Gabba gabba hey

That’s it. I’m done now. Hicks and Gillett? Gone. Hodgson? Gone. There’s no point in this page any more.

Just one thing left to say.

Patience my arse. I’m going to kill something.

It’s hard to walk away from your football team. Even when you know it’s the sensible thing to do. Even when the alternative is unremitting anger and sorrow.

When you’re sharing a house with your father who’s a lifelong supporter. When you met your very best friend at the match. When you’ve committed a significant proportion of your life to Liverpool FC. It’s fucking hard to walk away.

And I can’t. Not yet.

But I’m close to it. Every day Roy Hodgson remains at Anfield and Melwood is an insult. An insult and an injury.

There are people who preach patience and argue that the new ownership has done nothing wrong and that they simply need time to find the right people to run and manage the club.

I disagree. I say that if they were prepared to invest almost half a billion dollars in Liverpool FC they should have already known who they wanted to run the club and manage their investment.

I say that if they want me to be patient, then they need to get in their private planes and make the trip to Liverpool. Stay in the city. Feel the anguish. Savour the gallows humour. Listen to the sound of a football club and half a city in pain. Take the trip – home and away – to the games. Sit and suffer with their paying customers. They’ll never feel this pain as badly as I do, because they have no history with the club, they live an ocean away. and they have their millions and their Red Sox to keep them warm. But until they share just a little of this torment, then they have no right to expect anything other than impatient fury.

I’ve seen people – typically those who hope to build a relationship with John W Henry – argue that I shouldn’t expect anything to happen in a hurry because that’s the Liverpool Way. They point back at the era of Peter Robinson and Sir John Smith and remark that the old guard never washed their dirty linen in public. No, they didn’t. But they did live in Liverpool. They did go to every match. And when Anfield called for the head of Graeme Souncess after a second ignominious exit from the FA Cup then they dealt with the issue overnight. Souness was out. His assistant, Roy Evans, was in.

Clearly there is no-one working at Anfield today that is capable of stepping into the job and taking the club forwards. But there are candidates who could step in and fill an unattractive Hodgson-shaped void until the end of the season. Sammy Lee. Phil Thompson. Kenny Dalglish. Obviously Dalglish would be the popular choice but I fear that the owners distrust his long term ambitions and are reluctant to allow him to extend his powerbase at Anfield. Regardless, they ought to be capable of either reaching an agreement with him or killing his under-the-radar campaign — if it exists — outright. Isn’t it easy? Offer him a job til the end of the season and a pre-defined role upstairs thereafter. If he refuses, leak it to the press.

Of course, my personal choice – however politically unrealistic – remains Rafa Benitez. I love the man. He loved the club. He loved the city. He still fucking lives here, for eff’s sake. We had a truly world class manager. We let him go. We have a chance to bring him back. We should be biting his hand off.

The most critical assessment of Rafa’s last season at Anfield that I’m prepared to accept is that he let himself down a little. Having come so close in 2008-2009, his goal for 2009-2010 had to be to win the league. Everybody seemed to agree that the way to achieve this was to open out and play a more expansive, attacking game. So he brought in Glen Johnson for Alvaro Arbeloa – after, let’s not forget, Arbeloa had been targeted by the influential Jamie Carragher. Sami Hyypia – unable to hold down a first team spot – moved on. The Xabi Alonso saga reached its inevitable conclusion. And the replacements Rafa brought in failed to fill Sami or Xabi’s shoes. As the season progressed and our luck got worse and worse, it became clear that toys were being thrown out of prams inside the changing room. Carragher, it’s believed, was at the heart of this. A future manager in his own mind at least. But really, who the fuck knows?

What I do know is that after all his excellent work previously, Liverpool FC should have BACKED not SACKED Rafa Benitez. He should have been given the change to repair the club. If necessary, he should have been allowed to sell one or two “untouchable” players, bring in replacements, and have another go. We owed the man that much. And more.

But instead the long knife was wielded and media darling Hodgson – who had been in talks with Christian Purslow for the previous six months – was comfortably esconced in Rafa’s Anfield office. With pomp and circumstance everywhere. Except in Liverpool.

It was a shameful period for Liverpool FC. And everything that’s happened since has just rubbed salt in wounds that refuse to heal.

So. Yeah. If I was the owner of Liverpool, I’d sack Hodgson today. I’d bring Rafa in tomorrow. And allow him to list ANY player he thought we could do without and spend every penny raised. And then I’d sit back and wait til the end of the season.

But what do I know? I don’t even know the rules of baseball. But one thing I do know. If the owners don’t do something soon, I will find it in myself to walk away.

Memories

Yeah, I’m sick

“The first spade will start going into the ground on that [stadium] project by March [2007].”
– George Gillett

“Liverpool’s owners are convinced Roy Hodgson is not the man to lead the club forward in the long-term and are actively considering replacing him midway through the season, should the right candidate become available.”
– John W Henry (As leaked to friends in the media)

I read all those carefully weighted words in the Telegraph and Times, and all I can see is “Please stop complaining, Daddy knows best. ”

Well, hardly.

I was talking to friend about the Hodgson situation earlier today and I came up with a very colourful and heartfelt if somewhat exaggerated and offensive analogy. Watching Hodgson in the role of Liverpool manager, I said, is a lot like seeing your best friend being raped. Day after day after day. Henry is the man who could make it stop. Right here, right now, he could stop this terrible torment. But he won’t. Because it’s not convenient and because he’s not losing any sleep at night. Because he has no emotional involvement and because it’s not his friend being defiled.

To be clear, I don’t want him to feel rushed into appointing another wrong manager. I don’t even expect him to give Rafa his job back. I’ll happily accept any one of two or three caretaker candidates* in the understanding that things will only be resolved in the summer. Just please, make the bad man go away.

*But obviously not Allardyce or O’Neill

The Story Of The Blues

So what is subversive about love? And what is positive in the refusal of constraints? Well, it’s like this, it’s like Sal Paradise said – or was it John Lydon? Anger is an energy.

I’ve always been a Liverpool fan. My father is a Liverpool fan. His father was a Liverpool fan. Born in 1927, he saw Matt Busby play. And Bob Paisley.

Because my mother died when I was young I was brought up – all but exclusively – by my father and as a result I am very much his daughter. Football, music, literature; these are the things I learned to love at his knee. But not just any football. Only Liverpool.

I once let a boyfriend persuade me to accompany him to watch Spurs. It was one of the most boring afternoons of my life. If it’s not Liverpool, I told him, it’s just not rock’n’roll.

Shortly afterwards I dumped the cockney bastard and started fucking girls instead.

Anyhoo. Football.

Long story short, I’ve lost my love for the game.

Short story slightly longer, Roy Hodgson has smothered my love for Liverpool FC.

And it’s weird. When Hicks and Gillett were slowly suffocating the club, my love was fierce and unrepentantly optimistic. We would, I believed, fight a good fight, remove the twin parasites, and reap the rewards we deserved. When Rafa was fired, I was much more than merely furious but remained constant in my passionate love for Liverpool. This outrage would, I assumed, be the final nail in the coffins of Hicks, Gillett, Purslow, and Broughton. We’d get new owners, a new manager – I just couldn’t see Rafa coming back – and we’d all fall in line behind the new regime and move forward together.

But no. Instead we have Hodgson. An unlikable, unsupportable, preening delusional old never-was who is steadily inflicting the death of one thousand cuts upon my love for Liverpool FC while the new owners pursue a charm offensive that is meaningless without positive action.

Well, no more. I’m giving up. I’m tired of Hodgson. I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired in just about every way you can imagine. But most of all I’m tired of the toll he is wreaking on me and my relationship with the club and with some of my fellow supporters. So I’m done. I’m turning my energy in a different direction and I won’t waste another word or another thought on Liverpool FC until Hodgson is gone and what I can only describe as a Proper Liverpool Manager is installed in his place. And if that takes too long, well then I won’t be back at all.

It’ll hurt, of course.

My very first game was Kenny Dalglish’s testimonial. My father felt I should be there. And if my only lasting memory of the event is admiring Margie Clarke’s marvelously fetching red patent leather outfit well, so what? At least I was there. My next game was the Liverpool-Sunderland Cup Final. I’ve always been a glory hunter. I couldn’t get to Istanbul but I was there in Athens. I’ve been loving Liverpool FC for as long as I can remember. And, knowing my father, quite possibly longer than that. So yes, this hurts. And no, it’s not easy but it’s necessary. It’s a matter of coming to terms in my heart with the situation I’m in. A matter of choosing how things go for me and not having them forced upon me against my will. So for my own good, I’m going to start a revolution in my heart. For my own good, I’m turning my back on Liverpool.

I hope Purslow, Broughton, and Hodgson are happy.

I also hope they rot in hell.

Peace. I’m out.

A long and boring open letter to NESV that they will never read

Dear NESV

The true value of LFC is not the stadium, the players, the TV deals, or even the trophies. It’s the brand and the global recognition and competitive business advantage that goes with it. As the owners of Liverpool FC, I assume you would consider that one of your principal focuses should be to effectively manage brand value. If so, then there are some things you need to understand.

Football is not baseball.

American is not the world.

And Liverpool FC is not Arsenal FC.

This Is Anfield. Fernando Torres. Steven Gerrard. They’re all brands in their own right. And they all contribute to the allure of the overall Liverpool brand. But above else the brand is three little letters – LFC, And that brand was built by the supporters. With the help and leadership of a few good men — men like Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, we created the brand that is Liverpool FC and we are a vital part of that brand.

It simply wouldn’t exist without us. The Twelfth Man. The Kop. The Murderers. The Victims Of Hillsborough. More than anything else, in a weird circle-of-life way, the supporters of Liverpool FC are both its core brand and its core customer base. The affinity we feel for the brand is the brand. We are the tradition and unique selling point of Liverpool FC. Do not under-estimate the importance of this truth. Sincerely, we’re the reason people all over the world want to be part of the Liverpool family, to be part of our “brand community”. Because – and you should trust me on this one – we’re not the same as everybody else. We’re the wild-hearted outsiders. We are Anfield.

We can quibble over details, like Cuba and Japan, but essentially baseball is an American game. No-one else much cares. Just like helmetball. You can use all the global media marketing and cross-promotional bullshit that you can bring to bear, it doesn’t matter. The rest of the world doesn’t really care. Those games say nothing to us about our lives. And if rap music hadn’t promoted the baseball cap internationally, no-one would care at all. Baseball isn’t rock’n’roll or Coca Cola.

Here I was tempted to say, by way of contrast, that Liverpool FC is the Beatles. But we aren’t. We’re Bob Dylan. Think about it.

America’s favourite past-time is supported by a population of 300M and the world’s largest consumer economy. The Boston Red Sox brand has a strong tradition and history. But it enjoys a privileged position in a static market that is protected by a long and close mutualist relationship with the media. And the nearest rival for local supporter’s affections is 200 miles away. Do you know how many Premier League football teams can be found within 50 miles of Anfield?

I’m not suggesting that local Liverpool supporters would turn their backs on LFC and begin to support other sides. It simply doesn’t happen like that. However, the loyalty of the long distance supporter has yet to be evaluated and new football supporters – whether they live locally or in Singapore or Bangalore or Shanghai – are not exactly starved of choice. Meanwhile many traditional supporters have already been priced out of the stadium and others are feeling increasingly disenchanted and disenfranchised — a phenomenon that will effect merchandising as much as ticket sales and that will continue to eat at the strength of your brand.

As they tell us repeatedly, the English Premier League is a strong brand, but it’s not the only one. And Liverpool, like Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and others, is a brand that’s capable of transcending petty national boundaries and collective bargaining agreements alike. The LFC brand is that strong.

But the brand is in danger, and not because of a few embarrassingly bad performances on the field. The problems run much deeper.

Accept for a moment, the hypothesis that the supporters are the brand – you can validate it later, maybe ask Joe Januszewski? Well, the relationship between the supporters and the club has been deeply damaged, primarily by the ownership of Hicks & Gillet. You know this, of course. You’ve all done sterling work to begin to address it. But not enough.

In a curious way, the epic swindle that removed Hicks & Gillet also removed the common enemy that was keeping the supporters largely united. Now the bond of unity between supporters has begun to unravel. Things are falling apart. The centre may not hold.

The good news is that as supporters we are prepared to dig deep and remain faithful so long, I believe, as the custodians of the club honour our history and our traditions. The bad news is that in Roy Hodgson, you have a manager who does neither.

There is a story – perhaps a fable – about a very successful football club called Leeds United and a very successful football manager called Brian Clough. Clough was appointed to succeed Don Revie, the manager who built Leeds up to be one of the most powerful in Europe. At his first team meeting, Clough told his new players, Don Revie’s players, to throw all their hard-won medals into the trash because they were won by cheating and ugly football. 44 days later, Clough was fired. Leeds has never been a true football power since.

The point of the story is that Clough had no respect for the history or traditions of his new club.

Brian Clough was a remarkably successful football manager. Following the debacle at Leeds he went on to win two successive European Cups with the far from wealthy or glamorous Nottingham Foreset. If Dan Quayle was no Jack Kennedy, then Roy Hodgson is no Brian Clough. And yet Roy Hodgson is our Brian Clough.

We are the wild-hearted outsiders who need to bond with our manager and our players in a battle against the rest of the world. Hodgson’s addicted to media and peer approval and considers us to be, at best, an audience and, at worst, a nuisance .

We expect to win. He’s scared of losing.

We love talented, attacking footballers. He prefers effective automatons.

We call a spade a fucking shovel. He calls it a metallicized digging implement with an extended handular leverage structure and will talk for 45 minutes about how he invented it 35 years ago in Sweden.

I could go on. And on. And on. But I imagine you are all being inundated with complaints about Hodgson, so I won’t. I shall simply say that:

– You should listen to supporters, not the media. The media has no love of Liverpool FC and conspired at the appointment of Hodgson. They have a corpse in their mouth.

– You should protect the value of your brand – the reputation of the relationship between supporters and club. The foundations took decades to build. The edifice can be toppled in a matter of weeks, And rebuilding it – if possible – will be a lengthy and costly exercise.

Of course, you don’t have to respect our history, our traditions, our supporters and the immense contribution we make to the brand. There are other ways to manage the business that is Liverpool FC. Other ways to succeed. You can rebrand us if you like. But ask yourself, how did that work for Coca Cola in 1985? If you don’t want to own Liverpool Classic, why didn’t you just buy Blackburn, or Portsmouth?

Love and kisses

My Very Favourite Hodgo Interview

Everyone’s got one. Their favourite Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson interview ever. And until the pwess confewencth where he blames widicuwous internet tewwowists for losing him his job at Anfield, this is mine. It dates back to 2002 but clearly Hodgo hasn’t changed his methods one iota since then. And why should he?

‘Art of being a good manager doesn’t just disappear’

The Roy Hodgson interview: Nomad of a football coach was as big an influence on the game as Eriksson. Nick Townsend meets a man between jobs with a world of experience

Sunday, 24 March 2002

When you’ve had breakfast with him in Milan when his Internazionale side were flourishing, and a last supper when his days were numbered at Blackburn Rovers, it appears incongruous to bump into Roy Hodgson again at Upton Park and find him summarising on the Hammers’ 5-3 defeat by Manchester United, for Radio 5 Live. Certainly, the coach comes equipped with highly informed views based on vast international experience, but it’s rather like a talented cabinet minister filling in time by appearing on Have I got News For You? He is an eloquent analyst, but his contemplative, and just occasionally irate, visage should be viewed on the touchline, not behind the microphone.

But Hodgson, one of European football’s nomads, accepts his current position philosophically. His dismissal from Udinese in Italy last December has been followed by three months out of work, the Croydon-born coach’s longest absence from the pressures of the game apart from the six months he gave himself to take stock after being sacked by Blackburn at the end of 1998.

He concedes he was not entirely blameless in majority shareholder Giampaolo Pozzo’s decision to terminate his service with the Serie A club. “I was quoted in a newspaper article as saying that it was a mistake to go there, that Inter was a much easier club to work at,” he explains. “But I wanted to leave, so I was quite happy.”

Hence the punditry with Radio 5 Live and Sky TV, and some unpaid work for Uefa. When we met up again later in the week in Richmond, Surrey, where he lives with his wife Sheila, Hodgson had just arrived back from Turin in this week of Anglo-Italian encounters. He had been compiling a report on the Arsenal-Juventus Champions’ League fixture as part of Uefa technical director Andy Roxburgh’s panel of experts. Hodgson has been the manager or coach of nine clubs in five countries, and the national manager of Switzerland. The irony is that, as much as his reputation abroad has on two occasions made him a serious contender for the England job, his principal foray into club management here (he also spent a year at Bristol City in the early Eighties) ended with the late Jack Walker handing him his P45 after an inauspicious start.

“Of course, my track record, if people bothered to study it, would put me in the same category as [Sir Alex] Ferguson enjoys today, but people don’t talk about what I’ve done outside England,” he says. “Here, they just talk about Blackburn Rovers, but that’s just a very small part of a 26-year career. To most English journalists it’s the only part. I’ve got an excellent track record in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and in Denmark, where FC Copenhagen was my last job before I went to Udinese. We won the league there by seven points. Admittedly, the fact that I walked out and went to Italy to some extent tarnished that reputation…”

It was in his first season at Ewood Park – a job he was offered when his long-time friend, one Sven Goran Eriksson, back-tracked on an agreement to become their manager – that his star was truly in the ascendancy. Coach of Internazionale is a badge that will always draw admiring glances in this country. Two Manager of the Month awards ensued as Rovers led the Premiership before finishing sixth. This, the sages confidently predicted, was the next England manager. Before Christmas the following year, he was out.

For a time, his stock inevitably declined. “That’s always the way it will be,” he says. “You can be touted for future glories, then maybe a manager’s fortunes change and the whole attitude towards him changes. Of course, it’s wrong. If you’ve got the ability to be a good manager one minute, then unless people’s judgements are totally wrong, that ability doesn’t just disappear a few months later.”

He adds: “In my case, I don’t think it has. I went abroad again after that, and still I saw that my name was being strongly linked with England. To be fair to the England camp, they obviously saw beyond temporary success or temporary failure to qualities they thought I could bring to the job and all credit to them for that. They looked at my record overall.”

Hodgson’s begins at Halmstads in Sweden as a 28-year-old, after failing to make the grade as a player at Crystal Palace. In tandem initially with Bobby Houghton, he won the championship in his first season at a club apparently destined for relegation. It was around the same time that Eriksson began his coaching career.

“The football that Bob Houghton and I brought to Sweden between 1974 and 1979 fashioned the whole of Swedish success ever since,” says Hodgson who coached seven players who played in a national team that finished third in the 1994 World Cup. “In six years we won five championships between us. When we arrived Swedish clubs were playing man-for-man football all over the field, very Germanic, following the West Germany and Bayern Munich model.

“Then suddenly, from about 1977, a new breed of coaches, with Eriksson probably in the forefront, came along on the back of this and, ever since, the Swedes have played English football really, so much so that in the last 20 years and the last eight games they’ve not been beaten by England. They’ve achieved it by playing the archetypal English football that Bob Houghton and I introduced.”

Hodgson first met Eriksson when the current England coach arrived at Gothenburg. “We met as rivals and, of course, friends because he became the third man, if you like, to really embrace the Bob Houghton-Roy Hodgson style of football. And he went out on a limb to do so, because at that time this type of football still wasn’t generally accepted in Sweden.”

Since then, the Eriksson graph has been one of steady progress to what, in this country, we might consider the summit. Not so, according to Hodgson. “Sven’s career has been on a high-level plateau for many years, since Benfica, since Sampdoria, Fiorentina, Roma, Lazio,” he insists. “It’s arrogant for us to say that he’s reached the pinnacle by becoming coach of England.”

He adds: “It’s a wonderful career. And he’s playing the kind of football with England today as he has for the past 20 years, the way he did when my teams played against his in Sweden and in Italy. He believes in zonal defence, in compact play, pressurising, getting the ball forward quickly to the front players and supporting them, all the good English principles that Manchester United and Arsenal, Leeds and Liverpool show.

“I thought it was a good choice on behalf of the FA. I was sure he’d do a good job, as has been proven the case. But if you’ve been a candidate for the job, and you’d be happy to take it and somebody else gets it, then obviously any feelings you have for them are going to be mitigated by the fact that you wish it had been you.

“It [not being selected] didn’t bother me. I didn’t put myself up as a candidate. I was just pleased to hear that I was being considered. That was an honour in itself. It would have been an even greater honour if they’d said, ‘You’re the man’. But I understood that I was in competition with some other very strong candidates, names like Sven, [Terry] Venables, [Arsène] Wenger, all the top people in the game and you can’t always expect to come out on top. I’m pleased they went for a good man and that it’s working out because I would have been disappointed if they’d passed me over and given it to someone who wasn’t very good and the team had done badly.”

So, how great would be his confidence if Eriksson, say, fell ill and the FA asked him to step in during the summer? “With the quality of football and players we’ve produced and are continuing to produce, there’s no doubt in my mind that England will do themselves justice,” he says. “I’m convinced we’ll see a good England performance in all three games. Given just a reasonable amount of good fortune that their football will merit, we’ll see the team progress and do extremely well. It’s well managed and it’s got good players. But the group they find themselves in is unfortunate. It really is extremely strong.”

While Eriksson moved on to Italy, Hodgson’s choice was Switzerland, coaching the club side Neuchâtel Xamax and then the national team, with whom he qualified for the 1994 World Cup and reached the second round. Two years later, his Swiss team secured a place in Euro ’96 and held Terry Venables’ England 1-1 at Wembley before being eliminated. Internazionale beckoned and optimism was high when he led them to the 1997 Uefa Cup final, losing on penalties to Schalke 04, but failure to win the scudetto made the sack inevitable. And so to Blackburn.

With uncanny timing, a Rovers fan (there’s not too many of them in Richmond) approaches him in the street, shakes hands, and announces that Hodgson should never have departed. “We suddenly found ourselves near the bottom and that persuaded Jack [Walker], who feared for their Premiership status, to panic. But I remain convinced that if I’d stayed at the club Blackburn wouldn’t have been relegated. The players were every bit behind me as they ever were. We would have turned it around.”

It was back to the scenic tour. To Inter again, briefly, as technical director, followed by Grasshoppers of Switzerland, FC Copenhagen and Udinese. Now, the wait. During the hiatus, Hodgson, 54, who speaks four foreign languages fluently – including Swedish for heaven’s sake – and is an insatiable reader of contemporary as well as classic literature (“I’ve just finished John Banville’s Eclipse”) attempts to be patient. “I’m worried that I’ll get bored and take a job when I should have waited for some other better opportunity to come along,” he says. “I’m sufficiently arrogant to think that I don’t have to put myself around. At the same time, if I just disappear, it might be hard for people to find me. But I probably err on the side of being too discreet.”

During this interval, Hodgson is ideally placed to gauge the relative merits of Italian and English football, particularly with recent Champions’ League fortunes and Wednesday’s international at Elland Road in mind. But, radical thinker that he is, he doesn’t follow the predictable line of reasoning on Italian club football.

“It’s too simplistic to say, ‘They didn’t qualify. Therefore they’re crap’,” he says. “Looking at it from a very technical football viewpoint as I do, I’d say that Roma could just as easily qualified from that group as Liverpool or Barcelona. Technically, against Liverpool the other night they looked quite good. But really it’s about the star performers. Roma will suffer badly without a Totti just as Manchester United will suffer from the absence of Beckham or Giggs. Take Zidane or Roberto Carlos out of Real Madrid and replace them with McManaman and Salgado and it’s not the same. Likewise with Juventus. I’m not convinced that Leverkusen or Deportivo La Coruña are better football teams than Juventus or Arsenal. It could just have easily been that pair.”

However, he does concede: “The Italian league will have a lot of soul-searching to do, just as we would in England if we didn’t have any qualifiers next season, which could easily happen. If I was an Italian club chairman or an administrator I would be very concerned.”

Chances are that by the summer he may study that apparent malaise from close quarters as manager of one of their clubs. Though he insists that it is not “a burning ambition”, you suspect that, in truth, Roy Hodgson would relish another stab at the Premiership. Either that or begin his memoirs. They could call it: The Rough Guide to World Football Management.

Food for thought, children. Food for thought.

Standards corrupted?

The case for Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson has been put forward repeatedly. Most often by his biggest admirer, Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson. And it appears to be that:

• Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson is not Rafael Maudes Benitez
• Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson is English
• Gerrard and Carragher like Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson and did not like Rafael Maudes Benitez
• The media likes Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson
• British managers made to look stupid by Rafael Maudes Benitez like Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson
• Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson is one of the most respected coaches in Europe
• Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson won the LMA award for losing a minor European trophy
• Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson has 35 years of experience
• Liverpool FC paid at least a gazillion dorrar to remove Rafael Benitez and replace him with Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson so Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson must be the better man.
• Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson inherited a team that was relegation-bound and needs therefore to be trusted and given all the time in the world to turn things around and put the club back where in belongs – mid-table, at best.

Well, fuck him. Fuck the media. Fuck Gerrard and Carragher. And fuck England and the English. We’re not English, we are Scouse, and we can see right through Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson.

Experience – Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson does not have 35 years of experience. He has the same year repeated 35 times. Football has changed significantly in that time. But Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson has not developed or grown as a manager. And he appears to be proud of the fact
Ahead of the game against Blackpool, the Reds boss was quizzed as to whether his approach might be wrong when it comes to managing Liverpool as opposed to his former club Fulham.

He said: “What do you mean by that? In 35 years how many clubs have I had?

“What do you mean do my methods translate? They have translated from Halmsteds to Malmo to Orebo to Neuchatel Xamax to the Swiss national team.

“So I find the question insulting. To suggest that, because I have moved from one club to another, that the methods which have stood me in good stead for 35 years and made me one of the most respected coaches in Europe don’t suddenly work, is very hard to believe.”

Have I mentioned that Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson is one of the most respected coaches in Europe? Oh, and what was the result in that game against Blackpool?

One Gazillion Dorrar – The astute financial brains that paid to replace the seventh highest rated manager in the world with someone who couldn’t even crack the top 162 also agreed to pay $252 million over ten years for a rounders player called Alex Rodriguez and then – when forced to get his wage bill off their books – agreed to pay $67 million of the $179 million left on his contract just to see him go. And that’s just one example. The money LFC spent on bringing Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson to Anfield is already gone. It’s no reason to keep him here when the cost of doing so will be to destroy – perhaps irretrievably- the fabric of the team and the club  and – quite possibly – relegation and all the financial losses associated with that.

Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson inherited a team that was relegation-bound – Oh fucking really? Last season, we were blighted by bad luck and bad refereeing – the beach ball goal, for example – and by injuries. And apparently plagued by a rift between ageing English players and their more ambitious foriegn team-mates. And we still finished seventh. Which was considered reason enough – by the media, the English players, and those astute financial brains – to fire the seventh highest rated manager in the world – the man who had taken us to two European Cup finals. Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson was supposed to be able to put his arm around the squad, bring everyone back together, and improve on seventh place. So when exactly did the team and the players suddenly become so crap that his job was saving us from relegation and turning everything around? As far as I can tell, it was about twenty minutes after everyone discovered that he was a doddering old shithouse who couldn’t manage his way out of a wet paper bag with a chainsaw. All Hodgo’s supporters realized that he was making them looking like idiots and so they decided to rewrite history to protect themselves and their beloved English manager.

Unfathomable

There is no place for one of the most respected coaches in Europe in the ranks of the 162 Best Coaches 2001-2010.

Seriously. Who the hell do the International Federation of Football History and Statistics think they are?

Good grief! They even placed some Fat Spanish Waiter at seventh. Franklin Rijkaard at eleven. And Manuel Pellegrini at 35. I am appalled.

 

Elite

If I didn’t have a life (of sorts) I could surely waste mine in dissecting every disagreeable and idiotic utterance from the disagreeable idiot Roy “Hodgo” Hodgson. The man simply can’t let a day go past without shooting himself in the foot. However I do have a life (of sorts) and so I am just going to focus on a couple of statements from a single recent interview.

Roy: We’re fighting to find form – 20th Oct 2010 – Latest News

Roy Hodgson today insisted his players are working hard to emerge from their current troubles.

The boss admits his squad is down after a poor run of results, but he’s taking heart from the training sessions since Sunday’s derby defeat where the Reds are showing determination to find their best form.

“The players were very upbeat today,” said Hodgson. “The training session was very good – the intensity and concentration was as good as one would wish to see at any stage in the season. That, in itself, is very commendable when you are down. You can’t deny that we are down. We are down because we aren’t doing what we want to do, because the fans are angry and disappointed in us; we are down because we are at a great club and should be doing better.

“Unfortunately the reason we aren’t doing better is down to a number of factors. But it was great that we all rose above it and got out there and started playing again. Now we badly need that result or run of results that will at least take us into a safer position when we can live and breathe again.”

Liverpool can forget about their league troubles tomorrow night when they turn their focus to a Europa League clash with Napoli in Italy.

With four points from their opening two group games, the Reds are ideally placed to kick on and secure early qualification – but Hodgson insists his side will face a tough test in Italy.

“They are good,” he said. “I spoke to Claudio Ranieri at an elite trainer conference in Nyon not so long back and asked him about the Italian league and where the major threat to so called big clubs come from. He cited Napoli. Apparently they have a new owner, the son of the famous film producer, De Laurentiis.

“A lot of money has been put into the club, they’ve invested in some big name South American players.

“They are taking it very seriously. They are fourth in the league. Whatever team we play will have a tough game. We’ve got great respect for them. We’ve scouted them, we’ve been to see them play twice and done our video analysis.

“It’ll be a chance for at least four or five players that haven’t played so much this year to show me that they should be in the team or that I should be taking them seriously.”

Let’s leave aside his habitual proactive damage limitation exercise of bigging up our opposition. Let’s refuse to be provoked by the suggestion that if we’re lucky enough to win a few games then we might be able to climb out of the relegation zone. Let’s focus instead on

Hodgo’s continuing addiction to his own self-importance and credentials – If you’ve blinked and missed it, he is fond of occasionally reminding us that he is one of the most respected coaches in Europe, the LMA Manager of the Year,  who cost us an arm and a leg in compensation, was welcomed with “pomp and circumstance”, and is far too good to ever manage in Scandanavia again. Even though that’s the only place he’s ever won anything. So of course he was attending an Elite Trainer Conference at Nyon – home of UEFA, donchaknow? I’m only surprised he was prepared to lower himself to the level of the merely elite. Surely UEFA at least had the decency to get someone to bedazzle his conference ID?

Hodgo’s continuing B-Team contempt – Apparently a bunch of ne’er-do-wells that he would have loved to have been able to sign when he was elitely training the Fulham squad now have to fight to get their own manager to take his playing staff seriously. Presumably then it’s their fault he hasn’t been taking his job seriously so far. That might make sense, I suppose. After all, somebody’s got to shoulder the responsibility for everything that’s gone wrong since the highly respected Hodgo arrived at Anfield. And if we can’t pin the blame on Rafa Benitez then it might as well be the B-Team. Still, I’m sure they’re now fully motivated to get Hodgo’ a result in Napoli now. After all, it might be their last chance to get a Euro-elite coach to take them seriously.

Couple of questions:

Is it wrong that I don’t feel even remotely guilty for detesting the manager of Liverpool FC?

Should we read anything into the fact that even the Official Site is allowing Hodgo to shoot off his toes one by one?

Delusional

Honestly, the man is utterly delusional.

Roy Hodgson is the only sentient being in the universe who doesn’t understand how Liverpool lost.

This will be an interesting first test for the New Owners. And for the Dalglish/Purslow axis. I imagine Fernando Torres will become the scapegoat. After all, it’s not like he’s English or anything.