Rodgers adds: “It takes a wee bit of time. When you come into a club like this as a young player you have to adapt very quickly to the demands.
“I don’t think that as a team we are physically light or short in anyway. I think it’s mental and that’s something we need to improve.
“Is the club too big for some players? I wouldn’t like to say that at this stage. Up until Sunday we were all talking about how well they had been doing and how they were progressing.
“The bigger picture is we have some terrific players here. The nature of it is that at big clubs there will be players who come in and it will be too much for them.
“There are certain question marks and I don’t think that’s just over this period. It’s something which goes beyond that. It’s something I am finding out about. That’s where this season is, it’s a great season for learning in terms of what we have here.”
The manner in which 6ft 6ins Matt Smith, scorer of Oldham’s first two goals, terrorised the Liverpool defence alarmed Rodgers, particularly given how his side were outmuscled in the recent defeats to Aston Villa and Stoke City.
“The boy Smith hadn’t scored a goal at home in two years and he’s come up against two big units we have at centre-half,” says Rodgers.
“He’s a boy who has come out of university football and he looks like Didier Drogba. We have seen it before with (Villa striker Christian) Benteke, who after our game has disappeared. That’s the resilience and steel we need to have and we have to do it consistently.
“Going to places like Oldham you know what you’re going to get, it’s not a Premier League game. It’s a game where you have to roll your sleeves up and fight and as I said, it was too soft.”
While Rodgers is admant his lament over a lack of strength in depth was borne out by events at the weekend, he retains faith his players will have been hurting as much as he is in the wake of the shocking defeat.
“I think they care,” he says. “One thing I have found working with youth and seniors is you get plenty who tell you they care, but the benchmark and greatest way I assess it is what people do physically.
“I have had people telling me all my life, from when I was a young coach working with both young and older players, they say ‘I want to be in your team, I want to do this and I want to do that.’ I go ‘fine, no problem,’ but the minute they are out of the door I look to see what they do physically because what they do physically, that’s your commitment mentally.
“You get players who tell you they want to be this or that, who are maybe one of the last in in the morning and first out in the afternoon, and they don’t care.
“That’s what we are trying to piece together here – a group who are mentally on the same wavelength.”
