Dear Mr Rodgers

Dear Mr Rodgers,

I am writing to inform you that I used to like you. I liked your style, I liked what you try to achieve and I liked the amount of trash that you used to say, no matter how poorly we performed when you were here. It was funny, it was deluded and it was great to read. What you were trying to do was great and it's a shame that you didn't quite achieve it.

Before the game on Monday afternoon, I admired what you had done for Swansea and how you had done it. I loved that you had adapted their possession game into a passing and penetrating game, you had changed them from a team that played well but not scored enough into a team that was suddenly scoring goals for fun.

The fact that you managed to sign Scott Sinclair for a mere £1m is also a huge credit to your transfer window nous, because he is clearly a player capable of playing in the Premier League.  Your loan signing of Fabio Borini is also admirable, having only joined briefly he managed to maintain your form and continue pushing for an automatic promotion spot.

So why could you not do this at Reading? Why did you sign Mills and not play him? Loan in O'Dea and not play him? Sign Cummings and not give him a true chance? I don't get it. Why have you not done this at Swansea? Why have you made Swansea play this kind of football, when at Reading you just made Pearce and Ingimarsson pass it between them? I start to think that you were trying to relegate Reading... Surely not?

You've done worse than that now, you've managed to break our hearts by beating us in the play-off final, almost embarassingly so if it weren't for the second half double salvo.

Did you have to look at your big book of tactics to figure out how to beat us? Or maybe phone Mourinho? All three times we have played you this season you've beaten us and I can't put it down to your own mind and your players, you must have cheated. I don't know how and I don't care, you've cheated.

Maybe - no, surely - you gave Mourinho a phonecall before the match and made him look at videos of us on our run to the play-offs and made him do your dirty tactical work for you? He is one of the greatest managers so who can blame you, but one day he may be in the opposing dugout and then what? You're screwed. And when you are screwed by Mourinho, I will be watching and remembering this 4-2 defeat, chuckling and guzzling down a pint of Fosters.

You're mean. How could you do this to your old club, the one that gave you a (short-lived) professional footballing career and coaching roles? The club that when you were hired as manager you described yourself as one of the fans? It's all very well beating us in the league, but to have your stupid Welsh side to beat us 4-2 at Wembley, and even allowing the fans to hope and dream by letting your team concede twice, only to snatch it away again is mean. You're mean.

I don't like you anymore.

Yours faithfully,
Hoops