The clock is ticking for Brendan Rodgers - but stay or go, it'll be a memorable season for Liverpool

There's an unspoken code governing the season preview, an etiquette, good form. And it's basically this: accentuate the positive, because nobody wants to face the prospect of grim failure before a single ball's been kicked. Which is fair enough. What's the point of sport if you're not allowed to dream a few dreamy dreams before reality bites? However, there's a thin line between fantasy and denial, and there's no ignoring the optimism-crushing elephant in Liverpool's room: is Brendan Rodgers capable of surviving the season?

[PREVIEW: Stoke v Liverpool: everything you need to know]

It's the prism through which, rightly or wrongly, Liverpool's 2015-16 campaign will be viewed from the get-go. It might seem brutally unfair to talk about a manager being fired soon after the starting pistol, a tiresome and rather unpleasant facet of the modern game. But football these days is as fast-paced and frenetic off the pitch as on it, and the harsh reality is that Rodgers spent the best part of £120m on new players at the start of last season, only to suffer a triple whammy by way of its denouement: a timid FA Cup semi-final surrender, a mishandled exit for a club icon, and a thundering 6-1 defeat at Stoke City, the sort of absurd humiliation not visited upon Liverpool for over half a century.

Throw in a miserable Champions League campaign, and repercussions were inevitable. Sitting under the trembling sword of Damocles isn't too bad an outcome for Rodgers when the only other alternative is considered. Rodgers isn't quite a lame-duck manager yet. But there's something snagged in the webbing between his toes, and it might not be long before he starts to quack. The fickle fixture list of fate has been cruel to him, sending his side straight back to Stoke on the opening weekend. Anything less than a symbolic win, against fast-improving opponents at one of the Premier League's less-welcoming arenas, will instantly turn up the heat. God speed, then.

Such intense scrutiny will prove rather unpleasant for the manager, but perhaps not so much for the fans, who should look upon this state of affairs as a win-win opportunity. Here's a chain of events not beyond the realms, especially if Rodgers plumps to build his defence around Dejan Lovren instead of the grossly undervalued Mamadou Sakho: Liverpool fail to avenge the great Britannia mauling; they're caught cold at home by newly promoted Bournemouth, shades of Graham Taylor's Watford in August 1999 and all that; they're defeated at Arsenal; they lose at Manchester United. Pow. Bang. Ooyah. Oof.

That's very much the nuclear scenario, one which would see Liverpool plumb Hodgsonian depths, and almost certainly make the manager's position untenable. Ah well: short-term pain for long-term gain. Jurgen Klopp and Carlo Ancelotti are both currently getting their golf handicaps down, and either man would represent a minty-fresh blast of air at a club still overwhelmed by that post-Suarez fug, an oppressive atmosphere of fin de siècle which Rodgers has, to date, been incapable of lifting. Under a new regime, the future would suddenly look bright again, even if Liverpool would be condemned to another season concentrating on the cups.

But if we're going to look at the worst-case scenario for Rodgers, it's only fair we consider the flip side too. One school of thought blames Rodgers for the failure to win the league in 2013-14, second place a poor return when the third-greatest player in world football was in his ranks. Defeat grabbed from the jaws of victory. But the opposite view has Rodgers down as a coach of mercurial talent, capable of building sides dripping with attacking verve and panache, greater than the sum of its parts, coaxing Waitrose performances from Lidl talent.

A different analysis of the near miss of 2014 would show that it wasn't all Suarez, but a team effort of almost total-football proportion: Martin Skrtel scored more league goals that season than £50m Chelsea striker Fernando Torres, to pull one example out of thin air. However last year, Liverpool's transfer committee having bought bog-averagely, there was only so much Rodgers could achieve. This time round, in the wake of a much more successful transfer window, he's blessed with a precious last chance to showcase his talent for alchemy.

Liverpool have indeed bought well. Christian Benteke will re-energise the attack. Nathaniel Clyne offers dynamism from right-back. James Milner is a distinct improvement on the Steven Gerrard of latter years, in terms of both goals and assists. Roberto Firmino arrives with good notices, perhaps unfairly expected to sprinkle Suarezian stardust, but then there's nothing wrong with asking £29m players to clear a high bar. Should Denis Cheryshev arrive from Real Madrid, his direct wingplay would at least partly compensate for the depressing loss of the superlative Raheem Sterling.

Factor in the under-appreciated, astonishing Daniel Sturridge - a pipe dream, perhaps, given his fitness record - plus emerging talents like Jordan Ibe, arty midfielder Joao Carlos Teixeira and the young whirlwind Ryan Kent, and Rodgers has plenty of creative options to hand. These could be exciting times again, then, for there's a strong sense that the manager, having retreated into a defensive shell last season for little tangible reward, has decided that he may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and will go all out for attack once more. With no domineering goalkeeper in the squad, and the Lovren experiment yet to be shelved, it's probably a wise policy. Play to your strengths.

Paradoxically, with apprehension and low expectation surrounding the club, and the vultures waiting to descend on Rodgers, it would only take a couple of decent early results to flip all that pressure into something altogether more positive. Should Liverpool take anything from either the Emirates or Old Trafford - and if Benteke starts strongly, as that finish against Swindon hints he might, then why not? - that foreboding early run of fixtures could suddenly transform into the perfect confidence booster, solid blocks on which to build a spectacular season. Time for Klopp and Ancelotti to step off.

Another unlikely title bid, then? Or will the manager be sent skittering down Walton Breck Road on the seat of his trousers, a bone-shuddering act that'd usher in a whole new era at Anfield? Good luck calling it, because both scenarios are equally plausible. Either way, let's accentuate the positive: Liverpool supporters should consider themselves blessed, because success or failure, they're about to witness something epochal.