IT began with a close-up shot of the manager calling his players to gather round in the dressing room, with only a few minutes left to go before kick-off.

The roar of the crowd could be heard outside.

"Let's go. Nice and tight. In we come. Listen, today is the start of a long, hard journey for us, okay. And I've never, ever said it was going to be easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing. The thing to remember before we start this campaign is one thing: we can only trust ourselves. No-one else. We can trust the supporters because they are the best. And you trust your family at home. Those three groups. That's why we're here and why we're doing it, okay. So let's make sure we go and perform."

Brendan Rodgers' team talk on day one of the season put him front and centre of Being: Liverpool, the fly-on-the-wall documentary series following the club. In the course of the first episode, which aired on Channel 5 on Friday night, he was shown in his black Porsche Panamera, given to him by the club as a perk of the job, then at his sprawling home with its indoor swimming pool and large portrait of himself on one of the walls. It was to his immense credit that he didn't remotely come across as the tool all of that makes him sound.

Liverpool's start to the season has been awful (they were spanked by West Bromwich Albion after the aforementioned team talk) but a combination of behind-the-scenes footage and one-to-one interviews showed Rodgers to be articulate, intelligent, tough, and focused. Supporters who worry about recent results would almost certainly be won over by watching him.

Being: Liverpool is what you get when a club is owned from America, which means a far higher level of journalistic access. The six-part Fox Television series is an attempt to promote Liverpool in the USA and the underlying narrative is that this is a vast club striving to return from mediocrity. We are shown things we would never normally see. Nothing startling, so far, but unusual and interesting. Such as Rodgers taking a private moment during his first day in the job to walk around the outside of the pitch, the stadium deserted. Or footage of a "World Cup" competition during training in which the players are divided into a four groups: Scousers, Cockneys, South Americans and the rest of the world. We see Jamie Carragher and other players giggling as they're asked to balance on one leg and clasp their hands as if in prayer, during a yoga session. We see inside Steven Gerrard's house. He has a white piano in the front room, but then who doesn't?

It all has the feel of an extended promotional exercise. The opener was hardly warts-and-all as clearly the club retained editorial control, although there is some juicier stuff in later shows. In one, Rodgers is talking to the players during pre-season training in the USA. When he quietly tells Raheem Sterling his attitude needs to improve, the 17-year-old mutters "steady". Rodgers is on to him like a shot, talking with quiet force: "You say 'steady' to me again when I say something to you and you'll be on the first plane back." When Sterling feigns innocence Rodgers fires back. "You know what you said, I know what you said." Sterling melts.

Viewers or, more to the point, supporters, lap up this stuff because they are starved of it. Clubs run a mile from releasing anything genuinely insightful, let alone controversial or challenging, which makes it all the more absorbing when there is access. Even when four of us spoke to Rodgers in a quiet corner of Tynecastle the day before the Europa League first-leg tie against Hearts there was, in the background, a television camera.

Scottish football has had fly-on-the wall documentaries before. Blue Heaven in 2003 was a study of teenagers in Rangers' Murray Park youth development system and how they and their families coped with progress or failure. The year before, Grasping The Thistle followed Partick Thistle and set a BBC Scotland swearing record. The bleep button had to be used on manager John Lambie 168 times.

You wonder if the idea of Being: Rangers might appeal to Charles Green, not least if it would raise awareness of his club in America and generate dough. Green and director Imran Ahmad have just been milking Rangers' North American market in a brief tour of Toronto, New York, Orlando and Houston. Rangers continue to be flattered by international media interest in their implosion and travails in the Irn-Bru Third Division. On Friday, Ally McCoist made time to see a visiting journalist from the respected France Football magazine.

If the Liverpool series goes well there are proposals for Being: Chelsea and Being: Manchester City. As most Americans wouldn't know City if they held their games on the White House front lawn, Green should be trying to muscle in on this act for a Being: Rangers.

Never mind Rodgers with his "long, hard journey" ahead, what about the story of Rangers trying to haul their way back from the grubber? Footage of McCoist doing his nut after a bad result somewhere like Cowdenbeath? Whoever you support, who wouldn't want to see that?

And Another Thing

THERE aren't many books in which the content has to live up to the standard of the foreword, but the splendid Henrik, Hairdryers and the Hand of God, now on sale, is one of them. There are 72 articles by assorted characters and chancers who have occupied Scottish football press boxes over the years and they're revealing, insightful and funny. None is as moving as Brian Marjoribanks' foreword though, a personal account of his son Andrew and why all proceeds from sales will go to Sands, the charity which supports parents bereaved by stillbirth and infant death.