Hodgson - I dont know why I'm here; smint?

[Lee]

Has he been sacked yet?

[sean_lfc]

LOOOOOOOOOL

[Ben_Itez]

Some quotes and snippets from a guardian article:

Hodgson also intends to telephone Redknapp. "We've been friends for years and he wouldn't welcome any 'sympathy'," said Hodgson. "There'll be 'empathy'. He sent me a nice voicemail, and I'd like to think I would have done the same for him. I never assumed or expected to be appointed but I wouldn't say I was particularly surprised. I had the right to hope, given my CV, that the FA would choose me. No one in my family tried to talk me out of taking it, albeit I realise what I'm going into. I'm not naive and have been in football a long while. We're dealing with enormous expectations, but this is a marvellous honour."

Hodgson, who may seek to recruit Mike Kelly and Ray Lewington to his backroom staff....

"But it's pretty evident that, if you want to impose yourself on a group of players and have an effect on them, that's not going to happen overnight. It is a process. I'm rather hoping everyone will get behind me and give us the chance of the success we would like."

At Liverpool, where Hodgson endured an unhappy 191 days in charge, the 64-year-old perceived he had suffered because he was not Kenny Dalglish, a situation he potentially faces again, with Redknapp the populist choice for the England post.

"I'd have to be on another planet not to be aware of that situation," said Hodgson. "But there is one major difference between my time at Liverpool and being offered the job as England manager: the people at Liverpool who appointed me didn't have a chance to stay very long because others took over the club, whereas the FA had a lot of time to decide which candidate they wanted to do the job. I'm proud to accept it.

"It's difficult to say what would constitute 'success' at Euro 2012. One is tempted to say, because it's England, that success is only reaching the latter stages of the finals, even tempted to say success would only be winning [the tournament]. But I'd like people to cut us a bit of slack. The resignation of Fabio Capello has made the situation somewhat different. Fabio had been doing all the work with the players and preparing the team but I'm only going to have been here a short period of time.




Wont be long before he's talking up all England's opponents in the Euros and saying that they'll be lucky to get out of their group.

[Lee]

His CV again.

If anyone bothers to read his CV then they'll see that he's a ****ing fraud.

And a four year contract?! He'll snuff it before he sees that contract out. Still, it'd save giving him a payoff I suppose.

[Gibbo]

Hodgson can **** off.

His face is what I imagine an elephants bollocks to look like.

[Rich]

Jeez, saying he'll snuff it is a bit harsh.

[sean_lfc]

That's an insult to elephants around the world!!!

[Buzzo]

Jeez, saying he'll snuff it is a bit harsh.

I think Lee is implying that Roy has previously failed to see out his longer contracts

[Rich]

I think Lee is implying that Roy has previously failed to see out his longer contracts

Hardly Lightyear, hardly

Still Hodgson for England! Ra ra ra

[Ben_Itez]

A different guardian article, got to love his quotes at the bottom. Excuses his dismal record second time round at Inter, subtly criticises Capello and the players, bigs up France, Sweden, Ukraine etc whilst saying how difficult it will be for him

Roy Hodgson faces difficult days to defeat disenchantment with England

The new manager made an impressive start but his to-do list before the France game is staggering


Daniel Taylor

The first impressions were good. Roy Hodgson handled it well. He spoke with clarity and reason and there was the clear sense of a man who felt in control, a decent man in a difficult situation, happy to maintain eye contact and backing himself to make a decent fist of it.

So that was the first press conference ticked off. Now comes the really hard part and the most relevant question of the lot when the European Championship is getting so close and England's preparations have been so jumbled and chaotic.

It is whether Hodgson can put together a fully integrated plan when there is so much to do and so little time. Sir Trevor Brooking, one of the four Football Association executives seated alongside Hodgson, described it as a new manager being "parachuted in". What he failed to say was that Hodgson has not been dropped on a nice patch of grass. It may feel more like concrete when the new England manager considers everything that has to be done to re-establish a sense of order and structure.

Hodgson may have a four-year contract but, first and foremost, this job has to be about short-termism. There can be no other way when England's first game against France is so near. Forty days away, to be precise. "Forty days and 40 nights," Hodgson put it. It was one of the few moments when his facial expression changed and there was something close to a grimace. "I'm going to be working some long hours. But no one said it should be easy. No one, when they asked if I'd like to be England manager, said it would be an easy job and I'd look forward to some sunny, pleasant days ahead."

In total, he will not even have a month to concentrate exclusively on England given that he now has, in effect, two jobs. On the one hand, Hodgson will continue as West Bromwich Albion's manager for their final two games of the season. On the other, his new job comes with a to-do list that would challenge even the most formidable men in his profession.

To recap, Hodgson has a matter of weeks to identify and appoint his backroom staff, work out the best possible squad, select a captain, devise a formation, invoke a spirit of togetherness and, not forgetting, put in place an entirely separate strategy to compensate for the first two games when Wayne Rooney is suspended.

Before then, he has to decide on the players he wants to take to a training camp in Marbella and go through all the logistics that Stuart Pearce has put in place to decide whether he wants to do it differently. At some point, he will also have to sort out whatever is going on between John Terry and Rio Ferdinand and establish not just whether they are willing to work with one another but the dynamics of how two senior players being in open conflict is going to affect the rest of the players. "I'll have to get in touch with John and Rio to speak to them, hopefully face to face, and find out where they are in this situation. And not just those two. I'll have to speak to as many senior players as I can."

If he has time, he may also want to make a quick telephone call to Paul Scholes to float the idea of coming out of international retirement, even if he probably already knows the answer. Other players will be contacted and meetings arranged just for Hodgson to introduce himself. Ben Foster, his goalkeeper at Albion, may be asked, like Scholes, to return to the England set-up. When Hodgson will actually get time to look through all the videos and scouting reports of the players from France, Sweden and Ukraine, only he knows.

All this, and Hodgson knows he is inheriting a squad that, by his own admission, had expected and wanted Harry Redknapp. By the time Hodgson sat down, there still had not been a single England player to back his appointment publicly. All of which would not have been so noticeable had there not been such a stampede of players chirruping in support of Redknapp after Fabio Capello's resignation. "I'd have to be on another planet not to be aware of that situation," Hodgson conceded.

Redknapp, he said, has been in contact. "He sent me a nice voicemail and I'd like to think I would have done the same for him. We've been friends for a long time and I hope we can remain friends. We've unwittingly become rivals but I hope there are no hard feelings."

This is the way football works and Hodgson has nothing to be ashamed of.

Ultimately, it came down to the decision of the FA and, put simply, it concluded that he was the better man for the job. "This is the first time that England have ever appointed a manager who already has international experience," the FA chairman, David Bernstein, noted during a long eulogy about the manager's past achievements. What happened at Liverpool was quickly glossed over.

Hodgson learned the news in a telephone call from the Albion chairman, Jeremy Peace, at 2pm on Sunday. "My first thought was one of great satisfaction and pleasure, being very happy that the choice had fallen my way."

But there was an admission, too, that this was a time when the relationship between the national team and the English public needed to be soothed. "I don't like the idea that the fans are disenchanted with the team, or the idea that supporters feel like that when they have supported the national team through thick and thin. It's been pretty thin if you go back to national success since 1966. But I think they will get behind the team if we give them something to be excited about."

It was his job, he explained, to put in place something more positive. Hodgson has seen just about every England game at the new Wembley and he talked of seeing players who might have lost the enjoyment of being involved with the national team. Later, he drew a comparison with his second spell at Internazionale when he detected there were players who were "scared" of being in front of the San Siro crowd.

But a shift in mood can take time to put in place. Hodgson was asked what would constitute a successful summer in Poland and Ukraine and there was a distinct lack of tub-thumping. "It's a difficult question. I would be very, very disappointed if we didn't get out of the group, albeit it's a difficult group with France, Sweden and the host nation Ukraine. But the European Championship is tough.

"One is tempted to say, because it's England, that success is only reaching the latter stages of the finals; even tempted to say success would only be winning. Realistically, though, I'd like people to cut us a bit of slack in that respect. The resignation of Fabio Capello has made the situation somewhat different. I'm only going to have a short period of time.

[ChesterDave]

Hodgson can **** off.

His face is what I imagine an elephants bollocks to look like.

Imagine no more!

[Chazza]

Won't ask how you 'stumbled' across that website Dave

[Gibbo]

Imagine no more!

Whatever floats your boat Dave.

Our lass now thinks im some sort of wierdo as shes sat next to me in bed

[Buzzo]

Hardly Lightyear, hardly

Still Hodgson for England! Ra ra ra

[colin85]

clicked on the link, but will not click on anything else in there.
Someone else can let us know what you see.