Hodgson - early impressions

So here we are four games into Hodgson’s tenure and with a big game lying ahead on Monday. How has he done so far?

I made no secret of the fact that I didn’t want him as our manager. The reasons for that were:
1. I don’t believe he is a remarkable manager. I believe he is the sort of manager who can get a big club punching its weight but never punching above it.
2. I fear he is a ‘yes’ man who will duck difficult decisions if doing so preserves his popularity with the players, the supporters, the media and the members of the boardroom.
3. He has a track record of making short term decisions – presumably because he is never at the same football club long enough to reap any benefits from long-term planning – such as buying older players instead of investing in youth.

So on the first of these concerns, it’s very early days. We have won the three games in the Europa League as expected but hardly impressively. 2-0 home and away wins against FK Rabotnicki can be filed under ‘job done’ but certainly won’t live long in the memory. We were minutes away from recording a 1-0 win over Arsenal having played 45 minutes with 10 men (and 9 men for a spell after Agger’s concussion). In the circumstances, that would have been a fairly remarkable result but the performance was ugly and unremarkable – even before we conceded the man advantage. I’ve heard a few comments that Hodgson has reverted to the sort of hoof football we saw under his close friend Gerard Houllier and from the Arsenal and Trabzonspor games, I would have to agree. The 1-0 win over Trabzonspor was pretty disappointing. After a really positive attacking display against Rabotnicki with Cole, Pacheco and Jovanovic providing movement and creativity to a midfield that looked so static at times last season, we had reverted to a style of football that ranks amongst the worst we saw last year. Yes we could and should have taken more than the one goal advantage into the return leg in Turkey - Poulsen’s goal was wrongly disallowed while Cole should have done better than his woeful penalty kick. However, we certainly didn’t deserve a goal-fest based on that performance during which we struggled to string more than 3 passes together.

On the second charge, so far Hodgson has behaved exactly as I feared he would. He’s shown no inclination to challenge Carragher’s ‘untouchable’ status even though the player looks a liability and has so far benefited from some lenient refereeing decisions. He has taken the decisions to deploy Gerrard in central midfield and restore man-marking from set pieces – both of which were loudly demanded of Benitez last season.

He has also seemingly based his squad selections of the conventional wisdom of who should be playing and who should not. We might as well be Ebbsfleet United with every supporter voting on team selections.

Last season, Rafa was derided as being stubborn because he resisted calls from fans, journalists and ex-players in the media to ditch certain players or tactics. I didn’t always agree with his decisions but I respected his right to make them and acknowledged that he knew far more about football management and tactics than I could ever hope to learn and was therefore infinitely more qualified to make these decisions than the knee-jerkers and extremist morons bombarding the moan-ins and internet forums after every bad result.

Hodgson has so far adopted a policy of dodging any of the bullets fired at his predecessor. Zonal marking? Regardless of the fact that Hodgson employed this tactic at Fulham and defended it against criticism as a pundit on TV last season, he has switched back to man-marking – and suddenly we look in danger of conceding from every set piece!

The players for whom Rafa was most criticised last season were Lucas, Ngog, Insua and Aquilani. So far, it hasn’t been difficult to persist with Ngog while the lad keeps scoring but it remains to be seen how Hodgson will deal with the youngster if he encounters another barren run similar to that he experienced last season after a fine start to the campaign.

Insua, meanwhile, hasn’t been given a chance. Hodgson appears to have immediately decided that trying to convince the fans that Insua deserves a future at Anfield was not a battle worth fighting.

As for Lucas, it will be very interesting to see what happens this season. With Gerrard now being used in central midfield and with Mascherano looking likelier to stay on at the club, you would assume they would be the first choice midfield partnership despite the arrival of Christian Poulsen whom you would assume has been bought to play more than just a bit part. Lucas could find himself squeezed out to fourth choice. While this might be appreciated by those supporters that decided Lucas was shit two years ago and are unwilling or simply don’t watch enough games to reassess that opinion (like Tommy Smith), it would be a crying shame to halt the development of a very promising player.

Then there is Alberto Aquilani. Last season, the Rafa-bashers were quick to write him off as a bad signing despite the fact that to this day, no Liverpool supporter honestly knows just how good or bad this player is. We know he was highly rated in Rome but after paying £17-20m to sign him we haven’t seen him play. We’ve seen glimpses of quality and a fair few anonymous performances but for the most part we’ve only seen him sat in the stands. Now Hodgson wasn’t prepared to give him a chance and has sent him out on loan (£17-20m player on loan!!!!) to Juventus for the season. I want to see what the lad can do in our first team before making decisions about his future. It’s so frustrating!

The final concern relates to his policy of signing older players and not giving youth a chance. Well so far his signings include 28-year old Joe Cole and 30-year old Christian Poulsen as well as the resigning of Fabio Aurelio, 30. Meanwhile he has sold highly rated youth prospect Kristian Nemeth, 21, without even taking a look at the player and is keen to ship out Emiliano Insua, 21. Dani Pacheco hasn’t been seen since the home game against Rabotnicki though in fairness Martin Kelly has started 3 of our 4 games so far – although I would suggest this is an easier decision because Kelly is scouse.

I don’t want to be too quick to judge Roy but so far he is doing nothing to convince me my concerns about his appointment are not valid.

Monday’s game against City will be tough and most likely turgid based on recent games between the clubs. Trabzonspor away will be a massive test and one I am not confident we will come through. As long as we don’t get soundly beaten in either game, the games that follow will tell us much more about what we can expect under Roy.

West Brom away needs to be won well. Goals are expected but more importantly I will be looking for us to dominate possession, play with coherence and creativity and be enjoyable to watch. Birmingham away is a tough fixture but we need to go there and impose our qualities on the game and not sit back and try to poach goals on the counter-attack courtesy of long balls from the back. If we have 7 points after our first 4 games and the quality of football has been of the standard that the Rabotnicki game hinted we could be seeing, I will call this a decent start to the season. Anything less and it could be another long and draining season.