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‘I’m not sorry’ – Roy Hodgson explains what he really didn’t like as Liverpool manager
Roy Hodgson admits he struggled to find the right words when speaking publicly as Liverpool boss during his disastrous time in charge at Anfield.
Hodgson remains the shortest-serving permanent manager in the club’s 131-year history after being sacked just 31 games into his tenure having taken over from Rafael Benitez in July 2010.
He had the lowest win percentage of any Liverpool boss since their return to the top flight in 1962, but has since gone on restore his reputation with four years in charge at England and a successful spell at Crystal Palace, where he again took over earlier this year.
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Hodgson became famed for public faux pas during his time in the Anfield hotseat, which came with the club at its lowest ebb as it edged towards administration during the closing stages of the disastrous reign of owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett.
And in Sky Bet’s latest episode of The Overlap, Hodgson revealed to Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville he had difficulty dealing with the media during his time at Anfield.
“I’ve been quite lucky – at Fulham, Watford and here (Crystal Palace) – you’re not dealing with the real cut-throat journalists who want to try and reduce you to tears!” he said.
“I don’t put myself out for that and I’m not sorry to leave that (the experience I had with journalists at Inter Milan, Liverpool and England) behind, if I’m brutally honest. That is a part of the job that I find more demanding and more intellectually tiring than the football.
“The football doesn’t tire me but sometimes preparing for those interviews and being ready for the right questions, and choosing every single word correctly, making sure I didn’t say something that is going to rebound upon me (does).
“With England, it was more a question of feeling that all the journalists, through their various contacts, knew more than us (coaches). So you got the question and you’re thinking ‘hold on I don’t know if I know the answer, but you probably do!’, but the mass media has been kind to me so I have no complaints about that.”
While Hodgson’s time at Anfield was also hampered by taking over a squad that had been allowed to alarmingly dip in quality over the previous 12 months, he did little to endear himself to supporters with some infamous comments that suggested difficulty attuning to the demands of managing such a big club.
The signs were there early on when Hodgson described a Europa League play-off win at Trabzonspor as “a famous European night” and, later when quizzed on the famous Anfield atmosphere, he won few new admirers on the Kop by declaring: “The San Siro is very good. Old Trafford is excellent.”
After a miserable 2-0 defeat at Everton that left the Reds next to bottom after eight games, Hodgson claimed “to get a result here would have been Utopia” and said: “From what I saw I thought we dominated the second half totally. I watched the performance and the second half was as good as I saw a Liverpool team play under my management, that is for sure.”
And Hodgson addressed the discontentment of the Anfield crowd towards the end of his six-month stay by stating: “We’ve had to live with that for quite a long time now as ever since I came here the famous Anfield support has not really been there. It is sad and I don’t like hearing those things because I am trying to do the best job I can do. I am working as hard as I can so I can’t say it is something I really appreciate.”
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