Roy Hodgson
What was your reaction to the news that Burnley have fired Sean Dyche?
Shock. Enormous surprise. I must say, of all the people in the league, he would have been one of the ones most likely to survive anything like this. So I have no idea what’s happened of cause, I guess something must have happened, because you don’t part company with a manager like Sean Dyche after all the fantastic things he’s done for that club over the last 10 years. You know, he has built the club. So I was surprised. I was shocked and disappointed too, because I know Sean quite well. And I admire him as a coach and a manager and I didn’t think something like this would happen to him.
What do you think of the timing, and could it helps Burnley’s relegation rivals?
Well, I don’t make anything into anything at all really, because I don’t know why Burnley have decided to part company with Sean Dyche. So I would need all the thoughts that have gone through the people at Burnley, the people who own the club, and know really why they decided to do what they’ve done. And then maybe I could answer your question. But I have no idea really what provoked this decision. So as a result, I can’t give any further insight, if you like, into whether it’s a good thing for Burnley or a bad thing for Burnley. For me, from my position – and as I say respecting it, and admiring Sean as I do – I’m tempted to put it in the realm of a bad thing for Burnley.
What’s Dyche’s legacy at Burnley?
An incredible legacy. He’s taken the team really from the brink of the third division. I think they might even have been a third division team – I don’t have the facts at hand. But he certainly took a club that was really not even considered as favourites to win the Championship and made a Premiership team out. And very difficult Premiership team to play against and have a difficult Premiership team to beat. And he has kept that team in the league very comfortably for the past – I don’t know how many seasons – it must be at least five, because they were in the league when I came to Crystal Palace. And I can’t remember exactly how many years they’ve been in the league before that.
How do you think he’ll react to this news?
I would think he’ll be very disappointed because I think he realises how important he has been for Burnley. And of course, he’ll be also aware that Burnley have been good to him in terms of making him the manager and the force in Premier League football he has become. But I’m confident that he will bounce on to the next job without too many problems at all. And I would think he will be a hot candidate now for jobs when they come up. Because people will realise that if we get Sean Dyche, we’re gonna get a man who knows what he’s doing, and a man who will maybe turn our club around in the way he turned Burnley.
Can you just give us an update on team news? What’s the latest on Cucho Hernandez?
No, Cucho is injured. I’m afraid his muscle injury, a hamstring injury, is a serious one. So, I’m afraid we won’t be seeing him for a considerable period of time – so not in the near future. And we’ve got a hope that maybe he’ll recover before the end of the season, but it’ll be close even for that.
Against Brentford, given the situation that you’re in, have we reached must-win territory?
Yes, I suppose you could say that. I mean, I think last week’s game was a must-win too. But we didn’t succeed in that. So I mean, it’s all very well having must-win games and talking about how important it is for you to win them. But we’ve got to somehow find the performance which will enable us to win. But no, we’re very conscious of the fact that this is another opportunity for us. We have one last week, but that one slipped, slipped past this. Now we’ve been handed another one, equally difficult task, you know, we knew Leeds were going to be hard to beat, we know that Brentford are gonna be very hard to beat. But the opportunity exists for us. And we are fully aware, unless we start getting three points from some of these games, we’re going to slip even further behind the teams we’re chasing. So we are aware of our task. Now, it’s very important to hope the players go out and they show everybody in the club, the fans, that really they are 100 per cent behind this survival fight.
Do you feel that there’s a real sense of belief and confidence amongst the players still?
I think that the belief is there. Yes, of course, I think they still think that, you know, the performances, even when we’ve launched have not been so bad that we’ve had no chance of winning those games. So as a result, they realise if they continue to play in the same sort of vein as they’ve been playing, the chances to win will occur for them. Confidence is a word I’m afraid you can only use when teams are in a very good position. And I don’t know that there are any confident teams at the moment in the bottom six, because everyone is so scared that they’re going to be the ones who get relegated. And to get confidence you need to get a string of results, a string of performances, which make you feel confident, but they probably are arguably more confident than the table position [shows] – and what has happened to us recently is given the right to be and that’s a positive.
How do you go about nullifying Christian Eriksen?
Well, you got to be compact as a team, that’s the most important thing because he’s got a lot of ability and when he gets time on the ball and gets the chances to lift his head, and there are spaces that your defence have left open, they [Brentford] have the players who are quite happily run into those spaces. And Christian is a player who can see it and deliver the pass as necessary. So it is going to be very important that our strength, if you like, in defending as a team unit, making certain that we deny time and space, we don’t open up the channels where people can easily run in behind us and get into good goalscoring positions. And hopefully try and stop Eriksen getting too much of the ball, because we do know that if he gets the ball and has time on his hands, he can find passes, which not every player can find.
It’s been great to see Eriksen back to his best on the pitch recently, hasn’t it?
Yeah, it’s a wonderful recovery. And I think it’s one of those moments in football, when he had that terrible moment playing against Finland in the last EUROs, it bought home to us all: if someone is fit, and as healthy, as young as Eriksen can suffer this heart problem, then none of us are safe. Everyone that I know felt enormous sympathy for Eriksen. Everyone, including myself, was amazed at the way the Danish players rallied around and, you know, protected him and sort of screened off if you like the prying eyes. The work was done immediately by the medics and by the physios and doctors from the two teams, both Finnish and Danish. And happily, it’s had a wonderful outcome. Because I must say if you said to me, you know, when he was taken to the hospital and we got the good news that he’d recovered, he wasn’t necessarily like to suffer any long term effects. I don’t think many of us would have believed we’d see him back on the football field after maybe a few months. Great credit to him. Great credit to his desire to play. And great credit to the medical treatment he’s had. And just a good news story, in a world where the world we, at the moment, we are very, very short of good news stories.
Is it a case then, that if you stop him you stop Brentford?
That would be a bit unfair on Brentford I think. Because they’ve been playing very well. And they have a very strong team unit, I think he’s made them even stronger. There’s no question of that. But I don’t know that I would go as far as to say that, if we nullify his actions, the others won’t be able to step up and do a good job themselves. I speak to people who follow the team closely, and they are all full of praise for what he’s brought to the team and how good he is, which we knew. One could hope it would take him a bit longer to settle in than it has, but he settled in very quickly. And a strong Brentford team has become even stronger.
On the pitch, what do you feel needs to happen for you to stay in the Premier League?
But nothing more, really, than the obvious one that you’ve just said of winning games. Because, you know, during the last 11 games, there has been some performances that I’ve actually been very pleased with. I think we’ve even received, you know, some sort of recognition for the fact that they were good performances. But the problem is, we’re in that stage of the season, in the dilemma, if you like, of just needing wins and points. So you know, playing okay, or even playing well, doesn’t count for anything, unless the end of that match you’re on the winning team. So we’re just fully aware that’s got to be our one and only goal. And we’ve got to do everything we really can to achieve it. And that means, of course, making certain that each and every one of the players put in as much effort as he can muster – and is also a very conscious of the fact that, you know, we can only do it as a team. So he’s going to be very conscious, each and every player: ‘Am I doing what I should be doing for the team, as well as what I should be doing, in my opinion, for myself?’
Are the Watford players, at the moment, in your opinion, doing enough?
Well you’d need to go back through the games, wouldn’t you, the last three games. At Southampton, well when we won that, so you know, ipso facto when you win, you’re great. So we were great at Southampton because we won. We went to Liverpool, and in my opinion, lost one-nil, because I still don’t understand how VAR can intervene three or four minutes after an instant in the penalty area where there may not even be in an appeal. So we lose that one. But again, we lost it having given an extremely good account of ourselves. In the last game, we lose three-nil. But in actual fact, our goalkeeper makes very few saves. And for large swathes of the game we were the dominant team. So it depends how you want to put those things into context for what you need to do. I’m afraid, analysing matches, and analysing what exactly goes on is a little bit more difficult than people sometimes would like it to be. And you do have to be very careful of all the cliches that are going to swim around and be put in front of you, which would be a nice, simple way of perhaps encapsulating why it didn’t go your way. But often, that’s not what the truth is. And I think it’s very important for us working with players every day that they have to be fully aware that we are going to be very critical of you in these areas because you’re not doing what we think you should do as an individual and as a team player. But on the other hand, you might have to temper that with the fact that they might actually be doing a lot of things that are right for the team. But you know, if you are one-nil down and then you’re dominating the second half and you get a mix up, and it leads to a second goal with only about 10 minutes left to play, that colours the whole judgement. And you go on to lose 3-0, just like against Crystal Palace. We’re losing 2-1, pushing hard for an equaliser. We concede two late goals, we lose 4-1. Ipso facto: disaster.
Have you readjusted your plan on how many points you will need?
No, I don’t do that. We need at least one more than the team that’s in the third position from the bottom. We know we need that. How many points that will be, I don’t know. This is the time of the season where strange things sometimes do happen. It’s always a dangerous affair to look at matches and say this team will win that one. Because they’re higher in the league or we think they’re a better team, but it doesn’t happen. Not many people would have expected Brentford to go and beat Chelsea 4-1 at Stamford Bridge, but they did. And these are the sorts of things that happen this time of season. So, we’ve got to just keep taking the opportunities that come our way. Because we are not dead yet, we are still alive, we are still kicking. We are still hoping and believing we can get out of it. So we’ve got to take every opportunity that comes our way and try and get points and just hope maybe that some of the teams we are chasing don’t have similar fortunes, or good fortunes, and they suffer bad fortune.
Beyond Cucho, are there any other injury issues?
Yeah, we’ve got one or two minor ones. But I mean not from the ones who have been playing regularly. So, Samuel Kalu, who was with us last time, has got an ankle injury. Willy Ekong is suffering from a slight hamstring strain. We don’t think it’s major but too early to risk him in this game. Francisco Sierralta, the same thing, has a calf muscle injury which has stopped him training this week but I don’t think it’s going to put him out for a long period of time. It’s put those four players out of contention if you like for a place this weekend. But the one, of course, whose name will be on people’s lips is Hernandez because he’s been playing the last few games and scored some goals. I don’t know anything about that. It’s not going to affect my preparation for the game anyway.
What have you made of the recent Supporter Committee backlash?
I don’t know anything about that. It’s not going to affect my preparation for the game anyway.
Can you speak about your future beyond this season?
I have to be very careful with what I say, I think. Because you know, there was quite a lot of things written and enormous amount of warmth, if you like, and good feeling directed towards me when I left Crystal Palace. And I fear that by coming back, time and time again I should in some way diminish that, I made it very clear why I accepted this job and accepted the challenge if you like. I thought it was the right thing to do. Because I never actually did say I am now retiring full stop, but I made it pretty clear that that’s the way I was heading. And that’s where my mind was focusing. Now I’ve broken that, if you like, by coming here and I’m still trying to deliver what Gino Pozzo and Scott Duxbury hoped I could deliver. What will happen after that, I shall wait and see. But I certainly don’t have any particular plans, if that’s what you mean. I don’t have any goals to achieve. I’ve achieved all my goals. I would think it unlikely you know I would continue after this but you never know. I thought it was very unlikely, or pretty much impossible, I would continue after Crystal Palace and here I am. So I think I’m going to be very careful before I start bringing a curtain down on anything, just in case one day I might be sitting somewhere and you’re interviewing me again. And you will be saying: ‘You told me…’ I’ll be like Boris Johnson.
Do you speak regularly with members of the board or do they leave you to do your job on the training pitch?
No. I mean, the fact is – the members of the board I take basically to be Gino Pozzo and Scott Duxbury – and I speak to them very often. We are at the training ground all of us every day. So there’s very few days go by where I don’t exchange some words with them. And to the question, do they allow me to get on with the job in the way I want to do it? The answer is a resounding yes, they do. But of course, we talk together and I try to make certain they are fully aware of any decisions I’m making. So I don’t spring it upon them. Because we all have the same goal. Gino and Scott are desperate to keep this club in the Premiership and to keep this club moving forward and getting stronger. I, with the mandate I’ve been given, have exactly the same desire, the same wish. So it’s got to be a team effort. And I’d be very surprised if you can tell me that there are clubs operating in the Premier League where that isn’t the modus operandi because that’s the way football clubs should work. You should, as a manager, make certain that not only the players and your coaching staff know what you’re thinking, you should also make certain people above you who own the club or who run the club know as well.
