The Reason

The Reason

          Many media critics and journalists had nothing but scorn for the way LFC had been playing this season. Heaping on the pressure that threatened to envelop the beleagued Roy Hodgson. The fans drew on this criticism of the players and instead turned it onto the manager, threatening to bring him down no matter what.

          Often, in the media, the attention was focused on the detrimental effect the fans and the players were having upon Hodgson. To an extent I agree with this assessment by the media but not necessarily the purpose. We as fans only wanted to express ourselves and begin the process of recovery that Hick & Gillett had so disastrously prompted. With some of the most powerful protests seen in football taking place on the terraces, the internet and the streets, it would only be a matter of time that change would be granted.

          Football is obviously a fickle monster, it generates its own heroes and villains, its own romances and divorces and its own fairytale endings and abrupt nightmare finishes. What Hodgson failed to take into consideration was the maelstrom he was placing himself in. Not only had the fans taken three years of lies and misdirection from Hicks & Gillett, they had seen their hopes of challenging for the title diminish as soon as it had been nurtured into life by Benitez. Half of the fans mourned Benitez and expected less glory, the other half rejoiced and expected a man to fire LFC to better success.

          How wrong were those fans?

          His press conferences immediately defied belief. Calling Northampton ‘formidable’, chastising the protests against the previous owners and shuffling away from Alex Ferguson when confronted with condemnations of Torres’ professionalism. That’s how Hodgson alienated the fans, by not being a backbone for the fans, he should have been enraged to hear such comments about one of his players, he should have spat into the microphone and demanded a personal apology from Ferguson. Although very good friends, there are still times when one will overstep the mark.

          The media didn’t cover itself in glory either. Continuing to back Hodgson just because he was an English manager is so typical of the Premier League and the British press. I cant believe the blame that Benitez got for the narrow, negative and frankly negligible way that Hodgson played. He himself spoke of how ‘this wasn’t [his] team of players’. Consistently backed by the likes of Andy Gray, Patrick Barclay and Henry Winter, Hodgson became a bit of a clown, stumbling from press conference to press conference, always with a failing quote, a sound bite that took chunks out of his career. Yet, still he was backed by Establishment, loathe to turn on anyone who would be named a Manager of the Season.

          Hodgson’s formations were, well archaic and frankly depressing. A standard 4-4-2 for basically every match, away from home we sat so deep we basically filled our own goalmouth. Torres was so isolated due to the midfield having no creators, they sat on the wings, Meireles and Cole, and Gerrard got his way by playing in centre midfield, even though he is far less effective there. This just created a midfield that sat and absorbed wave upon wave of attack. The wings were taken up with creative midfielders who should have been supporting Gerrard and Torres.

          Results such as the defeat to Blackpool at home, the loss at Ewood Park and the shambles at Old Trafford, all serve to indicate a man who was at the end of a relatively successful career. He was using methods that had revolutionised the football world in the eighties and nineties. He simply couldn’t compete with the high intensity of formations such as the ultra wide 4-5-1 or the passing narrowness of 4-3-3.

          In the end, Hodgson demonstrated a drastically fatal flaw. He assumed he knew the club and its supporters, their dreams and their hopes, their style of football and the level of football we would stomach. However, he couldn’t have been more further from the truth, this is Liverpool Football Club and we didn’t win 18 titles and 5 European cups by playing four central midfielders at home to Blackpool.