Roy Hodgson
Despite your experience, losing that late is never easy, is it?
No, it doesn’t. To do what the players did for the club in the second half, after not starting the game anywhere near the level we were expecting and hoping for. But still, one goal to nil down and a lot to play for, I thought they went out and approached the second half, and the performance they gave against a team that are comfortable and in great form, I can’t really complain too bitterly about what happened there. That’s why the 95th-minute goal, which cost us yet another home defeat, was hard to take.
Is the loss hard to take after missing some big chances right at the end?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I thought the crowd were very good today, I thought that, you know, they were quiet in the first half and rightly so, because we didn’t give them anything to excite them. I thought we did give them some things to excite them in the second half, I think they saw the effort, the commitment, the work rate, the desire to score a goal and get back in the game was there. So when we did it, and then continue to push on in the search for that winning goal and get so close to it, I thought the fans were really 100 per cent behind this, and we managed to lift them. So, unfortunately, that last-minute goal – it’s only cost us one point, you know, we can say – the second goal winner that we hoped we’d got, didn’t go in because it was missed. And had we drawn 1-1, we’d have got one point from the game, and it’s just the way you lose it – as you rightly say, after coming so close to winning it – to actually lose it with the last action of the game, the freekick and the header, that was hard to take.
How frustrating was the first-half performance?
That’s what football is, you know, unfortunately, you prepare the game and you dream of the performance and you visualise the performance. But it’s not always the performance you get. And unfortunately, we really needed each and every player, right from the very first minute, to be at the top of his game. Now that was by no means the case. But we did remedy to some extent in the second half some of the worst aspects of our first-half performance. And we gave ourselves a chance. We equalised and we could even have got that winner, but it would have been nice if we could have done it from the very first minute because then maybe we wouldn’t have been behind at halftime.
Do you feel that this group of players are still capable of the kind of sequence of results that you need to stay up?
One has to believe, one has to keep faith, one has to take some sort of heart from their [Watford players] desire and commitment and effort during the second half. And you just have to hope that six times 95 minutes more, they’ll be able to do that. And maybe, who knows, we will pick up points when no one expected and we will get ourselves back in the race. But it’s not the right moment in time to start predicting that from the next game onwards we are now going to sweep the board and kill all opposition that we find in front of us. Because if I say that, people will laugh at me.
Are you happy with the defending considering both goals came from set pieces?
Well, no, one’s never happy when teams score against us from set plays, even though I must say, they are quite dangerous from set plays. Apart from anything else, they’ve got five or six players in the team who are over one metre 94. So it’s not easy to defend against them. We don’t have many one metre 94 defenders, in fact we don’t have any. So it was never going to be easy, especially with the delivery that Eriksen has with his feet from freekicks and corners, and of course the enormous amount of long throws that they are able to get. But I would just give you one statistic, you know, I think that In terms of freekicks and corners kicks, we clearly have more than they did. Which would suggest we limited him to not having that many, because we certainly had more, and we looked quite dangerous ourselves. And unfortunately, if you play against a team that is very good at set plays, and they are good – especially the second goal more than the first one – that risk always exists, because the quality of that ball in, ends up being a one v one duel. And if their guy is a bit bigger, stronger, more aggressive than yours, it’s gonna be a goal. But we did our best to block them. And we didn’t give them loads and loads of chances. And we knew that if Eriksen was getting on the ball for corner kicks, wide freekicks, central freekicks, within danger. And quite frankly, he didn’t get in that position very often. And when he did, he showed his class.
What’s it like managing the unpredictable Emmanuel Dennis when he doesn’t always seem like he knows what he’s going to do next?
I think that’s a bit harsh. I thought today was one of, certainly, his better games, not only individually, but also as a team player. So I wouldn’t want to criticise him today in those terms. But of course, he and [Ismaila] Sarr are very individualistic players. And we have worked hard with them and the rest of the team to try and get them to bring their straw to the water when it comes to team play. I think today I would have to say that I didn’t see any really massive evidence from them on that part. And Dennis, I think, will probably feel quite pleased with his performance today, because he was quite dangerous, and he scored a goal.
Is there a need to pick the Watford players up now?
Oh, of course. That is the hardest time to pick them up, when it would have been pretty hard to pick them up from 1-1. Because we’d have realised that the chance of those three points would have eluded us. We’d have only got one, but we could perhaps then have taken just a little bit more comfort from the fact that we came very close to the three points. Now when you don’t even have that comfort, if you like, to use in your attempts to motivate people to continue along the same lines, it’s much harder. But it’s part of the job. I make no complaints about that. I knew when I signed up for it that that would be part of the job. But there certainly is no easy answer to your question. Also, no words that I can use, which will change the situation. We’ve got to go out in the next six games and play in the same vein as we did in the second 45 minutes today.
What have you made of Brentford’s season and their success?
Well, they’re organised, they’re strong. They know the type of football that they want to play. And all the players have bought into that. They have some very good individuals. They had that even before Christian [Eriksen] arrived. Now they’ve added that side of their game. So they are always going to be a very, very difficult team to beat because there are no obvious failings in their team. There’s no obvious weaknesses. And they do have several very, very good strengths. Not least of all their long throw and their corners and wide freekicks to all the big players they have. And add to that the Set play, the long throw, that’s another one: never easy to deal with. So they are where they are because that’s where they deserve to be. I wouldn’t go as far as to say they really deserve to be going back to Brentford with three points today. I don’t know their performance really merited that. But I mean, I would say that their position in the league, and what they’ve done in the league, is a credit to the club, and in particular to Thomas Frank and his staff and all the players he’s worked with. They are where they are because that’s where they deserve to be.
After doing so well at Crystal Palace and Fulham by tightening up at the back, is it disappointing to not achieve that here?
Well, I mean two things. I mean, first of all, what we did at Fulham and what we did at Crystal Palace was a lot more than tightening up at the back, and my speciality. Every coach’s speciality should be to be able to organise a team, to make certain they defence compactly, and pressurise the ball properly and deal with defensive situations. No different here, we’ve worked for that. I don’t think we are conceding many goal chances. You don’t see our goalkeeper in the list I see of the goalkeepers who’ve made the most saves in the league. I’ve seen the top 10 and [Ben] Foster doesn’t feature. Just like today. Defensively, how many chances did we give Brentford? How many times were Brentford in a situation where you thought, watching from the side, they’re going to score here? Now I didn’t see many, which I would say is a tribute to the way the team is trying to defend. But we conceded two goals. We didn’t defend a long thorw. And we didn’t defend well enough, a very good wide freekick from Brentford. You know, to make it so simple, that well the team hasn’t tightened up defensively, and they don’t know how to defend it – I think that will be a very unfair judgement, which has no relevance really to what I’m seeing.
Do you think the gap between the teams at the top of the Premier League and the bottom is too stretched?
No, I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I think that’s fairly normal. At least here, there is a little bit of a fight for the top spots between the very, very good teams, who have enormous wealth, enormous riches, and play extremely well. Just as we’ve seen now, really we should have had three out of four teams in the semi-finals of the Champions League. I think when you get that you’re always going to see another side, perhaps down the bottom where teams can’t compete, but perhaps less so than Bayern Munich who dominate every year in Germany, and Real Madrid and Barcelona dominate every year. I think to some extent, there is a more interesting fight here and I think we, the bottom teams, we make it a little bit harder sometimes for the top teams and this is the case in some other leagues. But I’m afraid it’s always going to be part and parcel of the game. The game is about players and the teams that can have the best players are going to have the best results in the league.
