Don't be surprised if Rodgers or Moyes pip Pep as boss of the year

Under Rodgers, the Foxes won 12 matches out of 14 at the start of last season - championship form - and then just seven out of 23 afterwards.

That's 'sack-you-in-the-corridor' relegation form.

Leicester were a whopping 14 points ahead of a struggling, pre-Bruno Fernandes Manchester United at the turn of the year but finished four points behind them - and out of the coveted Champions League placings.

It was a sad whimper of an ending to a campaign that, at one stage -and especially following the sensational 9-0 away with over Southamption - even had Leicester fans dreaming of another fairytale Premier League title.

And if Rodgers was the architect of such optimism, then he was equally culpable for the shocking collapse of a team that had spent virtually the entire season in the top four, but weren't there when it really mattered.

So no, I don't feel bad about my critical end-of-term assessment of the former Liverpool and Celtic manager, even though some folk think it's treasonous and unpatriotic to lay into someone who went to the same Ballymena secondary school as your younger brother.

I was completely wrong, however, in assuming that the 48-year-old Carnlough native had blown his only real chance of redemption after the Liverpool experience.

Rather than fall away after missing a solitary shot at glory, Rodgers' men are back up there challenging for a top-four finish - and looking even better than last season.

And for that, our Brendan deserves all the credit going.

It must have been gutting for him the way things turned out last time - which surely brought back memories of the 2014 title collapse when he was in charge at Anfield - but our boy simply picked himself up, dusted himself down and got on with it. Big respect, Brendan.

I'm sure he'll be back in charge of a Big Six outfit before too long - almost certainly one of the London clubs - and in the meantime he's being spoken of as a Manager of the Year candidate.

Indeed, if history is anything to go by, it will be Rodgers or West Ham United's David Moyes who gets that nod come the end of the season.

To say there's a bias towards British bosses when it comes to voting time is akin to suggesting that Kylian Mbappe has a decent chance of making it as a professional footballer.

Indeed, some of the past decisions made by the members of the League Managers Association - which was founded in 1992 and represents all bosses from the English Premier League, Championship, Leagues 1 and 2 and the FA Women's Super League and Championship - have been nothing short of incredulous.

For instance, Moyes got Manager of the Year in 2005 - the same year Chelsea, under Jose Mourinho, won the Premier League title and League Cup and reached the Champions League semi-finals... losing to Rafa Benitez's Liverpool, who went on to lift the trophy.

Moyes, meanwhile, steered Everton to fourth place in the Premier League - 34 points behind the rampant Chelsea.

That was the Scot's second of three Manager of the Year awards - one more than Arsenal's legendary boss Arsene Wenger - and only Sir Alex Ferguson, with five, has been honoured more times.

That 2005 vote didn't surprise the late Gerard Houllier. He lost out to yet another Scot, George Burley, four years earlier despite leading Liverpool to an FA Cup, League Cup and Uefa Cup treble and finishing third in the Premier League - two places ahead of Burley's Ipswich.

More recently another treble winner, Pep Guardiola, was deemed unworthy of the accolade even though he'd guided Manchester City to an unprecedented domestic clean sweep of Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup.

It was Sheffield United's Chris Wilder who picked up the 2019 gong after what was, to be fair, an excellent first season back in the Premier League.

Should Rodgers - no stranger to domestic trebles himself from the Celtic days - win this season, it will actually be his second time.

People tend to forget that, despite being overhauled for the title by City in 2014, it was Rodgers and not Manuel Pellegrini - who also won the League Cup in his first season at the Etihad - being feted at the 22nd LMA bash in London's historic Old Billingsgate venue.

Other one-time winners include Steve Coppell, Frank Clark, Peter Reid, Danny Wilson, Dave Jones, Alan Curbishley, Roy Hodgson, Alan Pardew and Eddie Howe - all English-born, although Wigan native Danny Wilson is, arguably, one of 'our lot' having played 24 times for Northern Ireland in the Billy Bingham era.

Dublin-born but Watford-raised Joe Kinnear can also place himself alongside the likes of Pep, Jurgen Klopp, Claudio Ranieri and Antonio Conte on the list of managers who have won it once, while thumbing his nose as two of the most successful bosses of all time - Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti - who have yet to be honoured by the LMA.

Ancelotti is having an excellent season with Everton but, as leading Chelsea to the club's first Double in 2010 wasn't deemed by the LMA to be a better achievement than Hodgson's admittedly laudable feat in taking Fulham to seventh in the Premier League that same season, the Italian won't be holding his breath.

These contentious decisions are, of course, nothing new, and not confined to English football either.

I remember 1989, for example, when Linfield won the Irish League, two other domestic trophies and reached two further cup finals, but it was John Flanagan, a Co. Antrim Shield winner with Bangor, and not Blues boss Roy Coyle, who got the nod as manager of the year.

Perhaps it's generally accepted that improving the position of a 'smaller' club will inevitably trump winning a major trophy with one of the big boys.

So don't be surprised if Rodgers, or Moyes - or even Dean Smith at Aston Villa - get the nod this year, pipping Pep.

Having said that, being born in Blighty won't have done their chances any harm either.