News emerged that after finding his role at the club diminished under Brendan Rodgers, conditioning coach Darren Burgess had decided to leave Liverpool in order to return to Australia. His departure follows that of head of sports science Peter Bruckner, who left in April alongside Damien Comolli when Fenway Sports Group began their overhaul of the club's backroom staff, and in fact there were rumours that Burgess was leaving the club shortly after Bruckner's dismissal and again in the summer after Brendan Rodgers was hired—only those rumours never ended with an official announcement.
When Rodgers arrived, there was the suggestion that with the new manager looking to bring much of his support staff from Swansea along with him to Liverpool there would no longer be room for Burgess at the club. Now it appears that those rumours—and the reasoning that went along with them—were true, and that his departure has in fact long been on the cards. It does, however, appear that Rodgers convinced Burgess to at least stick around for a few months to see if could adjust to working alongside the new arrivals and in a slightly less prominent role.
"Brendan wanted to bring in some staff from Swansea," said Burgess following his departure from the club, "and Brendan has been fantastic, but my role has changed and it's not really worth living on the other side of the world for. It's tough, because I worked for 15 years to try to get into the Premier League—it was my dream. But I leave thinking it's the right thing for my family."
A diminished role and a job far from home for him and his family seem as good a reason as any for Burgess to move on, and we wish him all the best wherever he ends up back in Australia.
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