If not the next Newcastle manager, then it's time to ask: The Brendan Rodgers Question - The Warm-Up
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Published 15/10/2021 at 07:45 GMT
Leicester's manager says he doesn't fancy the Newcastle job, but that doesn't stop us wondering: what's he going to do next? Tobin Heath gets her first for Arsenal as they demolish Hoffenheim, Raheem Sterling doesn't fancy being a substitute for much longer, and Ben Brereton Diaz does it AGAIN for Chile.
Brendan Rodgers, Leicester manager
Image credit: Getty Images
FRIDAY'S BIG STORIES
The Brendan Rodgers Question
The top end of English football has plenty of pressing questions to deal with at the moment. Who is going to win the Premier League? Are Brentford/Brighton/Everton going to keep this up? Where has the real Harry Kane gone?
But think about the medium term, and there aren't many questions more intriguing than this one: where is Brendan Rodgers going next?
We're thinking about this because the reports came yesterday that Rodgers, who currently seems settled and happy at Leicester, is not interested in the Newcastle job. Whether this is a firm "no, never", or merely professional courtesy extended towards both Steve Bruce and his current employers, only time and rumour and future shenanigans will tell.
But you could see it, right? Rodgers, a mere 48, is at a strange kind of career sweet-spot, highly experienced and genuinely successful but still somehow promising. He has medals, he has time served in front of fans that would quite like to win the league, he has a long and consistent record of making players better as individuals and as a team. He has philosophy. He has tactics. He has envelopes. Football club owners love that stuff.
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Brendan Rodgers, the next Manchester City boss after Pep Guardiola?
Image credit: Getty Images
And so you can see why moneyed-up Newcastle might fancy him to be the brain behind the money. Equally, you can see why he might be on Manchester City's list for the post-Guardiola future. You could see Arsenal or Spurs, if circumstances allow, and Rodgers turns out to be a masochist. And we're willing to bet (a very small amount of) money that the suits at both Liverpool and Manchester United have considered braving the waves of nostalgic/furious narrative that would come crashing down around them.
But you could also see each of the self-appointed Big Clubs looking elsewhere, spooked by Leicester's wobbly European performances or this knack for just missing the Champions League. Or Rodgers, who has after all been round the Big Club carousel once already, deciding that he's secure and trusted and supported where he is.
Imagine a boardroom. There is a whiteboard. There are names on the whiteboard. Some of them are underlined; most of them are crossed through. A few, and only a few, have question marks next to them. One of those names is RODGERS. By our guess, at this precise moment that whiteboard exists — well, they probably use Powerpoint, but go with it — at every single Big Club in England, and more than a few around Europe, and maybe even Wembley. But it also exists inside Rodgers, in the wood-panelled air-conditioned boardroom of the soul. Seven Brendan Rodgerses, sitting around a big table, nodding and smiling at the presentation from Brendan Rodgers. All the options open.
Oh, and the answers to the other questions are: Chelsea; yes/yes/it's Everton; and he was kidnapped over the summer by persons unknown in an elaborate insurance scam that immediately went wrong. That's Charlie Kane out there. He's doing his best, bless him.
Bouncebackability
What do you do, if you lose your opening Champions League game 4-1 to the defending champions? The Warm-Up's answer probably goes something like: retire immediately, change name, adopt large fake beard, move to… well, we're not telling. That would defeat the point.
Arsenal's women's team, however, are made of stronger stuff. Last night at Meadow Park they harassed, disrupted and then dismissed Hoffenheim by four goals to no goals. That takes Arsenal to 19 goals from just six European matches, which is pretty good going. Tobin Heath got her first for the club, while Vivianne Miedama got her eleventy-millionth when scoring from roughly zero yards out.
And their record in the league — 19 in five — is even better. Fold in the 2020-21 FA Cup, which is being finished on a delay, and the club as a whole have 43 goals this season. It's the middle of October. Obviously, head coach Jonas Eidevall reckons his team are getting better with every game —
I think it was our strongest game this season so far, to have a passing game in our own half and their half that was the best we have done this so far this season. We had very aggressive counter pressing too, very pleased with the performance tonight.
— because that's what head coaches always say. But that reverse fixture against Barcelona, early in December, is looking pretty intriguing from this distance. And there's got to be an outside chance that Arsenal have a century by then.
Sterling Manoeuvres
The days are getting shorter and colder, the leaves are yellowing and browning and falling to the ground, and the sun is but a rumour, a memory, a distant promise. And so it's time to look ahead to that great winter tradition that we all love and loathe in equal parts. We speak, of course, of the January transfer window.
It comes around earlier every year, right? Mid-October, and already you can hear the traditional songs all over the place. Here's Raheem Sterling, currently underused at Manchester City, making noises about his future.
If there was the opportunity to go somewhere else, I would be open to it," Sterling, 26, said. At this moment in time, football is the most important thing to me. I have always had something that maybe one day I would love to play abroad and see how I meet that challenge."
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'I'd love to play abroad' - Sterling opens up about future
Obviously "abroad" here is footballer-speak for "one of about five or six clubs, you know the ones, they can afford my wages and they play in the Champions League". But the idea of issuing a come and get me plea to literally the whole world is an enjoyable one.
We're guessing City won't be up for selling him until next summer at the earliest, and Ferran Torres' injury means that Sterling should get a little more football in the coming weeks. But between the arrival of Jack Grealish, the constant rumours of a new striker next summer, and the emergence of Phil Foden and Torres, that front line is getting awfully crowded. We're detecting high saga potential here.
IN OTHER NEWS
Football's most heart-warming story continued last night, as Ben Brereton Diaz scored his third goal for Chile. Look at the crowd. Look at the players. Look at the chap in the sensible brown anorak and furry hood. What a wonderful time they're all having.
RETRO CORNER
Happy birthday to Vítor Baía, perhaps the only serious footballer ever to get away with squad number 99. 10 league titles with Porto, another one with Barcelona, and all three major European tournaments. Oh, and 80 caps for Portugal. He really got some distance on those saves, didn't he?
HAT TIP
Did you know that Brentford, lovely Brentford, can-do-no-wrong Brentford, scrapped their academy system in favour of a B team that plays friendlies all over the place against all sorts of opposition? Oh, you did. Well, the Warm-Up needed The Athletic's Jay Harris to bring us up to date.
What we have to understand is that maybe 20 per cent of our players will make it into the first-team squad. So we need to prepare the other 80 per cent for football, not Brentford football. If they go on loan, they will go to a different environment. If we haven’t fully prepared them to compete in those places, while trying to get them to achieve our style of play, then we may have failed them.
COMING UP
A potentially tricky game for PSG against fourth-placed Angers, a local derby between West Brom and Birmingham City, and Hoffenheim vs. 1. FC Köln. Take your pick, fill your boots.
And have a good weekend! Tom Adams will be here on Monday.
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