfield Town, £500,000), Pepe Reina (Bayern Munich, £2m), Martin Kelly (Crystal Palace, £1.5m), Kristoffer Peterson (Utrecht, undisclosed), Jack Robinson (Queens Park Rangers, £1m), Daniel Agger (Brondby, £3m)

2015
Oussama Assaidi (Al Ahli, £4.7m), Suso (AC Milan, undisclosed)

*28 players sold for £129.4m

Good business

Luis Suarez

With Suarez again making the wrong kind of headlines after biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini at last summer’s World Cup, and having also expressed his desire to leave Anfield, Rodgers and the club did well to recoup £75m for a player Liverpool had bought for £22.8m in January 2011.

However, the problems arose when the Northern Irishman then came to spending that money trying to replace the brilliant forward.

Bad business

Daniel Agger

Rodgers and Agger fell out during the 2013/14 season, despite the Liverpool manager making the Dane the club’s vice-captain at the start of that campaign.

As a result, Agger was sold back to Bronby last August for just £3m, despite the Reds having rejected big-money offers for the centre-back in the past, with the defence badly missing his presence at the back last season as they conceded 48 Premier League goals.

A TROPHYLESS THREE YEARS

Rodgers’s time in charge at Liverpool has been marked by his failure to win a trophy, making him the first Liverpool manager not to claim any silverware in his first three years at Anfield since the 1950s.

The closest Rodgers came to ending that particular drought was in the 2013/14 Premier League campaign, when the Reds needed seven points from their final three games to win the title before falling at the final hurdle.

Meanwhile, last season Liverpool made it to the semi-finals of both domestic cup competitions, only to once again fail to take that final step to glory.

PREMIER AMBITIONS

Rodgers has managed Liverpool in 114 Premier League matches since replacing Dalglish at Anfield on June 1 2012, winning 60 (52.65 per cent) and losing just 27 (23.7 per cent), the sixth and fifth best records respectively in the top flight in that time.

Under Rodgers’ stewardship the Reds have also scored 224 goals (1.96 goals per game) and conceded 141 (1.2 goals per game), ranking them second and seventh respectively in the league during that three-year period.

OVERALL NUMBERS

In total, Rodgers has led Liverpool in 155 games in all competitions during the last three years, being victorious in 80 of those fixtures to give the Northern Irishman an overall win percentage of 52 during his time at the helm.

Rodgers has also managed to oversee the scoring of 282 goals at a rate of 1.8 goals per match, making the last three years a goal-laden time at Anfield, especially given the Reds have also let in an alarming 188 goals during that time.

HIGH POINT

Liverpool 3-2 Manchester City (April 13 2014)

On the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, Rodgers guided Liverpool to a memorable win over Manchester City to move them within touching distance of a first league title since 1990.

The result took the Reds two points clear of Chelsea and seven ahead of City, who did still have two games in hand on their two rivals. But after this win, Liverpool knew that four victories in their last four matches would mean the Premier League was theirs.

The roar from the Kop to greet the full-time whistle that Sunday afternoon was as loud as anything Anfield had heard in a long time as Rodgers took in the applause of his adoring Liverpool faithful.

LOW POINT

Stoke City 6-1 Liverpool (May 24 2015)

Liverpool’s mauling at the Britannia Stadium on the final day of last season not only gave Steven Gerrard the worst possible send-off as captain, but it also placed huge question marks over Rodgers’s own future at Anfield.

The Reds had not conceded six times in the league since 1963, while it was also the first time ever they had let in five goals in the first half of a Premier League match.

And with Liverpool also finishing the season outside of the Champions League places, this defeat could not have come at a worse time for Rodgers ahead of his much-publicised meeting with FSG to review the last campaign.