Published: Monday, 8th June, 2009 4:10pm

Rodgers launches Royal revolution

by Anthony Smith

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NEW Royals boss Brendan Rodgers has ordered a revolutionary shake-up of the club"s training methods.

The 36-year-old Northern Irishman wasted little time stamping his personal mark on the Royals squad after taking his place in the Madejski Stadium hotseat last Friday.

Reading paid Watford up to £1 million for Rodgers and his trio of backroom staff, Frank Lampard snr, Dean Austin and Karl Halabi who are set to follow him this week.

And it seems Rodgers is determined to bring in his own coaching ideas and move away from the training methods preferred by ex-boss Steve Coppell who departed at the end of last season along with coaches Kevin Dillon and Wally Downes.

'I"m really looking forward to the first day of pre-season,' explained Rodgers. 'I am not a traditional coach so there won"t be a lot of time spent in the gym or running around the pitch.

'There"s a saying that you don"t buy a piano and run around it - you play it and get used to it. It"s the same from a football aspect.

'So I"m really looking forward to bringing in a non-traditional way of working. It"s a method that"s worked for many top players and it worked at Watford. It should be something the players really enjoy.'

Reading are due to return to pre-season training on July 6 and Rodgers is determined to get them playing attractive football again.

One of the biggest criticisms during the latter stages of Coppell"s six-year reign was that the team reverted to desperate, long-ball tactics far too often. But it seems the chances of that being repeated under Rodgers are remote.

He managed to improve Watford"s style and keep them up during his brief seven-month stint at Vicarage Road.

'I"m a different tactician,' he declared. 'When I came into the Championship I was told you cannot play football.

'I could understand that because some games I was involved in were more like rugby than football. The ball just got kicked all over the place and I felt sorry sometimes for the supporters.

'But you"ve seen you can play football in this league and get your players to express themselves and feel comfortable on the ball.

'The gameplan is always to win but for me the most important thing next to scoring goals is to keep the football. A lot of my work is based around that.

'I suppose it"s a mixture of the British and European models and I"m looking forward to putting that in place.'

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