Brendan Rodgers is sleeping with a suitcase under his bed right now.
It feels like this is the end game for Leicester City’s manager as he grapples with a disastrously underperforming squad sitting in bottom place in the Premier League.
One point from seven games and 22 goals conceded means Rodgers probably isn’t getting much kip at night anyway. There are even suggestions City’s owners will use the crowd reaction at the next home game as a barometer to influence their final decision.
So Rodgers’ future hinges on getting a thumbs up or thumbs down from the punters at the King Power Stadium, thereby catapulting 21st century football right back to the days of Rome’s ruthless Colosseum.
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When a team is massively underperforming there is only ever one victim - the coach. Whether that’s fair or not is irrelevant. And there is something about Rodgers that makes him an easy sacking. He has managed one of the biggest clubs in world football, won major trophies and yet has still failed to win universal acknowledgement of his abilities.
Lauded by Jose Mourinho, derided by large sections of the Liverpool fanbase. You’ll find fans and critics in equal numbers. In short he is Marmite and the odds suggest he is toast come Monday week’s home game against Nottingham Forest.
But if anything, he has been unlucky in his two biggest jobs in English football - either arriving too late or too early to spend significant amounts of money. He can also hold his head up high against his peers in the increasingly precarious world of Premier League management.
Rodgers has spent more than three and a half years in his current job at Leicester. That puts him in the top five longest serving coaches. Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola, Thomas Frank and Ralph Hasenhuttl are the only four from the top 20 teams in the land with more longevity.
Football management is a cyclical business with an ever-tightening circle from appointment to getting the bullet. Simply surviving is an achievement in itself.
During this time, Rodgers has been under enormous pressure to follow in the footsteps of an astonishing Premier League title win in 2016 under Claudio Ranieri. It was a success so outrageous that Hollywood thought about making a movie. Whatever is said in public there is an understandable demand for a sequel even though Leicester’s budget is being squeezed.
The scientists in football can point to formations and tactics for winning games. The realists in the game agree it is money and players that succeed over the long haul.
That is why Rodgers was able to win the FA Cup for the first time in City’s history but despite giving it a bloody good go has not penetrated the top four since taking over in 2019.
The odds on him doing so now go way beyond the 5000/1 offered for the Foxes to win the league when they did six years ago.
City’s Thai owners are feeling the pinch from the Covid pandemic, like many others. England went into lockdown a year after Rodgers took over. At a club not built on lasting success, a sudden snapping shut of the purse hurts the fingers more.
In the summer, City sold centre-half Wesley Fofana for £70 million, replacing him with Wout Faes for less than a quarter of that from Reims, currently 17th in the French first division.
Even as manager of Liverpool, Rodgers was on a relatively tight financial rein yet managed to finish second and just two points behind super-rich Manchester City. There was no world record fee for a defender of Virgil van Dijk’s class. No £65 million strikers in the mould of Darwin Nunez; still to prove he can take over from where Sadio Mane left off - a player signed by Rodgers for barely half that sum.
But there was a free transfer for James Milner and £29m spent on Roberto Firmino, still pivotal to all Liverpool’s triumphs under Jurgen Klopp, now blessed with a £67m goalkeeper in his squad.
Leicester lost their iconic keeper and captain Kasper Schmeichel in the summer. It’s a miracle they held onto James Maddison and Youri Tielemans but rest assured those two will be getting itchy feet.
With big clubs hovering over the remaining good players, financial worries abounding and a manager approaching his ‘best before’ date there is usually only one outcome.
And if City’s owners are so weak they are letting the fans have the final say on Rodgers’ future, they deserve all they get.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject to Change
