“THESE things happen.”
They do.
They did.
These things happen.
They happened in Liverpool, Blackburn and Inter Milan. They happened, these things. They happen.
The facts about these things, the things which happen, all the facts that were ever needed, were present on April 30, 2012. On that day, had anyone decided to look at the list of things which happen to sides that Roy Hodgson manages, they would have drawn the conclusion that these things were really rather common. That Roy Hodgson smells of thirteenth. That he is made of it. That he can bring practically anyone, from the worst player in the top flight to Lionel Messi to that level. This is what he does.
I would go further – 37% man pic.twitter.com/RY2JQfBeuP
— Sean Rogers (@Sean_Rogers) June 27, 2016
1 There's a quote from one of Roy Hodgson's former West Brom players in a piece by @DickinsonTimes today that I think sums him up perfectly.
— Tony Barrett (@TonyBarrett) June 28, 2016
2 “Roy makes bad players average. But he makes good players average too."
— Tony Barrett (@TonyBarrett) June 28, 2016
That these things happen. And they kept happening. And happening.
Maybe occasionally a side of his can over-perform and before you know where you are there are a ton of mildly annoyed Fulham supporters acting the goat. Maybe occasionally a side of his can under-perform. That is what happened against Iceland. A football team created in the mediocre image of its manager dropped below mediocre. Dropped a long way below. It happens. It is one of those things.
The best thing about “these things happen” is the passivity inherent within that sentence. What can he be expected to do about these things? They happen.
Hodgson just sends them out and then what will be will be. What will happen will happen. And they always happen to him first for he is a manager — a man — whose first thought is about how much these things which happen do so to him. Not to a team or supporters, but to him personally first and foremost. He is sure everyone is disappointed but his disappointment is of the first rank.
The discussion shouldn’t simply be about how bad Hodgson was, that he disgraced himself and his house of cards career in front of the nation, in front of the continent — we’ve done that. We were doing that in 2012 and in 2014. The discussion should be “How Hodgson?”.
How Hodgson is a complex thing, bigger than some words on a Liverpool-supporting website such as this one. It brings in a lot of issues about this house of cards nation of ours — a national game run by an organisation which isn’t fit for purpose, which abnegates its duty regularly, which is contemptuous of clubs and players and supporters up and down the country and is convinced it is better than those it is supposed to represent, effectively picked a manager they felt was one of them. Someone they could do business with. An Englishman, a southern Englishman, travelled, corporate, comes with his own blazer.
Roy Hodgson is the lies the Football Association tells itself about itself and those lies are so engrained that Hodgson was able to survive what was simply, indisputably, the worst World Cup campaign in England’s history. He was able to do so with his reputation mostly intact through a nationwide level of expectation management far, far better than his actual football management.
Read: ‘The Hodge Files’ – The Very Worst of Hodgson’s Quotes During His Time At Liverpool FC
What helped perpetuate Hodgson is that this nation has become one with easily managed expectations publicly. The coverage prior to the Iceland game was that he had to win or his job would be gone — as though that was the test. That he failed even that doesn’t demonstrate how disgracefully low belief has become in the national side. This isn’t about being arrogant or over-confident, but simply saying the side with the first or second best striking options in the tournament shouldn’t show fear against any side.
There was lots of fear. There always is with Hodgson.
How Hodgson happened and how Hodgson kept happening is related to the British football press. When discussing how these things happen, Hodgson ended it thanking the press. A press which has mostly doffed its cap and tugged its forelock in his general direction because he comes across as a man you can deal with, a good man, a reader because part of how Hodgson is that Roy Hodgson reads books. Roy of the readers, indeed.
Anyone who got within a mile of Hodgson at Liverpool pressers will know this is the real him and that all the "good man" chat is guff.
— Chris Brereton (@chrisbrereton1) June 28, 2016
He and those who champion him and his reading give books a bad name. Give thoughts and ideas a bad name. Reading as a badge of honour, not as the start of enquiry into the world, the discovery of new useful ideas. A middle brow smugness, an unpleasant sneer. This is what Middle England sounds like when it thinks about football, sneering at a young black man with too much money:
This Martin Henderson article still rankles. "Has Raheem Sterling read a book? Hodgson has." https://t.co/0QV31SlASg pic.twitter.com/rLpQtGSciD
— Dave Phillips (@lovefutebol) June 28, 2016
How Hodgson? He is the man Henry Winter referred to as a “Broadsheet man in a tabloid world”, a sentence that rings true when you look at most editions of most broadsheets. Out of touch, self-satisfied, printed and overseen in the south of England, unsure of their place in the world. Again, “How Hodgson?” is greater than just Hodgson, our discourse dominated by an ever-shrinking Overton Window which kills both ideas and rigour. Do remember that sacking Hodgson was unthinkable after Andrea Pirlo sauntered around centre mid in 2012. Unthinkable.
People liked how Hodgson spoke. He spoke like a man who knew what was going on. He did know what was going on. Events that were broadly speaking nothing to do with him and that was the way he liked it. Having sympathy about the lives of those who probably don’t read books? Not for the likes of us. How happy so many were to have a man who sounded like he knew what was going on. A man who sounded like us.
Roy Hodgson is the wilfully ignorant complacency not of English football, but of the elite of English football — the administrators, its treatment by government and those who oversee the mainstream written, audio and visual media.
While these media managers love the cant right now — gallons of cant. Cant in your bellybutton, cant in your ears — they, like the administrative elite, cannot be bothered to look at issues central to the game on the whole until forced to, however much work good journalists try to do.
Hands off, feet up, trebles all round, chaps.
Not bothering to travel to Swansea until someone points out travelling to Swansea hasn’t happened and then there like a shot. See it as a metaphor for the whole wretched show since the Premier League was formed if you like. See it as a precursor for not bothering to watch Iceland in person and swanning off to Paris if you want. Just see it and don’t stop looking at it. Remember these well-to-do gentlemen tend to believe they are born to lead and tend not to be very good at it.
Not sure it's a good idea for Martin Glenn to say "I'm not a football expert" twice.
— Tony Barrett (@TonyBarrett) June 28, 2016
Hodgson’s career ends in disgrace. That it undoubtedly shouldn’t be the only one is both integral and neither here nor there. “How Hodgson?” is partially answered by “When Hodgson?”. The whole of Britain, as ever led by the South of England whether it likes it or not, when the wheels fell off is part of Hodgson.
Not fit for purpose. Not good enough. Not varied enough.
Roy Hodgson, and all those who enable him make the world smaller. And then, even then, they cannot deal with the world.
Hodgson’s career ends in disgrace.
“Hodge” -noun, something quite poor, of low quality, very disappointing
i.e. “This kebab is a bit hodge” or
feelings of discomfort, unease and malaise
i.e “I feel a bit hodge, must be that kebab I had earlier”
“To Hodge” -verb, ( past tense ) opposite of “to do a Leicester”, to complete an act far worse than you envisaged, failure in the face of assumed triumph, to snatch defeat from the jaws of success
i.e “I thought I’d make it to the toilet but hodged it and shat myself”
Bravo. Take a bow, Guitaroboy. Brilliant.
i’m glad you picked up on the ‘these things happen’ line. It’s been ringing in my ears since that press conference. The dismissiveness of it. The ‘oh well nevermind eh’ of it. The idea that it was just something beyond his control.
It’s hard to know what to say. I dislike Hodge so much it’s ridiculous. I thought he was, as Neil says, a C+ manager. I thought the last World Cup was his level. But the ineptitude he showed in this tournament was flabbergasting.
A very decent set of strikers, good attacking fullbacks, no wingers – so let’s play 4-3-3. How Hodgson indeed. I honestly believe that had he sent the same 11 players out in a diamond with no instructions whatsoever, they probably would have been okay. In fact, I really thought, right up until the last, that it might occur to him that 4-4-2, the one way he knows how to play, would suit this squad. As Neil says, that Iceland was even a test.
Good riddance Roy. Actually Roy, vaffanculo.
Pretty we can’t say goodbye to everything else Neil talks about in his excellent article. Competence in well-paid positions of influence. That would be utopia.
Great stuff, Neil.
I got dogs’ abuse from some bastard for saying I was kicking a man while he was down and he is a decent man and doesn’t deserve me ridiculing him. Fuck him and fuck those brainwashed Little Englanders
Excellent read, Neil.
Hodgson has been the biggest fraud in football management for close to 30 years.
Speaks volumes that the FA chose to ignore his track record cos he was’one of them’.
Hodgson is a smug twat who epitomizes everything I detest about that certain kind of Englishmen. The kind that have just taken the country over a cliff.
How fitting, then, that his first utterings at the press conf were ‘I don’t know why I’m here’.
Well we did, Roy, as you were the Emperor without the clothes.
A complete twat and utter disgrace.
Put that as his epitaph.
A complete twat and utter disgrace.
Put that as his epitaph.
Spot on.
Out of his depth by 20 years or so. Would make a great politician in the current climate. Terrible manager.
I honestly believe that you’d be hard pushed to find anyone who could do a worse job with some fairly decent players. Couldn’t inspire a four year old, let alone adults.
At least he’s gone now. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I truly struggle when trying to think of a manager as outright unlikeable as Hodgson. At least with Mourinho there is a small element of panto.
The sheer state of the man. I knew yesterday’s press conference was going to be an absolute clinic in blame avoidance and subtle distancing of himself from abject failure – as Liverpool fans I suspect we all did. In regards to this he truly master. My personal favourite was him even managing to blame his appearance at the press conference itself on someone else: ‘I was told it was important for me to be here.’ Yeah, sorry Roy, resigning within seventeen seconds of losing to a nation with a population size roughly proportionate to the amount of clubs you’ve managed and running away to your bedroom wasn’t really going to wash.
Dick.
*he truly is a master
That was a brutal read laying out the brutal truth. Sensational article that ought to be read all over England.
An ex Liverpool player who used to walk his dogs in the park with us, used to avoid talking about work. The only time he ever said anything of any substance, was the time he let slip his thoughts on his manager. “Roy Hodgson is a very weak man”. Words from his mouth.
I’m going… Agger?
Deffo Calderstones park (Caldies)
Finishing bottom of a World Cup group won by Costa Rica isn’t C+. That Iceland game certainly wasn’t either. More Aston Villa of last season than getting West Brom/Fulham mid tableish.
That prepped resignation statement read out all of about five odd minutes after walking down the tunnel with no further questioning allowed was one of the most pitiful acts in the history of football management. An embarrassment to his profession.
I’ve seen Henry Winter on the telly talking over Skype trying to absolve Hodgson like the cowardly little bitch that he is. I can see how he empathises with Hodgson so much because he’s stealing a living as well.
I think the question on everybody’s lips is: can Gareth Southgate finally stop these things from happening to the English? Didn’t a Middlesbrough fan manage to run to the dugout and throw his season ticket at him? Lol
Excellent piece. Captures what I think and how I feel regarding Hodgson perfectly. In the real world idiots without a plan or any nous are exposed. I just regret that it took so long for Hodgson, as the England team could have done far more.
I could not give a flying fuck about England. Hopefully the UK is about to fall apart.
Hodgson is the perfect representative of England. Old, irrelevant and not very competent, but utterly deluded over its ability and unable to see it’s blatant inability.
Fuck England. Scouse not English.
Who should replace the grey, face- rubbing turd though?
If I didn’t like him so much I’d say Rafa. Ace tactician and organiser and a winner at the highest level. And probably available too- shouldn’t be wasting his talent in the Championship.
Is fucking right Neil. Stood up an applauded that when I finished reading it. Hodgson is a cunt of a man we all knew it, they wouldn’t have it though.
Love all this from his Wiki page:
“Hodgson was sacked two months later on 21 November 1998, with Blackburn bottom of the league table.[27] As Hodgson later explained, Blackburn’s owner gave him the chance to resign honourably, but he refused to do so, leaving the club with no option but to sack him: “To Blackburn’s honour, Jack Walker wanted me to resign, he wanted to still pay for the rest of my contract. He said, ‘Why don’t you resign? You’ve had enough, it’s not working out.’ I refused to do that, arrogant of course as I was in those days. I thought if they stuck with me I’d save them from relegation. I do think that the players were very much still with me, so I couldn’t resign because that would be a suggestion that in some way I was doing something or something was happening which I didn’t see to be the case or the truth. I gave him no choice but to sack me”.[32] His final game was a home defeat by Southampton.[27][33]
Hodgson later complained that his failure at Blackburn tarnished his reputation in England, whilst his record on the continent should have made him comparable to Sir Alex Ferguson: “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”
“Comes with his own blazer” summed up to perfection the appointment.
The face rubbing and watches.
Joachim Loew takes face rubbing to a new level though he picks his own arse winnits rolls them up and sniffs them while on the sidelines, truely remarkable youtube it.
Hodge: Truly a fart of our time
That’s a really devastating piece, Neil Atkinson. I’m cringing and wincing at it. I’m also struggling to disagree with any of it. Okay, I’ll stop struggling. You’re spot on.
Hodge. Deffo a corporate beast, in that he – to pinch a Noam Chomsky quote – ‘privatises the profits, and socialises the losses’.
Delighted that the Owl has been exposed as the charlatan he is. I couldn’t believe how easy a ride he’d been getting from the press up until now. It was obvious to almost every Liverpool fan after a month or so of taking charge of Liverpool that he was incompetent. He might read Milan Kundera but that doesn’t make him clever, despite what Henry Winter might say.,
Watching the Iceland game, it struck me that Hodgson would have been much better suited to being the Iceland manager and he might even have done quite well at that. .
It’s extraordinary, still not even the slightest hint of a mea culpa from the media who:
1. Campaigned for Hodgson to get the Liverpool job
2. Excused his failure with us and blamed the fans
3. Campaigned for him to get the England job
4. Let him off scott-free after Brazil
Let us Liverpool fans NEVER forget, we were subjected to daily criticism from the likes of Winter, Samuel, Barclay, Hayward, Paul Wilson and MANY others (the vast majority of the football media in the UK) for not appreciating the genius of Hodgson. WE were the problem, apparently, and not the clown who couldn’t pick the right players, play the players in their right positions, give anything resembling clear tactical instruction and who described Northampton Town as ‘formidable’ opponents!
Even now, not one of these fuckwit Little Englander toads will entertain the idea that, lo-and-behold, the Scousers might, well, you know, have been kinda right…?
Hodgson always appealed to these cretins because they saw Hodgson as one of them – a nobody with fuck all football credibility who had somehow, through brass neck and rare-successes-achieved-by-law-of-averages, managed to forge a career in the professional game. They were able to act out their vicarious football manager dreams through this relatable charlatan who was no better at football management than they are at football writing.
Is it any wonder they are trying to steer the conversation towards ‘mentality’, ‘fame’, pampered players’, etc etc? To focus on Hodgson (as they should be) would be to admit they know the square root of fuck all about the game
Neil I love the way ou write about football you take it to a whole new level and most of the time you are 100% spot on. Following LFC for over 50 years I can’t think of anyone associated with us I despise more. That middle England mentality being applied to or club was a recipie for disaster. The Hodge is the very essence of a gobshite in a blazer. How marvellous he has now made a fool of himself on the national stage. The embarrassment couldn’t have happened to a better guy. As for the right wing press they go what they deserved..again. Give me a European Cup for LFC over a World Cup for England any day. Scouse not English.
Hodgson is the kind of man who could train Anthony Joshua to lose to a light-welterweight and still write it off as ‘one of those things.’