Roy Hodgson
What’s the team news? Pretty busy few weeks.
Yeah, and the other thing is we’re not good at playing three games in a week. The makeup of our squad and the players coming back from injury etc, a third game after two very tough ones we’ve had is not the right situation for us to comfortably say yeah, we’re great and put out the same team.
I’ve really got to wait and see tomorrow. I really am hoping that it will be better than I might fear it might be, but until tomorrow I don’t know.
A word on Ebere Eze. A big injury like that can be a big shock and something players have to prepare themselves for mentally for what lies ahead. How is he? Is he the sort who will get on and treat this as a big challenge and a part of life? Yes, I mean I think that sums it up beautifully. I had a long chat with him this morning, actually. We’re concerned, of course, that when that happens to you after such a good season – literally the world couldn’t be better and the picture couldn’t be rosier than it looked – one is then concerned that it is going to have a catastrophic effect on the player himself. But I’ve got to say I’ve been very impressed by his resilience, by his mental approach to the subject. He will recover, and he will recover quicker than it seems normally possible to recover. In the mean time, I’m afraid he is going to have to accept that these tests of his mental capacity are part and parcel of football. He’s learnt it so early on, but he has got such a bright future, the young man. He will get over it and come back stronger.
A bit busier than usual the last few days. Have you been able to continue business as usual?
No. No, I think I’m a human being at the end of the day, like everybody else. It would have been a very special person who could have accepted everything that’s going on. The reception the other night from the club, the players – what they did on the field apart from anything else. The fans. Today… Taken aback really by the reception from the players in a presentation today for to Ray Lewington and myself this morning. All things which we didn’t really expect. And other people from the club also coming with presents and gifts and thank yous for the time we spent together. It’s strange in a way that we feel – Ray and I – that it’s us who need to be thanking you. We certainly need to be thanking the players and the club, all the people in the backroom staff. And we need to be thanking also people like yourselves, the media. Because the Premier League, to keep it going like we have done, it’s needed a lot from the players, the club, the backroom staff, and it’s also needed a lot from you guys as well because it’s not quite the same. It’s good to have a job to go to, but it’s not quite the job that you’ve been used to. For me it’s a time of great gratitude. And I’m being a little bit taken aback by the fact that so many people want to tell me they’re so grateful for what I’ve done. So it’s a nice feeling in that respect. But it is strange, I must say. The game the other night was I’m not saying surreal, but it was hard, it was very hard, and after the game even harder.
On Sunday you’re heading to an iconic stadium. You’ve got plenty of history there as well. You must be hoping for an emotional win, though.
Well, we might not get out of Anfield if we win, that could be the only problem. We might be locked in the dressing room for a good while. But we are an honest bunch here, there’s no doubt about that. We talk a lot about integrity and the Premier League, for me, it’s one of the great leagues in the world for showing integrity. I don’t know if we can be good enough to go up to Anfield and win, but I do know that whatever XI players put that Crystal Palace shirt on, they’ll be busting a gut basically to win. If we don’t win, it’ll probably be because no the day Liverpool have played better than we did.
A big summer, lots of players out of contract. A fantastic foundation, is it crucial that they push on and build on that now? You’ll want to look back on it as the start of something.
Yeah. I’d be careful with the pushing on, that’s the only thing. If I was coming into the club now or if I was the club chairman or sporting director, I’d be a bit worried about this “now’s the time to push on”. What does pushing on mean? You have to be so careful, we’ve talked about it before. For me, the stability of the club is a very important factor. I believe that the club will push on, I think they will get better and will get stronger. But whether that will all of a sudden lead to Champions League football, that’s another matter. That might take an even longer amount of time and might never even be possible. There’s plenty of teams who have never played an FA Cup final, never won a major league and never been in European football. Being in the Premier League is such a vital component, I think, for teams like ourselves today. So I would prefer my departure to be met with: right, there is a stable base, there is a good group of players there, the club’s in very good condition playing wise, financially; there are opportunities to make improvements that get an even stronger squad together. But let’s at least not put the new manager under the pressure of ‘Hodgson’s kept them in the league, right around the middle of the table for four years, now you’re going to get us into Europe’. I think that would be an enormous burden on anybody. And not just the manager, the whole club. Personally I’d prefer expectations to remain at what I consider to be a realistic level.
How have the emotions been since Wednesday night?
Yeah I don’t feel I’ve been good with it. It’s one thing preparing a situation, then another thing living the situation. There have been so many touching gestures that I’ve experienced over the last couple of days, not to mention the incredible scenes on Wednesday evening and the reception that I got from the crowd. And the way the club handled it and what they’ve said about Ray and myself as we are leaving our jobs behind. I don’t think people would really believe me if I said it was no problem, shrug it all off, business as usual – how can it be? I’m lucky that I’ve got a very professional group of players. I think Ray and I have also got a large degree of professionalism. We’ve got enough to do the training sessions we need to do to prepare the game in the right way. All that will be done, there’s no question of that. But will it feel the same as it would have done at the end of the season when I would be soon preparing for a next one? The answer is no, it won’t feel that way. There will be further emotion. Not least of all because we’re playing up at Anfield, which is a pretty emotional stadium. It could be of course emotional for one team or another. It might be us celebrating an unexpected victory or draw, or them of course sealing Champions League football. There will be plenty of emotion on show on Sunday afternoon.
Do you think this will be the biggest emotional tug you’ve had when leaving a club?
Yes, without a shadow of a doubt. There have been others, and comparisons are not really good to make anyway. But there’s no doubt that the departure from Crystal Palace and the way it’s been handled, the way people have reacted and the things that have been said – that will live very, very long in the memory. I must say I couldn’t have expected it to be as good as it’s been. I am humbled by it, I am certainly very grateful for all the things that are being said. It’s nice to know I suppose that when you step aside from Palace after four years, and maybe even step aside from football after 45 years and a half years, it’s nice to know that people have appreciated to some extent what you’ve done in the game. I’m really proud of that.
If it wasn’t going to be a home game, I suppose Anfield – the home of the recently deposed champions – is that what you would have liked, to bow out at one of the cathedrals of football?
Yes, I think so. I think that’s right. Although there are so many cathedrals now, the way the Premier League is. So many teams are doing so well and building up that it’s not just the odd one or two cathedrals, you see a lot of them. But yes, you are right, I see where you’re coming from. It would be wrong or amiss of me not to recognise that’s a very valid point.
Fans are back in on Sunday. Obviously they’ll be backing Liverpool, but do you think there is something you can get from that as well?
Yes. I think that crowds do energise. We saw it on Wednesday, both teams were energised by the fans. The level of performance even towards the end of the game showed how much energy and enthusiasm there was on that field with that group of players. It started in a way that must have been strange for both sets of players. Great for me, the guard of honour. That really took me by surprise, I’m grateful for that and thankful that Arsenal agreed to do that. That was really strong and classy of them. But when the game started and finished there was no suggestion that it wasn’t 100% Premier League football – we both need to win, we both need to get points. There will be plenty of that, and I think the fans did help in that respect. It was so good to see them back, and at the start of next season if they allow even more back you’re going to see football back again as we know it.
