Ayre: Rodgers had final say on transfers – Rodgers: No I didn’t!

Brendan Rodgers claims he did not have the final say on transfers when he was at Liverpool.

The former Reds’ boss was talking about the infamous transfer committee at Anfield as a guest on Sky Sports’ Goals on Sunday yesterday.

Rodgers said: “The model at the club is slightly different whereby the ownership group have a way of working where they want to bring in young players, look to see them develop and move on. A lot of the players who came in were 24 or below.

“As a manager you’ll always be the figurehead but there’s a recruitment team in place – guys who’ll work very hard.

“It was a group decision; it was certainly not something where I would have the sole final say. It’s difficult because you want a player in but if the player is not on the list, you’d have to take someone.”

Using the signing of Mario Balotelli as an example, Rodgers added: “We needed a player who could press at the top of the pitch; it wasn’t just a goalscorer we were after because Luis Suarez was giving us so much more than that.

“After a friendly against AC Milan, I was asked the question and I felt Mario wasn’t someone who suited the profile of what we were after. But come the end of the summer when we were struggling to get in the type of player we wanted, the ownership thought this was perhaps a player I could develop.

“He’s a wonderful talent, there’s no doubt about that; you see him on the training ground every day – tall, strong, great touch. They were thinking this is a £50m player we could maybe get for £16m.

“When the owners are wanting you to go down that route and there’s no other option, you give it a go.

“The huge blow was that we thought we were getting Alexis Sanchez and that he’d be a like-for-like replacement in terms of how he pressed the game, his aggression. We thought he’d be perfect, it’d be a smooth transition and Rickie Lambert would come in and be an option if we needed something else in the game.

“But we didn’t get Alexis Sanchez and, bless Rickie, there was a lot of pressure on him when really that wasn’t the plan. So we had to bring in someone, Mario has big talent – I wasn’t thinking I’d be any different in terms of managers who’ve had issues with him – and at that moment, we didn’t really have another option.

“It was something that didn’t quite work for us and it cost us.”

Rodgers’ comments contradict everything he said while employed by the Reds. That doesn’t mean he’s telling porkies though, it just suggests he toed-the-line, something we continually stated during his time as manager, as he didn’t have the CV to stand up to the owners and challenge them.

After he’d been given the bullet by Liverpool owners, Fenway Sports Group (FSG), chief executive Ian Ayre claimed Rodgers had the final say on every signing made during his tenure (see below).

Who do you believe. Rodgers or Ayre? Let us know in the comments section below. Personally we don’t care, we just oppose the whole set-up and policies imposed by FSG which have seen Liverpool plummet down the UEFA rankings since they took control in October 2010.

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“It was February 2009 and Yossi Benayoun’s header had just stunned Real Madrid in Bernabeu to write another page in Liverpool’s rich European history. Two days later, Uefa unveiled its latest club rankings. Resplendent at the summit, peering down on their rivals for the first time since 1985, sat Liverpool. Today Liverpool are ranked 55th, languishing just a place above PAOK of Greece,” – Paul Joyce, 16 Sep 2015

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RELATED QUOTES:

“Brendan had the final say on all the players we signed,” – Ian Ayre, Liverpool CEO, 3rd Nov 2015

“I can categorically tell you Mario Balotelli will not be at Liverpool,” – Brendan Rodgers, 3rd Aug 2014

“We will never bring in a  player here who the manager doesn’t want in. That’s a great credit to the owners and the other people at the club,” – Brendan Rodgers, 28 May 2014

“There is absolutely no way a player will come in here if I don’t want him. I will always be the first person it comes to … it’s very clear that anyone we sign will be because I want him here,” – Brendan Rodgers, 2 May 2013

“I think that director of football role in a lot of cases almost creates as many problems as it solves because people try to judge where the power base is with that role. Who’s picking the team? Who’s deciding which players? What we actually have is probably three or four people who all are involved in that role,” – Ian Ayre, Liverpool CEO, 18th Apr 2013

“It’s not signing by Committee, it’s an analysis by Committee. It’s a whole range of people bringing together a whole range of skill sets that go and find and identify and obviously with Brendan having a big input to that. But certainly not a structure where we would force any player on the manager,” – Ian Ayre, Liverpool CEO, 1st June 2012