Pack your bags Roy

[vonk]

Maybe we could get Coyle to swap benches on Saturday. Wouldn't mind him I have to say.

[Shaggy]

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news...#ixzz19diLmsZ7

Hodgson has two weeks to save himself



Published 23:00 30/12/10 By David Anderson

Roy Hodgson has two weeks to save himself at Liverpool as the American owners begin to lose faith in him.

It is understood John W Henry and parent company NESV feel Hodgson blundered in attacking the fans for booing him during the shock home defeat to Wolves.

They are also said to be dismayed by the team's limp showing and fear Hodgson may have lost the players.

NESV are refusing to panic and have not called a board meeting to discuss Hodgson's future before tomorrow's clash with Bolton at Anfield.

But it is clear they are losing patience with the former Fulham boss and expect a rapid improvement.

Defeat at home to Bolton tomorrow would leave Hodgson on the brink, and after that Liverpool travel to Blackburn and Blackpool in the league plus Manchester United in the FA Cup before the Merseyside derby at Anfield on January 16.

The pressure on Hodgson is already reaching breaking point and Liverpool's miserable tally of 22 points is the lowest going into a new year for 57 years.

They are just three points off the relegation zone and have won just six league games all season.

This is totally unacceptable for Henry and NESV, whose target is to make Liverpool one of the best teams in the land again.

They were determined to give Hodgson time when they took over in October and still hope he can carry on at least until the end of the season.

Despite the Kop's calls for Kenny Dalglish, they do not want to appoint the Anfield legend as caretaker boss and would prefer not to go looking for a new manager in January.

However they are not prepared to let Liverpool's slide continue and will act if they feel Hodgson cannot turn the club around.

[Arn]

So Arn, i dont think you've mentioned it yet - who would you like to see as our manager?

My first choice is Rafa

We need someone that is prepared to give 100% for the club the next 10+ years. Someone that won't walk away even if he is offered the job at Real or Barca. Someone we know WILL stay and build up a legacy.

I doubt that Villas Boas for example would do that or Rijkaard. Would Rijkaard for example turn down the chance if he was offered the job at AC Milan?

We need long term stability.

We need a manager that put us as his number one whatever other offer that comes up from other clubs.

[Shaggy]

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news...#ixzz19di813nN

Fan rift too deep for Hodgson to repair, says Lawrenson



Published 23:00 30/12/10 By Darren Lewis

This is first time that I can remember a Liverpool manager having the fans turn on him after such a short time in the job.

Roy Hodgson has been that what, five months? And yet the fans are not happy because they have seen the way he sets out his teams home and away and they are not impressed.

I think he is a lucky man though, because the new owners appear not to be of the knee-jerk variety. They seem more inclined to take the softly, softly approach.

It strikes me that they are wondering what the benefits of sacking Roy would actually be. Who else is out there, for example and who that person could bring in during the January transfer window that would improve things.

Because despite what people may think, you have to be very, very lucky to get someone in mid-season who will actually improve you.

That said, you can't hoodwink Liverpool supporters. Roy has had a go and expressed his frustration at the fans but they in turn want to see a Liverpool side that they can be proud of.

They have had a look at his teams and it has not been good enough.

At the moment it is so negative and sadly, they are not even in with a chance of the top four. Right now it's touch and go for the top half at best.

[pezzzer]

You've gotta give them something

come on craig you WERE RAFA'S BIGGEST HATER you cant knock arn for wanting him back, as you do too

[RichC]

OH MY GOD - What planet does this old fool live on!!

[Craig_H]

Superb article, by Kettle.

[sean_lfc]

Together with Pako Ayesteran and Alex Miller he left the team hotel with the intention of finding somewhere quiet to watch the second half of the Chelsea v Barcelona game.

But for once he misjudged the situation.

What followed has already passed into folklore, with every Liverpool fan under the sun now claiming to have been there when 'Rafa went the pub to see the lads'.

"It was fantastic. We went out to see the second part of the Chelsea game but we only ended up seeing our supporters," Benitez told Liverpoolfc.tv in an exclusive interview at Melwood today.

"The atmosphere was amazing and we could really feel it. Normally we only see or hear them in the stands so it was fantastic to meet them close up.

"I was not expecting there to be so many Liverpool fans in Germany. Just before going into the Irish bar we thought there might be some fans in there but not that many!

"We tried to sneak in without anyone noticing and I said to the first fan 'ssshhhhh be quiet', but next thing the whole place erupted and everyone was singing 'Rafa-Rafa-Benitez'.

"I stayed for about 50 minutes but it was impossible to watch the game after that. All the fans gathered around me, singing, shaking my hand and taking photographs with their mobile telephones. I told them to forget about me and watch the game but it was impossible.

"The singing continued all the time I was there. It was great. The fans of this club are totally different to those in Spain. In my third year at Valencia the fans began to sing but here they have been singing since I arrived. They are always singing. And to experience it at close hand in the pub was just fantastic."

So will a trip to the pub now be part of Rafa's regular pre-match routine, especially as it was followed by a memorable win on the pitch?

"Oh no," he laughs. "Normally we will be in the hotel concentrating. It was only because there were important games on the TV and we couldn't watch them in the hotel."

The high esteem in which Benitez is held by the Liverpool fans has certainly reached new heights following the midweek trip to Cologne.

Liverpool fans lift aloft a photograph of Rafael BenitezBut his soaring popularity was best illustrated prior to the Carling Cup Final in Cardiff when a group of supporters paraded through the streets holding a giant framed picture of the 'Rafa-tollah'.

"Yes, I have seen the pictures," he says with a beaming smile across his face. "I must say I was both surprised and impressed.

"It is not normal in Spain, maybe Iran but not Spain! It's a kudos thing and for me as a manager it was fantastic to see the fans showing their support for me in such a way.

"It was just a pity we couldn't have won the final for these supporters and all of our other supporters but I can assure them that we are doing all we can to give them some trophies to celebrate in the future."

He really is one with us.

[Rudo]

Lawro talking sense for once.

[Craig_H]

come on craig you WERE RAFA'S BIGGEST HATER you cant knock arn for wanting him back, as you do too

And i'm not.

And please dont post all that old mother hubbard about 'hating Rafa' - seriously, it's playground pathetic at best.

[Craig_H]

My first is Rafa

We need someone that is prepared to give 100% for the club the next 10+ years. Someone that won't walk away even if he is offered the job at Real or Barca. Someone we know WILL stay and build up a legacy.

I doubt that Villas Boas for example would do that or Rijkaard. Would Rijkaard for example turn down the chance if he was offered the job at AC Milan?

We need long term stability.

We need a manager that put us as his number one whatever other offer that comes up from other clubs.

No no no....make it stop

Only messing mate. I think most of us have an inkling about how you feel

[Craig_H]

Together with Pako Ayesteran and Alex Miller he left the team hotel with the intention of finding somewhere quiet to watch the second half of the Chelsea v Barcelona game.

But for once he misjudged the situation.

What followed has already passed into folklore, with every Liverpool fan under the sun now claiming to have been there when 'Rafa went the pub to see the lads'.

"It was fantastic. We went out to see the second part of the Chelsea game but we only ended up seeing our supporters," Benitez told Liverpoolfc.tv in an exclusive interview at Melwood today.

"The atmosphere was amazing and we could really feel it. Normally we only see or hear them in the stands so it was fantastic to meet them close up.

"I was not expecting there to be so many Liverpool fans in Germany. Just before going into the Irish bar we thought there might be some fans in there but not that many!

"We tried to sneak in without anyone noticing and I said to the first fan 'ssshhhhh be quiet', but next thing the whole place erupted and everyone was singing 'Rafa-Rafa-Benitez'.

"I stayed for about 50 minutes but it was impossible to watch the game after that. All the fans gathered around me, singing, shaking my hand and taking photographs with their mobile telephones. I told them to forget about me and watch the game but it was impossible.

"The singing continued all the time I was there. It was great. The fans of this club are totally different to those in Spain. In my third year at Valencia the fans began to sing but here they have been singing since I arrived. They are always singing. And to experience it at close hand in the pub was just fantastic."

So will a trip to the pub now be part of Rafa's regular pre-match routine, especially as it was followed by a memorable win on the pitch?

"Oh no," he laughs. "Normally we will be in the hotel concentrating. It was only because there were important games on the TV and we couldn't watch them in the hotel."

The high esteem in which Benitez is held by the Liverpool fans has certainly reached new heights following the midweek trip to Cologne.

Liverpool fans lift aloft a photograph of Rafael BenitezBut his soaring popularity was best illustrated prior to the Carling Cup Final in Cardiff when a group of supporters paraded through the streets holding a giant framed picture of the 'Rafa-tollah'.

"Yes, I have seen the pictures," he says with a beaming smile across his face. "I must say I was both surprised and impressed.

"It is not normal in Spain, maybe Iran but not Spain! It's a kudos thing and for me as a manager it was fantastic to see the fans showing their support for me in such a way.

"It was just a pity we couldn't have won the final for these supporters and all of our other supporters but I can assure them that we are doing all we can to give them some trophies to celebrate in the future."










He really is one with us.

[sean_lfc]

He will be back, I'm in talks with the universe to make it ****ing happen!!!

[Shaggy]

Here's the full interview from ever the braggart Roy Hodgson in 2002.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/art-of-being-a-good-manager-doesnt-just-disappear-655164.html

'Art of being a good manager doesn't just disappear'

Sunday, 24 March 2002

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

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.

Biography: Roy Hodgson

Born: 9 August 1947, Croydon.

Family: Married to Sheila, one son.

Background: Trained as PE teacher, speaks five languages.

Playing career: Midfielder, on Crystal Palace books as youngster, moved to Maidstone Utd, then Berea Park in South Africa.

Managerial/coaching career: 1976: Coach, Halmstads in Sweden, won championship. 1980: Assisted Bobby Houghton at Bristol City. 1981: Coach, Orebro, Sweden. 1982: Manager, Bristol City. 1983: Coach, Malmo, Sweden, won five successive championships and two cups. 1990: Coach, Neuchatel Xamax. 1992: Coach, Switzerland, inc 1994 World Cup, 1996 European Championship. 1996: Coach, Internazionale of Milan, reached 1997 Uefa Cup final. 1997: Manager, Blackburn Rovers, 6th in first season. 1998: Technical director, Internazionale. 1999: Coach, Grasshoppers, Switzerland. 2000: Coach, FC Copenhagen. 2001:

[pezzzer]

And i'm not.

And please dont post all that old mother hubbard about 'hating Rafa' - seriously, it's playground pathetic at best.

craig mate, i agree with a lot of the stuff u say but mentioning your hatred towards rafa is not playground ffs, how many times do you bring up other peoples posts??????????