It’s well known that Watford like to change their managers with great frequency. Perhaps that is why new boss Roy Hodgson is not looking beyond this season regarding his new role. Speaking to the press ahead of his first game in charge – a vital bottom of the table clash against Burnley at Turf Moor – the 74-year-old was asked whether or not he was lead to believe his time in charge will go beyond the end of the current season.
Roy Hodgson said: “No, no, no. There was never any question of that. I didn’t come in here asking for guarantees, I didn’t certainly expect any. I came in wanting to hear what the board thought, what they would expect of me, and what the mandate was going to be. I guessed it was going to be a fairly simple mandate. Come here and keep ourselves in the league, so at the end of the season when your time runs out with us, we’re still there. I’m more than happy to do that and so are they. So that’s where we are, and I don’t want to think certainly any further than May at the moment because I’m going to need to be 100 per cent focused and give every single bit of my attention to the task at hand, which is not a simple task as everybody knows.”
Hodgson has never been relegated from the Premier League, and has steered the likes of Fulham, West Brom and Crystal Palace to safety despite inheriting them all in difficult positions.
Roy Hodgson said: “I had no input whatsoever in any of the signings that have come to the club. And I don’t intend to have any input either if the club feels they’ve got to reduce the squad, as I know that they’ve got to, and got to release players.” I arrived on Tuesday, did three sessions before the window [closed] and did an awful lot of other things, apart from the sessions in that time. But one thing I didn’t do, was to sit with the board talking about the signings that need to be made or people that need to be left out. And in any case, the signings that the club wanted to make, they had made right at the start of the transfer window. And I’m in the same situation with those new signings as I am with many of the other players. Learning to know them, learning to find out more about them. Learning to find how we can best use them. That’s going to be our task. So I’m afraid when it comes to transfers you can strike my name off your list of potentials in terms of influencing it.”
