Rodgers plays down crisis meeting

Posted Tuesday, April 07, 2015 by Foxsports.com

Liverpool manger Brendan Rodgers has denied a report in the Daily Mirror that he held a crisis meeting following his team's 4-1 loss to Arsenal on Saturday.

The Mirror claimed that Rodgers had accused several players of not giving it 100 per cent, which led to a number of them lashing out at him.

While Rodgers admitted to holding a meeting after the match, he made it clear that The Mirror had over-exaggerated what was said.

"We have lots of meetings here in terms of analysing performance, and it was no different to a whole host of meetings we've had throughout the year," he said during a press conference on Monday.

"It was those meetings that allowed us to recover from the bad start that we had and win 10 games out of 13.

"It was nothing, really. It was analysing performance and where we're at, and then feeding forward to the players what the objectives are, with seven games to go and an FA Cup quarterfinal. It was just unfortunate that something else was made of it."

Continuing on about the FA Cup, Rodgers admitted that his side haven't been at their best throughout the tournament.

But, he insisted all that will change when Liverpool face Blackburn Rovers in their FA Cup quarter-final replay on Wednesday.

"In the last four games we've played, we haven't created as much, and that's more about ourselves than anything the opposition have done," he said. "In the first Blackburn game and the matches following that, we probably haven't created as much. We want to focus on creating those chances. It's my job to find the solutions."

Rodgers also confirmed that striker Mario Balotelli will undergo a fitness test prior to the FA Cup match in order to see if he has sufficiently recovered from his knee injury.

"We'll see how Mario is this morning," he said.