When Roy Hodgson was sacked by Liverpool he peddled a defence which was widely swallowed and served to insulate his reputation as a top coach.
It was the fans wot did it. According to Roy, every Kopite had wanted Kenny Dalglish, not him, to replace Rafa Benitez, so he was doomed from the off.
But it wasn’t true. The majority of supporters may have been underwhelmed by Hodgson’s appointment in 2010, but willed him to succeed.
That majority only started calling for Dalglish five months into Hodgson’s reign when they were in despair over his woeful signings, negative tactics, inability to motivate top players and make decisive tactical changes and a defeatist attitude which showed undue respect to their fiercest opponents.
Oh, and that face-rubbing touchline impression he did, whenever the pressure built, of a hamster who’d fallen off his wheel.
They concluded Hodgson was a man to set-up teams to climb from the bottom half of the table into the top, but lacked the sophistication to take a big club that had under-achieved for years back into the elite.
Kopites didn’t drive him out they sussed him out.
And I’m sensing the same is happening with England fans who, on Tuesday, saw the same Hodgson who inhabited the Anfield dug-out. A troubled man, rubbing his face, paralysed with indecision, unable to respond to the tactical changes made by his opponent and looking out of his depth.
Then, adding insult to injury, the inevitable defeatist post-game spin which merely confirmed the worst fears: “I thought we hung on quite well” he said, after a draw with mighty Montenegro, before lowering expectations below the floorboards by hinting that England may now be looking at getting to next year’s World Cup via the play-offs.
Happy 150th anniversary FA. You laud yourself as being in charge of the biggest footballing country on earth. But one struggling to top a group ahead of a nation with a population of 630,000 and an average FIFA ranking of 84.
There may well be, as the cliche goes, few easy games left at international level, but had Sven Goran Eriksson or Fabio Capello been in charge, England’s place in Brazil would now be assured. They breezed through every qualifying group they faced and would have done in this.
I don’t want the FA to sack Hodgson. I’d just like to get this question in now before it’s widely asked when the obituaries are written on his England career: Why did they appoint him?
Surely failing so miserably, so recently, in his one shot at managing a big English club should have made them question whether he has what it takes to do it at the highest level. At the time, the low-key, behind-closed-doors way he was given the job had the same feel as his Liverpool recruitment.
He was hired by worried men not because of who he was, but who he wasn’t: Rafa Benitez at Anfield, Harry Redknapp at England, both boat-rocking characters, perceived to have baggage, who like to do it their way.
It was a safe, old-school, he’s a respected Englishman who’s earned his shot at the national job appointment. It was Graham Taylor Mark II.
And I fear his end may prove as undignified as the Turnip’s when his head is turned into a piece of fruit or veg after a crushing defeat against a decent side.
Which could be as soon as the November play-offs against, say, Belgium in Brussels (“Sprout of this World”) or next summer after an early plane home from Brazil (CopacaBanana?)
Lettuce pray I’m wrong.
I will enjoy listening to all the England fans who critisised us for our treatment of him complaining about the job he's doing in charge of the England team 
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