Rodgers reborn: Leicester boss proves he can reinvent team

Football management is a funny old game – a winning run could see you heralded is a potential club legend, and just five games later you could be out on your ear without a soft landing into a similar-sized club. It often works in cycles, increasingly so in the last few years – the longevity exhibited by Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger are seldom seen in the modern game.

There have been times in the last 12 months where Brendan Rodgers’ cycle at Leicester City appeared to be in its dying phases, and it takes an adaptable and pragmatic manager to not only understand that, but also to accept it and adapt to make sure this isn’t the case for too long. For what it’s worth, when the Newcastle takeover by the Saudi PIF was finalised, I suggested it would be the right thing for all three parties if Rodgers headed up to the North East.

That of course couldn’t have been more of an inaccurate assessment, given the Northern Irishman pulled the Foxes out of the doom and gloom of inconsistency into a very respectable 8th placed finish last year, not to mention the wonderful job Eddie Howe is doing with the Magpies. The other instance where the writing appeared to be on the wall for Rodgers’ Leicester tenure was after game number seven of this year, the humiliating 6-2 defeat at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.