Stubborn Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers must stop alienating players

Brendan Rodgers is not only a brilliant tactician, but also an expert when it comes to public relations.

His knack of smoke-screening the club’s individual player concerns in favour of the team-centric focus is commendable, but his sheer lack of respect remains vivid, despite his best efforts to conceal it.

Mario Balotelli, Fabio Borini and Jose Enrique continue to train in isolation, and while it is evident that these three remain surplus to requirements, it is simply not the way to treat professional footballers.

At the moment, they are being treated like pigs ready for slaughter, as they will ultimately be sold or kept in isolation if there are no potential buyers. It’s an unsavoury way of handling the situation.

While Balotelli has done some swine-like things at the club during his time, Borini and Enrique are humble professionals that deserve more respect, as does Balotelli.

You may scream and shout all you like about how Balotelli is worthless, horrible and a blight on the club, but the reality is the club bought him for a ‘bargain’ price of £16, and now they don’t know what to do with him.

There are limited takers out there because of the mercurial Italian’s behaviour, but Liverpool are being made to look amateurish, like someone who bought something they didn’t need on sale and now regret it.

The reactions of Liverpool fans to these words are already ringing in my ear, but they’re words you need to here.

These three footballers deserve better, regardless of how poor they have been at the club, and just because the club cannot find any suitors for the three does not mean they should be shoved in the corner to await their fate.

Balotelli isn’t perfect, but Rodgers isn’t perfect either.

The Liverpool manager has a track record of alienating players, and while it is ultimately not down to him whether a club buys, sells or loans a player, the buck stops with him.

Daniel Agger – one of the club’s best defenders of the past decade. He too, had his problems with Rodgers alienating him, despite being vice-captain at the time.

He did not feature for the Anfield club on a regular basis during the 2013-14 season, purely because he and Rodgers did not see eye to eye.

As a result, the 29-year-old Dane moved back to Brondby in the summer for a fee of £3million and left with these parting words.

“Let me put it this way, the manager and me were perhaps not on the same page in all of last season. For most of last season at least,” Agger told Danish programme Onside.

“There was much between us, and for me it was just enough. I felt that he didn’t appreciate the things I could and contributed. When I feel that, then it’s time to move on.”

“Where me and him maybe went wrong from each other, was that I’m very direct. I say things as they are, and so I also expect that people are the same to me. Maybe it’s wrong to expect it sometimes.”

His exit deeply angered many Liverpool fans, as he was still clearly the club’s best defender at the time.

While Balotelli, Borini and Enrique aren’t on the same level as Agger, why isn’t there alienation inciting Liverpool fans?

Speculation is rift that Rodgers has also clashed with another central defender at the club, Mamadou Sakho.

Despite denying any hostility between the pair, it is clear to see that Rodgers and Sakho are also not on the same page.

After leaving Sakho out of the squad for Liverpool’s game against Everton at the end of September last season, the French defender took it upon himself to leave Anfield in a fit of rage. This is childish behaviour, and you can side with the Liverpool coaching staff who made Sakho earn the trust of the management, however, the 25-year-old did not start again for the Rodgers’ side until late December.

Three months is a long time to learn your lesson, especially when the Reds were crying out for a central defender of Sakho’s ilk to replace a hap-hazard Dejan Lovren during that nightmare first half of the campaign.

“It’s never a personal thing. You have to be honest with players and sometimes the modern player cannot deal with that but I think your behaviour and your actions will allow players to see that what you are doing is for the benefit of the team. This is how we play, this is how we work and if you can’t work this way, if you can’t be competitive or function then you won’t play,” Rodgers said at the time.

“I won’t disregard them. I think I’ve shown that millions of times. I am a developer and I want players to be the very best that they can be whether they’re 16 or whether they’re 32 or 33 and if they follow the philosophy and the methodology of how we work then they’ll improve.

“In terms of Sakho, maybe he was frustrated with himself at times but he’s got a really strong mentality and that’s what you need, a team that’s hard to beat with mental toughness and he’s a tough boy.”

[interaction id=”55d189d95323c30959d61e3a”]

Sakho, in the eyes of many Liverpool supporters, is the club’s number one defender who has a superb pass completion rate of 91% since August 2013 – only two defenders in the entire league have a better record.

Rodgers alienated Agger, did the same to Sakho for a while and now has continued with Balotelli, Borini and Enrique.

He has a track record, and whether Liverpool fans like it or not, alienation is not a quality of an astute man manager.

These players need to be sold or initiated back into the team environment, enough is enough – it cannot be good for the morale of the squad to see their work colleagues ostracised.

Rodgers may have a great technical grasp of the game, but beneath his delicately put dialogue lies a manager who has issues with man-management.

What are your thoughts? Let us know by dropping a comment below via our Facebook comment box. Make sure you follow us on Twitter @Outside90 and like us on Facebook.