A day in the life of... Brendan Rodgers

10.20 am: Brendan Rodgers drives to the garden centre to replace last year’s flowers. The first year in his garden was nothing special, but he had to repair a lot of the damage from the previous owner of his house. The garden had one absolutely enormous, sick oak tree, and one incredible plant from South America. The rest was a mess, and he was able to spend a great deal of money in putting things right.

Out went the deadwood, into a woodchipper and to other gardeners who wanted to pick up something for the compost or because they fitted the plans they had for their own gardens. Rodgers had potted plenty of new saplings. Some from West London, and a Brazilian from an Italian-owned store. For a year, it worked brilliantly. The plants he’d inherited flourished alongside his own younger plants, and it looked certain for months that he would have a garden to win awards. Until, that is, disaster struck. One of his most established plants completely collapsed just before the end of the season, and a couple of months later, his prized possession was lost to a Catalan-borne virus.

All he had now was a mound of horse manure, and he was desperately trying to cultivate something new. For now, though, it just seems like he is stuck with this s**t for the foreseeable future.

10:45 am: Rodgers orders a mug of tea from the garden shop cafe, and as the waitress asks him how his tea is, he is interrupted from drawing his tactical plan for the Manchester United game - he calls it a footballing mindmap - and tells her that the tea is, “Outstanding, absolutely outstanding. It’s taken unbelievable character to ask such a bold question. You’re an incredible human being.”

10:52 am: The waitress is nevertheless surprised when he leaves a 50 pence tip, which was above the standard 12.5% expected, but does leave her wondering if the tea was quite as outstanding as he had suggested to her earlier.

11:00 am: Rodgers regards himself as a master when it comes to attention to detail. As such, he sets aside the next two hours for preparation for the United game. He goes to his walk-in wardrobe, takes out his 14 life-sized mannequins and tries out every single permutation of his outfit for the match, all the way down to which pair of pants he will wear. As ever, he chooses the Calvin Kleins. He just bloody loves his Calvins.

14:42: Having spent slightly longer than he anticipated on his outfit, he turns off the new Brand New Heavies album piping across his whole house, and settles down, finally, to do some tactical work. He reviews the work of those he considers peers, and from his digital library he downloads how past managers have played against teams who use systems currently employed by Louis van Gaal. Weighing up managers that he believes have similar capabilities as him, he downloads some tactical analysis of Pep Guardiola, Rinus Michels, Valeriy Lobanovskyi and Zdeněk Ščasný, who Rodgers had heard of before he even became cool, anyway. Rodgers sends texts to Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp to ask them what they think of his first thoughts about the match ahead.

15:56: “Who’s this?” Replies Guardiola.

16:35: “Who’s this?” Replies Klopp.

16:37: Rodgers replies to both, letting them know who he is, ending both messages with, “New phone, then?”

17:45: No response.

18:56: No response.

19:45: After breaking his gaze from the portrait of himself that he keeps in his house, Rodgers finally decides on the tactics for the game against Van Gaal. He writes down the XI to play, with Roberto Firmino on the right wing, and Danny Ings playing the same position on the left. Martin Skrtel is in central defence, and Simon Mignolet will start in goal. Teenager Joe Gomez will continue after his impressive run. Rodgers has an odd feeling in his stomach, but puts it down to pre-match nerves.

21:45: Though it’s still light, Rodgers decides to get an early night, unable to shift that feeling in his stomach. He looks at the teamsheet he’s decided upon, then looks outside at the manure. At the team, then the manure. Team. Manure. Team. Manure. Ah, he thinks. And he goes back to check another possible outfit.