Kopping the Flak

Three games in and Brendan Rodgers is officially shite. That's the news I'm getting. It doesn't do to take an average team high enough up the table to require the services of a sherpa cos there'll always be some glory-hunting success-starved muppets waiting to dangle the BIG CLUB carrot in front of your ass's nose.

At present Roberto Martinez looks like the cleverest man in football. He's turned down Aston Villa - the benchmark for Big-Club-Mentality/Small-Club-Results - and that particular spitting cobra is being wrestled to the ground by an already ashen looking Paul Lambert. Martinez managed to duck the Koppite's job, and it seems clear he's dodged not so much a bullet as a fecking torpedo.

Let's remember what Rodgers took over for a minute - a squad of overpriced underperformers cobbled together in a spending spree that would have astonished Imelda Marcos. Rodgers couldn't give away Jordan Henderson and he must've tried.

Nevertheless Dalglish, whilst grunting through post-match interviews like a dangerously unmuzzled Highland Terrier, still managed to hustle Liverpool to two Cup Finals, win one, and almost claw back the other.

But their League form, coupled with King Kenny's preposterous handling of Suarez's racism - I still wonder what the hell Glen Johnson was doing in that Suarez t-shirt - meant that it was only right that Mr Incomprehensible should step aside.

Rodgers looked a good fit. He said the right things - as did Roy Hodgson - about this being a job that you couldn't turn down. He's got his way of playing and it's a style that had several TV pundits getting a tad Onanistic about it. (I'm sure Sam Allardyce watched it with incomprehension: 'Where's the big lad upfront, eh? And the other big lad upfront? And where's the big lad in midfield and the enormous big lads across the back? It's not football, that.)

Rodgers' second act was to pretty much bad mouth the lanky pony-tailed Geordie behemoth who almost rescued the FA Cup for them. Not only that but, fed by Stephen Gerrard's right boot - a foot second only to the right peg of the statue of St. Peter in the Vatican in terms of Scouse worship - Carroll leapt like a seaworld dolphin to power home a majestic header in Euro 2012 and it seemed that the lad had turned his world around.

Rodgers, though, didn't want him. There's me thinking that a bit of the old tika-taka (and saying that in a Liverpool accent leaves a helluva lot of phlegm on your keyboard) might be just that little bit of finesse that could make Andy an all-round international centre-forward but Brendan's not having it.

So the lad who had started to treat that £35 million millstone as merely a two-quid necklace from off the Bigg Market - a lad, moreover, that was on the cusp of acquiring utter cult status at Anfield - was on the A road to E Bay.

But you know what - who cares? He'll be bringing in a new man. A better man. An opportunist. A hanger off the back of the last man. A ruthless, incisive, lethal finisher. (Or he could bring in Borini.) But no, nowt. Clint Dempsey withdrew at the last minute and Rodgers has zilch on the bench to turn to. It's not smart, is it?

Nevertheless it is too early to judge. But for a horrid back pass from the Slovakian model for Munch's The Scream, Rodgers might already have the defeat of the champions under his belt. As it is the Baggies thumped 'em, with Suarez helping their cause with a display of wastefulness not matched since the laast time Prince William bought his wife a pie.

The home match with Arsenal must've promised much, especially given the Gunners' acquisition of another goal-shy duffer in Giroud. But Wenger's team were all over them, really. Diaby has spent his life doing second-grade impressions of Patrick Vieira but yesterday the lad was every bit of him with a bit of Yaya Toure thrown in to boot.

Cazorla is the main man, though. He's got that enviable feathery quality of a Silva or an Iniesta. He reminds me of someone (an emaciated Peter Kay?) but more to the point he cost the same as Joe Allen. Allen's a nice little player, typical of the Swansea team that we all delighted in patronising last year, but is he the hub around which Rodgers team can develop?

Of course we may be making too much of this lack of an out-and-out front man. Rodgers may be so enamoured of the Spanish style that he feels he doesn't need what we beer-swilling barflies used to call 'an old-fashioned number 9'.

Of course, Rodgers could always turn to the King of the Pinged Hamstring, the Traitorous Trafford Turncoat, the Free Agent everyone's talking about. Michael Owen? Welcomed back? With open arms or with firearms?

Whatever, there's a whiff of a manager already on the backfoot, a gaffer not entirely supported by just another bunch of detached American opportunistic owners. Henry has said he would never jeopardise the club's finances by sanctioning risky purchases but anyone who, having watched Fulham last season, wouldn't have coughed up £6 million for Clint Dempsey really doesn't know what they're talking about.

Meanwhile Dempsey has thrown himself into the wacky world of Villas-Boas (which translates as the House of Snakes, I believe). Martin Jol must be chewing through the filters of his Marlboro red-tops every time Tottenham is mentioned. Not content with sacking the bloke for doing a decent job, they've just nicked his midfield.

Thing is, I still think Villas-Boas has got the tougher job. It strikes me that no one really knows if he's up to much. His new job will be as demanding as the Chelsea one. He's got plenty of jostling egos at WHL. He may have better handwriting than the man he took over from (then again so does a rhesus monkey) but he doesn't come across as a bloke with a bedside manner. Plus he is getting full and frank support from Daniel Levy which is never a good sign.

There are new brooms everywhere but the ones who appear to making the best starts are the ones who haven't come bustling in with a radical agenda: Clarke, Laudrup, Hughton (notwithstanding the drubbing by the Swans) all seem to have given their teams a firm footing.

Footballers don't like change, apart from the loose variety that tumbles out of their Armani jeans of a Saturday night. It's one thing to get hold of a bunch of young 'uns and tell them this is the way it's going to be. It's another to convert some old lags.

In the long run, I reckon Rodgers will outlast AVB. But in their cases the long run might not even be the length of the home straight for a pissed-off Pistorius.