Roy Hodgson
Is facing Manchester City away from home the last match you want to play at the moment?
I don’t know that is a good question. I don’t know if that’s actually the case. I mean, we are enormously wary of the fixture because we know how easy it is to get heavily beaten up there. Because of their enormous attacking talent, and of course, the wealth of talent that Pep [Guardiola] has at his disposal, but I still think it’s a good game to play. I’m hoping that the confidence won’t have been totally shattered by the last-minute goal in the last [Watford] game, where in actual fact, the second half performance was probably as good as we’ve given for a long period of time. So I’m actually hoping that they’ll think more about the way we actually played against Brentford in the second half. And not just the fact that we once again had to swallow that bitter pill of a defeat.
In a way, is the game a free hit?
Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I think the problem with that is it might be even possible for me to see it as a free hit sitting here on Thursday afternoon, but I feel as though I’m going to see it as a free hit at three o’clock on Saturday. That’s the problem because then I’m gonna be so concerned about how they’re capable of you know, cutting our defence to ribbons and creating spaces that we just have found ourselves unable to block. But I think that the players have done exceptionally well this week, after the bitter disappointment of that 95th-minute goal which cost us, in my opinion, a well earned – or what should have been – a well-earned point. We’ve had to pick ourselves up and I must say, in the training sessions our preparation for the game coming up has been as good as I can expect it or wanted to be. And I’ve not seen any falling off in any way the level of attention and desire if you like to do the right thing. So that gives me some hope that we’ll be able to go up there like you say, give some sort of performance like we did say against Liverpool where, despite the defeat, you can come away thinking ‘well. we aren’t that bad’.
It’s a tough ground to go to, but you’ve done well with Crystal Palace there in recent times, haven’t you?
We won one and drew one and then the lost one 4-0 after a very good 55 minutes, but when the first one went in we conceded three more. But yeah, we’ve done okay up there you know. We’ve done what teams like ourselves, Crystal Palace you know, when I was at Fulham, teams like that can do, ie, work very hard to be well organised and try and frustrate the opposition because we haven’t been good enough, any of the teams I’ve coached, at Man City to go toe to toe with them.
Watford have lost all of the last 14 conceding 53 goals against City, what do you think of that?
No, I mean, to be honest, it wouldn’t have been a statistic that I knew about, I do now. And if you don’t mind I shan’t be using it, it’s not a statistic, which I think would have been a good way to motivate the players. We’re gonna stick very strictly and boringly, if you like, to discussing the task that we see ahead of us and what we can do, to the best of our ability, to ask as many questions of Man City as we can. I mean, we’re unfortunate, again, in the sense that there could have been a time where you go to Man City, where they are in between fixtures, they’ve got a Champions League game coming up, they’ve already sewn the league up – so they’ve got no worries in that respect – so you know, you go up there and they’re just in a party mood. Now, of course, we’re going to meet the deadly serious Man City, who if they don’t beat us and get three points, it’s going to be a massive blow to them. Pep didn’t speak to me for a long time after Palace managed to steal a win. If we get a win this time, he might never speak to me again!
He might use that in his team talk, his previous experience against yo?
I don’t think so. I think his team talk will be much more about what he requires his players to do. But the good thing he can look towards, as Jurgen [Klopp] can, they’ve got such a big squad that changes are not only possible, you know, they’re probably even desirable.
Results have been better away from home
Yeah, maybe. But I mean, the fact is, unfortunately, we are where we are because of the home fixtures. You can’t consistently lose matches at home. And if I just take the ones that I’ve been involved in, there’s at least two of those where we really should not have lost, we should have at least got something from the game, but we haven’t through various circumstances. And you can never shy away from that. And it would be very foolish to start saying, ‘Well, it’s not damaged us. It’s not been that important, not winning at home, because we’ve been a bit better away from home.’ If we have, it’s purely a hazard that we’ve been better away from home, there’s no no way I can point to anything which suggests why we are better away from home.
Do you have a quick look ahead at the fixtures that are coming up, like games at home against Burnley and Everton?
Yeah, I mean, you do. Obviously you do think in those terms. It’s only natural. But it’s dangerous because that’s how we were thinking really after beating Southampton, and doing very, very well at Liverpool. We obviously thought ‘now we’ve got two home games against Leeds and against Brentford, this is an ideal opportunity to get six points and to lift ourselves up the table’. And look what’s happened. You know, we haven’t even taken one point. So if anything, we’ve gone deep into the mire rather than risen above it. So in actual fact, of course, we do think that way, of course, we still believe we still have faith that we still hope that what you’re suggesting is going to be the case. But at the moment, it’s been enough for us to start doing everything in our power to prepare [for] the game on Saturday against Man City and hope that, as you rightly said earlier on, we can get some degree of confidence.
An algorithm claims Watford have an 98 per cent chance of going down, what do you think of that?
I can only take some comfort that my first job, which was a fortunate one because I launched my career by taking a team [Halmstads] that only avoided relegation on goal difference and have been up and down from the top division in Sweden and in the Second Division about four times during the previous five years. That at the start of that season, we actually had a 100% prediction that the team would get relegated, and we won the league. So miracles do happen.
Is Erik ten Hag a good appointment for Manchester United?
I don’t know him. So I really can’t make it [a judgement]. I mean, Ralf [Rangnick] when he was appointed and I was asked that question, I do know Ralf and have contact with him. So I could say a few words about him. It would be very foolish of me to tell you anything about Erik ten Hag because quite frankly, other than like any football supporter, I know he’s done a wonderful job at Ajax and had great success, not just in the league but in Europe. So that I know, like anybody else. But that’s as far as my knowledge stretches, I’m afraid.
Ajax and Manchester United are a different kettle of fish, aren’t they?
It’s Dutch football and Premier League football. Of course, there’s a difference between those two. But you know, you can’t deny it, the success that Ajax have had with him, and with lots of other coaches before him, you know, they’ve had a succession of incredible legendary coaches going back to Rinus Michels Johan Cruyff, Louis van Gaal. You’re talking about a list of people really, all of whom became recognised as some of the best coaches ever to grace our game. So there’s no reason to believe that Erik ten Hag, who they’ve obviously, given due diligence, in terms of their appointment, isn’t just as good as those as three I’ve just named. And if he gets into that category of managers, then they’ve got a wonder manager.
Can you run us through any team news or injuries?
Well, we’re monitoring one or two, who haven’t been able to train with us as fully as we would like during the week. But I’m expecting, strangely enough, tomorrow to have a pretty clean bill of health with everybody. Cuch Hernandez, everybody knows, won’t be with us. There’s a risk I suppose that one or two of these others, that I really hope and believe will be okay tomorrow, might not quite make it or might come out to the training session and decide that they need an extra week, but at the moment it’s looking pretty good in that respect.
What do you think you need to take to a team like City who are fighting at the top of the table in order to try and be successful?
To some extent, everyone really knows what the situation is. And everyone really knows, when they pose the question, you know that the answer that I’m expected to give, isn’t really the answer that is the most relevant one. Because the fact is, I don’t know, really, if you’re in our situation, what you can really say, in terms of: ‘We’re going to go to the Man City, and we’re going to do this that and the other.’ I mean, what we’re going to do, we’re going to try and make ourselves unpopular. Because if we want to make ourselves popular with Pep and in the Man City crowd and everyone else in the country, all we do really is we just go hell for leather to try and win the game and try and match them at their own game. And that, as at least 99% of people – certainly those working in football – know, is a recipe for disaster. So our only chance really is to go in and give their play the respect it deserves. And to make certain that we make life as difficult for them as we possibly can. That, you know, we seal the spaces that they need to get into goalscoring positions, we try and make it very hard for their incredible quality players in the final third of the field to produce the passes or the crosses they need to produce. And then we hope, of course, like everyone that goes there, that when we do get the ball, there will be enough in our team, especially on the counter-attack, to give them a few problems of their own to solve. But that’s really all you can do. And anything you promise beyond that is just leading people to believe in a fantasy football world. You know, they’re not top of the table, and have won goodness knows how many games in a row, for nothing. And if there was a simple solution to: ‘well, if you do this, you will start to beat them’ – then we would be the first team to try it, there would have been lots of teams before us who would have tried it.
Cucho recently said the players need courage on the pitch. What do you think he meant by that?
I don’t know. You’d have to ask him. Are you talking about physical courage or mental courage, what was he talking about? Well, it’s one, courage is one of those qualities really, that you want to see in your players in every game. So I don’t know that. Whether you’re playing Man City away or playing Brentford at home, I don’t know when you would push courage aside and say we don’t need it today. And now we do. I think it’s one of those things you need at all times. I’ve got to say that a lot of things that we say in football – I’m not blaming Cucho here because I’m guilty of it myself – they are words really that don’t have the sort of relevance that one should really give them. It’s an important word. Being courageous, we would all we all agree, what a wonderful quality you know people who were courageous. But how do you become courageous? What does your manager tell you before you go out, before you play the game that suddenly turns you from someone who isn’t particularly courageous, to someone who is courageous? I don’t know. But anyone who can tell me what to say, I’ll say it.
