Rodgers lost in the �Parked Bus�
Wene Owino | Friday May 9, 2014 13:26
The man is usually unflappable, but the furious way he joined the ‘Parked Bus’ mantra showed that he was wilting under pressure and he knew it. That is why he quickly recanted his ill-advised attack on his mentor, Jose Mourinho, for ‘parking two buses’ in the match.
The rant may have been an indication of his inexperience and failure to operate effectively in the pressure cooker of the dying days of a very tight title race.
If this was speculation, it was confirmed on Monday when a rampaging Liverpool wasted a comfortable 3-0 lead for a damaging 3-3 draw with Crystal Palace. Forget Mourinho’s two sedentary buses. Not even a Nissan March was near the pitch at Selhurst Park when Liverpool let in three goals in the last 11 minutes to virtually kiss the title goodbye. If Rodgers had parked even a Toyota Vitz when he was 3-0 up and won the match, he would have been perfectly in order because that is how a tactical coach with experience at this level would do it.
That a usually calm man like the Liverpool tactician cottoned onto the ‘Parked Bus’ lament after losing a match is an indication of the folly of the popular stationary coach as an explanation for defeat. The simple truth is that it is the work of a coach and his players to find a counter to the methods employed by opponents.
The sobbing about parked buses is nonsense and coaches who offer such explanations for failure are barking at the wrong tree. Take the case of Rodgers himself. If his ‘two parked bus’ claims are taken to their logical conclusion, then Mourinho’s tactical acumen gets buttressed again. According to Rodgers, the Special One parked two buses and won 2-0; meaning one bus one goal. That is a very fair return – a 100 percent profit plus the bonus of not conceding a goal.
But what about Rodgers? From the look of things in the Chelsea match, he ‘parked’ a rotten banana skin in front of his goal in the first half and a donkey cart in the second half. The results of such frugality were catastrophic. His inspirational skipper, Steven Gerard, slipped on the banana skin, fell down and left the ball to Demba Ba to score the first goal for Chelsea. The England captain is one of the steadiest human beings in a football pitch. Only a banana skin or some such stuff can undermine him in such a fashion at a decisive moment in a crucial match. This is how ‘two bus parked theories’ work.
Towards the end of the second half, Rodgers threw in a donkey cart, perhaps to collect the banana skin(s). But the cart failed to distract or block former Liverpool heart-throb, Fernando Torres and Willian from breaking loose from midfield to get Chelsea’s second.
Meanwhile, the Liverpool forwards were armed with vintage Second World War guns with empty cartridges. They fired blanks throughout the match with Gerard’s old canon gun pumping furiously but harmlessly from outside the box.
The ‘Parked Bus Theories’ can go on, but the reality is that without the complications of systems, diets and drills, football is a very simple game. The first route to success is to outscore the opponent. The second is to score and prevent the opponent from getting a goal or vice versa. The rest is luxury for connoisseurs to sample.
Coaches who weep about the ‘Parked Bus’ do not want to accept that they lacked imagination to overcome the obstacle.
Logically, a parked bus is the easiest to pass. Even a tortoise or a snail with a speed governor can do the job. Alternatively, the bus can always be towed or pushed away. Better, a through way can be found under the bus, through broken windows or any other space in the pitch not covered by the vehicle. Manchester United under the retired Sir Alex Ferguson was very good at dealing with parked buses in the English Premier League, especially in the dying minutes.
If Rodgers is honest with himself, he should know that his main mistake in the title race is failure to back his highly successfully sniper fire with heavy artillery. Even before the Chelsea and Crystal Palace setbacks, Liverpool’s title challenge was being undermined by goal-difference.