Football
Mike Whalley 9y

Luis Suarez says Liverpool in good hands under Brendan Rodgers

Former Liverpool striker Luis Suarez believes the club are in "very good hands" with manager Brendan Rodgers because of his tactical expertise.

Suarez scored 61 goals during his two seasons playing for Rodgers before moving to Barcelona for 75 million pounds in July.

The Uruguay international hit 31 of those goals in the Premier League last season -- sharing the European Golden Shoe with Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo -- as the Reds finished runners-up to Manchester City.

Liverpool have struggled to match that form so far this season, lying seventh in the league after winning four of their opening nine matches.

But Suarez -- in his new book "Crossing The Line," being serialised in the Guardian -- feels that he benefited from the way Rodgers set up his team to play.

The striker, 27, wrote: "Liverpool are in very good hands with Brendan Rodgers. The way he coached us during my time there was impressive and I am sure that the methods I enjoyed and found so effective will continue to be employed."

Suarez had been at Liverpool for 17 months when Rodgers arrived from Swansea to replace the sacked Kenny Dalglish in June 2012, and quickly felt as if the new manager would help his game.

"He wasn't a 'big-name' manager and I didn't know much about him, but Swansea City were a team that stood out because of their attractive style of play; they were different and especially impressive for a team that had only been promoted to the Premier League the season before," Suarez wrote.

"One of our last games of the 2011-12 season had been away at Swansea.

I'd bumped into Brendan in a corridor afterwards and he said in Spanish: 'You're an excellent player, congratulations.' I remember thinking: 'That's interesting, the Swansea manager speaks Spanish.'

"The first chat I had with him was at Melwood [Liverpool's training ground], just after he was confirmed as Liverpool's new manager. It wasn't a long conversation, just the typical 'welcome to the club' stuff, but he also wanted to talk to me because there had been suggestions there was a chance of me going to Juventus.

"Brendan spoke to me in Spanish and he told me to give him time, to give him a chance, and that I would like the way we were going to play. It would suit me.

"He said we would bring the ball out on the floor, keep possession and play attacking football. I remember him saying: 'It's not so hard to bring the ball out from the back on the floor, you know.'"

Suarez added: "From the start, it convinced me. It made sense. And although the results weren't good, I could see that we were playing better. I was excited.

"Brendan's philosophy was to play on the floor, keep possession of the ball and, if we lost it, to pressure to get it back. Don't panic, don't play so fast as we had the previous season, look for the spaces at the right time."

Liverpool failed to win any of their first five league matches after Rodgers took charge in 2012, a run that placed them in the early-season relegation zone.

But results improved as they lost only two of their final 16 league games to finish seventh, before mounting a title challenge last season.

Suarez wrote: "The new style suited me. Playing in England, where all the centre-backs are tall and strong, the long punt up the pitch is no good to me, but a quick ball to release me either side of them works well.

"Mostly, I need the ball on the floor and Brendan knew that and he also worked with me on the movements I could make to isolate defenders. He was confident that if I could take them on one-on-one, I would be likely to beat them.

"He was keen to play to my strengths and my style suited his. He knew that I'm a very instinctive player who plays on intuition."

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