Roy Hodgson, know your role and shut your mouth

[BCM]

Knew id posted it, said it in the "World cup squad" thread

 

 

Roy picking as many kids as he can get away with, virtually guarenteeing him another free pass at a major tournament and another 4 years and the euros regardless of world cup results.....

[TheHowieLama]

He has stated it will take him six -- 6 -- years to get the squad where he wants it.

[Boss]

That famous loss to Italy wasn't even a good performance, i don't know what people are on about, Candreva ran Baines ragged, Pirlo totally dominated the midfield and Rooney was an absolute disgrace on the left, some performance that was. The media act as if we crushed the Azzurri 5-0 playing free flowing attacking football, when in actuality we got bossed, we got bossed, and faded without even a whimper of a fight once the second went in, how courageous of us.

[magicrat]

That famous loss to Italy wasn't even a good performance, i don't know what people are on about, Candreva ran Baines ragged, Pirlo totally dominated the midfield and Rooney was an absolute disgrace on the left, some performance that was. The media act as if we crushed the Azzurri 5-0 playing free flowing attacking football, when in actuality we got bossed, we got bossed, and faded without even a whimper of a fight once the second went in, how courageous of us.

It was very average but had Rooney done what he gets paid to do we would have won and probably gone on to qualify. Doesn't alter the fact we are shite . The other teams in our Group were nothing special and a top side would have breezed through. 

[Barrington Womble]

Well,how about that the English players are overrated and nowhere as good as they think they are?

Latter stages of Champions League in teams filled with foreigners seems to back up my point too.

Chile have qualified with players from Nottingham forest and Cardiff. Greece have qualified with players that wouldn't get near the premier league. Costa Rica have qualified with another bunch of players who'd be luck to get a game in the Sunday league on Stanley park. the English players are plenty good enough to get out of their group.

[Jairzinho]

Chile have qualified with players from Nottingham forest and Cardiff. Greece have qualified with players that wouldn't get near the premier league. Costa Rica have qualified with another bunch of players who'd be luck to get a game in the Sunday league on Stanley park. the English players are plenty good enough to get out of their group.

 

Half of them play for us and we're not bad.

[Section_31]

He has stated it will take him six -- 6 -- years to get the squad where he wants it.

It's just a cracking little money spinner for him, it's beautiful, one of the top posts in football so it suits his displaced ego, while at the same time having low expectations and virtually no expectations any more. He is to football what Stan Valcheck is to police work.

[lifetime fan]

Talking about the Costa Rica game...

 

"I take positives - this was a banana skin".

[Fugitive]

The dementia will take fully take hold soon. He'll be sat on the bench in his undies after forgetting to put his kecks on or something.

[El Rojo]

It's both shocking and hilarious that he'll be allowed to do the same all over again for Euros.

[TheDrowningMan]

Talking about the Costa Rica game...

 

"I take positives - this was a banana skin".

Banana skins are decidedly unthreatening when you're already on your arse.

[SammyAftershave]

Based on several years of meticulous and extensive research I can quite categorically report that Hodgeson is a fraud, a shithouse and a cunt. Take that to the bank.

[Gnasher]

Roy wants the offside laws changed after Suarez winner the other night. I kid you not. The daft cunt probably didnt realise you can be played onside from an opposition player.

[magicrat]

Not a prayer he will get 6 years,  He would be gone now if there was anyone with a shred of ability willing to take the job , Redknapp excluded for obvious reasons. You could have given Beckham the job for this WC and with couple of competent  assistants he would have got more out of this squad than Hodgson . Its fucking disgraceful  

[thompsonsnose]

"Well of course i hear what you're saying, but if you choose to look back and check your facts, you will find that, i was the coach of the Swiss team in those formative years and have had a telling input on their methods, and now, i'm sure you can see, that those methods are now coming to fwuition"

 

Cunt.

[Dr Nowt]

It's just a cracking little money spinner for him, it's beautiful, one of the top posts in football so it suits his displaced ego, while at the same time having low expectations and virtually no expectations any more. He is to football what Stan Valcheck is to police work.

 

Hopefully someone's loading his car into a shipping container as we speak. 

[Barrington Womble]

"Well of course i hear what you're saying, but if you choose to look back and check your facts, you will find that, i was the coach of the Swiss team in those formative years and have had a telling input on their methods, and now, i'm sure you can see, that those methods are now coming to fwuition"

 

Cunt.

I'm pissed so I'm struggling to work out if that's real or a piss take!

[thompsonsnose]

I'm pissed so I'm struggling to work out if that's real or a piss take!

That's me that.

I aim to confuse.

[Gnasher]

It's just a cracking little money spinner for him, it's beautiful, one of the top posts in football so it suits his displaced ego, while at the same time having low expectations and virtually no expectations any more. He is to football what Stan Valcheck is to police work.

He's ace at lowering expectations and destroying player confidence. When Roy described Suarez as not world class i can imagine Danny Welbeck knocking his door and asking " boss if Suarez is not world class what does that make me?" Hodgson "massive face rub"

[Guest LFD]

[SammyAftershave]

And this is what he had to say:

 

[Gnasher]

If Hodgson would've had the sense to take Ashley Cole to tighten the defence, the bollocks to drop Rooney and put another runner (Milner?) in to help Gerrrard and Henderson take control of the midfield I see no reason why England couldn't have been beating Greece last night to reach the quarter finals. He blew it.

[Jose Jones]

I think all the calls for Ashley Cole are missing the mark a bit really.  Baines was crap, but for the most part the system he was in didn't offer him much opportunity to play well.  If Cole had gone he wouldn't have done much better and there would have ended up being similar criticism that he was past it, hadn't played for Chelsea all season, etc.  Agree with the other points though.

 

The main problems the Hodge had are:

 

a)  His favoured way of playing is terrible, boring, shit and if he'd tried to play that way England would have been knocked out of the group stage. 

He tried to play the classic Hodgson way against Costa Rica and came out with a courageous and historic 0-0 draw.

 

b)  He was persuaded to try and play like Liverpool (due to press influence towards the end of the season and trying to avoid any criticism) but had no idea on how to do it. 

Hence playing Wellbeck and Rooney in the wide positions against Italy, which gave Baines no protection.  Not picking two runners in midfield in front of Gerrard, and not having a clue on how to press the ball giving the opposition lots of space.  Then not having a single idea on how to change things during matches because he didn't understand the tactics in the first place.

[PestiRed]

This is a pretty good summary although I would have used the word cunt more

 

HAD A PINT with Steve Graves last night. He is fuming. Fuming about Hodgson. He can’t stop talking about Hodgson. Had a phone call from Daniel Fitzsimmons yesterday. We’re making our debut feature film next week. Imagine that! Making a film. It’s dead hard and there’s loads to do but thankfully people far better qualified than me are sorting things out. We spoke about film related stuff for five minutes. And then Hodgson for twenty. Dan is furious. Furious about Hodgson.

 

Both said something like “I’m not even bothered about England. So why am I more furious than those who are bothered about England?”

 

Hello my old friends.

 

We’ve been here before. So why are we here again? It’s because I can’t get the C+ problem out of my head. And I want to work out why we are more bothered than those who should be.

Shall we? Let’s…

 

- The season Fulham came seventh under Roy Hodgson (08/09), they won fourteen games.

- The full season Hodgson had in charge of West Bromwich Albion (11/12), they won thirteen games. Incidentally Fulham under Martin Jol that season finished ninth and won fourteen games.

- After the twenty league games Hodgson had presided over at Liverpool he had won seven games. Extrapolate that across a season. Thirteen and a half wins.

 

C+. C+. If you are OK with C+ (Fulham, West Brom) when great. If you want silverware and something more? C+ doesn’t cut any mustard. C+ is what Hodgson does. What he has always done. With any set of players, he does C+. C+ is where, for some reason, English football on the whole, its mainstream media on the whole, its watching public on the whole has decided to live. It’s where they’ve decided their football should be.

 

They have chosen the worst possible moment to do that.

Look at the sides who have prospered at this World Cup. They are sharp in transition. Aggressively winning the ball back and moving, fast as lightning at the opposition goal. Like the Manchester United of Alex Ferguson. Like the Arsenal of Arsene Wenger. Like the Chelsea of Mourinho the first time around, Ancelotti and Benitez. Like Rodgers’s Liverpool. Like Martinez’s Everton.

 

At a juncture where what works on the world stage is in tune with what works in the Premier League. At a juncture where the players emerge built to play the sort of football that’s worked for Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, France and Holland, players such as Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling, Danny Welbeck, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Jordan Henderson, Adam Lallana and Ross Barkley who can be supplied and encouraged and led by Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard. At a juncture where the World Cup isn’t following any sort of script, where nettles can be grasped and diems can be carped and where the Dutch can demolish the Spaniards and no one has a clue about the Mexicans.

 

At that juncture, at this juncture, here, now, English football is led by Mr C+. English football is led by thirteen and a half wins. English football is led by a man who himself is led by the general consensus, a man who falls between every stool, a man for whom the prevailing wind will always prevail. A man who sees football matches as a series of events predominantly outside of his control, let alone the control of his players.

 

And crazily, astonishingly, outrageously, seemingly everyone’s gone, yep. Sound that. We had a good first half an hour against the Italians. (The Italians went out folks). We really got about the Italians. (The Italians weren’t very good, lads. They only scored against England). We blooded some young players against the Italians and they impressed. (You mean Raheem Sterling. Who then got moved.)

 

Seemingly everyone’s gone, yep. Sound that. Fine margins isn’t it. Fine margins. Forget that the standard of Uruguay/England was dire. Forget the plan for Pirlo was undone after fifteen minutes when Pirlo swapped with DeRossi and played in the acres of space between Henderson and Sterling unhurried. Forget that Costa Rica – COSTA RICA – got the very point they required against England relatively untroubled. Instead focus on the midfield:

 

Instead focus on Suarez’s brilliance. Remember only that England had a lot of the ball second half against Italy, not that Italy let them have it when 2-1 up. Remember those fine margins. Focus on those fine margins.

 

What more could be done? Fine margins. They always get you in the end.

 

Thirty one sides won’t win the World Cup. That’s a lot of teams that won’t win it. Fine margins will be involved at some point for all of them. But some of those thirty one will get to represent what their country’s football does well. In a World Cup where this country’s type of football actually prospers, England will not feature amongst.

 

Or will it? Is this thirteen wins football now what England do well? Are we a nation of C+ers? This is why Steve Graves and Daniel Fitzsimmons are fuming. This is why they are furious. Because Hodgson, the acceptance of Hodgson and Hodgeball, of his never upsetting any power that be, of never risking everything to succeed, the fact that his sheer, unending career of mediocrity has led him to the top, surrounded by a Praetorian Guard unwilling to criticise speaks of a larger malaise. If your face fits in contemporary British, English, London society, if you don’t upset the wrong people, if you don’t ruffle feathers, if you manage expectations, if you become one of the boys, you’ll always be boxed off. You’ll always be alright. This is Britain, England, London. Twenty Fourteen. This is what it looks like. Ta-da. England resplendant, Sterling moved for Rooney, false dawns, cold realities, the perfect World Cup campaign that says this is where we are now.

 

Knobheads boxing other knobheads off.

 

We laughed at the Spectator piece but at its essence is this: “He’s one of us. He’s one like us.” Roy’s Zelig. Place him around people of consequence and he’ll meet their expectations. The Croydon man who has read books. Who has learned languages. Who has gone abroad. Who is OK at the football. One of us. One of the in crowd. He doesn’t speak of hopes or dreams. He speaks of cold realities.

 

The rest of us, you, me, Steve, Dan we’re on the outside, looking in. We’re looking in at yet another failure. Yet more C+ from a self-appointed elite which has had so very little going for it for so long and we’re furious and we know it doesn’t matter. Because what they say is good enough.

 

I said to Steve, as he vented spleen, I might write something on Hodgson.

He said “What’s the point?"

[Faustus]

Having spent two of the past three weeks out in the States attending a mate's wedding, for the first time in my life, I caught most of the World Cup in a foreign country. One thing watching the coverage over in the States that struck me was the difference in mentality between Hodgson and someone like Jurgen Klinsmann. I'm not saying Klinsmann is a great manager- I think he's one perfectly suited to the international game because he has a charisma and a magnetism to him that makes players want to run through bricks walls through him, as everyone saw in Germany '06 when they were buzzing to be hosts also. At club level, which I think explains his time at Bayern, that novelty can wear off after 1-2 months and you need to develop other strengths. He's done a good job with the US this World Cup though because watching their games, you can see how well drilled they are and because of how much of a shift each player puts in, you can guarantee they'd give anyone a game.

 

Anyway, I'm slightly digressing here, but with Klinsmann, his manner in press conferences and speaking to the media really struck a chord. They were in a group that was comparable to England's and with a squad of much worse players but every time the fella spoke, he exuded positivity. He was respectful of the other three teams in the group, but not to the point of deference like Hodgson, and was quite bullish about the States' chances, saying that they weren't there to make up the numbers and were determined to make it to the next round. I know when written down, it reads like standard footballing clichés, but watching it on TV, you could see he truly believed in what he was saying and that can't help but transmit itself to players and supporters.

 

Compare that to Hodgson's constant excuse-making, stories of hard luck and general fudgery. The one positive thing he came out with was saying he believed that England could win the World Cup, but he ended up sounding like Mike Bassett. Hell, you could have sat Ricky Tomlinson down in a presser and had him reciting Kipling's 'If' and signing off with the line "And England will be playing four-four-fucking two" and it would have been more stirring than anything to come out of the wet blanket's gob.

 

I honestly can't believe how it looks as though he'll be keeping his job. When you see teams like USA get out of a bastard of a group, Costa Rica top another tough group and Algeria frighten the Germans half to death with players some Championship teams would turn their noses up at, it's genuinely staggering how he hasn't had the press on his back.