History will be kind to Brendan Rodgers - and he's no Roy Hodgson

Poor old Brendan Rodgers. The axe was inevitable, and having been ushered out of his Anfield office with extreme prejudice, his name goes on a very select and extremely unwelcome list, as only the second manager in Liverpool's post-Shankly history to fail to win a single trophy.

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It's a cruel fate. But history will be kind. The other man on that list, Roy Hodgson, proved himself a woefully inappropriate appointment in double-quick time, making no effort whatsoever to connect with the spirit of the club. His brief reign was a joyless melange of stultifying football and middle-management entitlement. There are no fond memories.

Rodgers, however, will leave a mark of which he can, in time, be proud. For all his faults and failings, he embraced the singular identity of Liverpool with a passion. He might have been occasionally gauche and verbose in his desperate (and ultimately futile) pursuit of Shanklyesque wisdom - the countless David Brent-isms for which he was mercilessly mocked - but there are worse crimes, and at least he was trying to make the people happy.

That alone should cut him a little slack when the historians get down to business. But of course there's also the small matter of the 2013-14 Premier League challenge, the 19th title that never was. Rodgers deserves a little more credit for this than he usually receives. He might have lucked out (in the sense the club's US owners will understand) in being blessed with the Suarez-Sturridge-Sterling attacking trio at the top of their game and Steven Gerrard enjoying an Indian summer at quarterback. But at least he was savvy enough to realise this quickly, park his tiki-taka pretentions, and set up the entire team to allow a blistering forward line to repeatedly do their thing on the break.

He was also smart enough to play to his squad's strengths: in other words, go balls out in attack, with nary a thought of defence. It was the only way that particular Liverpool team could ever possibly win the league, and even then it was the longest of long shots. Yet with a series of crazy results during the run-in - 5-1, 4-3, 3-0, 3-0, 6-3, 4-0, 3-2, 3-2 - Rodgers very nearly pulled off the greatest heist of all time.

And there's no point Rodgers - or indeed Gerrard - continuing to beat themselves up over the fateful Chelsea defeat. We will never know, of course, but even if Rodgers had changed tack on the back of a nine-game winning run and set up to defend staunchly for a draw, one suspects Jose Mourinho, the spoiler supreme, would have found a way through anyway. At least Rodgers and Liverpool were philosophically consistent to the bitter end.

There - philosophical consistency - is the rub. Rodgers' ultimate tragedy at Liverpool is that, somewhere in the wake of their spectacular near miss, he fatally lost his nerve. Luis Suarez leaving didn't help. Nor did Gerrard's legs going, or Sterling succumbing to wanderlust. But none of it explained the sudden jettisoning of the gung-ho joy which had nearly brought league success back to Anfield for the first time in a quarter of a century.

Such Keeganesque recklessness was arguably unsustainable, but Rodgers should have recognised that without it, he was nothing, just another mid-table manager with no discernible plan other than to get by. Not good enough for the gig he'd been booked for. So the time is right to leave: he'd run out of ideas, run out of road.

The experience should stand him in good stead, though, and the vast majority of Liverpool supporters will wish him well in the future, hoping once he regroups and gathers his thoughts, he finds a little of the success that ultimately eluded him at Anfield. No trophies, then. But one brilliant, bittersweet campaign ensures that, unlike Hodgson, there will be no hard feelings.