Liverpool Too Big For Hodgson

Monday, 25th October 2010 at 08:28am

After eight games of the 2010/11 Premier League season, it's becoming clear that current boss Roy Hodgson simply isn't the man to revive Liverpool's fortunes.

At various stages of the 2009/10 Premier League season, there were a number of Liverpool fans calling for the head of Rafa Benitez less than a year after he had delivered Liverpool's best ever Premier League season. I wonder how many of those fans would welcome him back with open arms after such a shambolic start to the season under Roy Hodgson?

After the departure of Benitez in the summer, Hodgson looked to be a safe pair of hands for a club in turmoil having guided Fulham to the Europa League final following impressive wins against Juventus and Wolfsburg to name but two.

There were doubts about his credentials to take on such a mammoth task but with few managers wanting to tackle the mess that was Liverpool at that stage, he was the best of an uninspiring bunch and made a positive start by persuading Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres to stay and signing Joe Cole.

Now, just two months into the season, Liverpool find themselves second from bottom with just a single win in domestic football and defeats to Manchester's United and City, and Everton away from home and embarrassing home defeats to Blackpool and Northampton Town, the latter coming in the League Cup.

What's now worrying for Liverpool fans is that not only does Hodgson seem incapable of remedying the team's woeful performances to date, he almost appears deluded with regard to how the team is performing.

Following the 2-0 derby defeat at Goodison, Hodgson declared Liverpool's abject performance as the best he'd seen during his brief tenure.

The best performance since he started? I can't remember a more abject, pathetic excuse of a performance. Liverpool were awful from start to finish, managing only a decent spell of pressure after Everton took their foot off the gas once a two-goal cushion had been established.

The team is seriously disjointed; there was no pressuring the Everton side, no attacking movement, a lack of quality passing, and no support for Torres; the lack of confidence the squad has was shockingly evident and all Hodgson did was blow his cheeks out on the touchline; hardly inspiring stuff.

Rafa Benitez was often pilloried for his poor purchases but he never, ever bought anyone as bad as Paul Konchesky, nor for that matter one as bad as Christian Poulsen, a player who is doing a great impression of a poor man's Eric Djemba-Djemba.

Then there are the interviews. Every press conference - minus the bizarre one following the derby - has been littered with negativity and, worst of all, of late Hodgson has taken to blaming players, particularly Fernando Torres, darling of the Kop and the man they fear will leave them sooner rather than later.

Gareth Bale announced himself to the world with a stunning hat trick in last night's Champions League clash with Inter Milan and Harry Redknapp immediately said he wasn't for sale at any price. When Hodgson was asked about a potential bid from Manchester United for Torres he said, "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" a statement that has prompted angry responses from all Liverpool fans.

Hodgson is obviously a gentleman in a sport littered with unsavoury characters but he seems to be suffering the same fate that befell Steve McLaren when he made the step up to the big time; neither man was up to the task that faced them.

It's never been the Liverpool way to dispense of a manager so quickly but things have been so poor this season, it seems the only viable option.

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