After the Merseyside derby, Hodgson looked as though he was beyond the point of salvation. Slightly fortuitous victories over Blackburn and Bolton changed nothing. An awkward and undeserved third consecutive victory over Napoli did not alter opinions. Then victory over Chelsea finally sowed the tiniest seed of doubt into the minds of the man’s detractors. Yes the football was as ugly as Harry Redknapp in drag and slightly less exciting than pulling a cheap Christmas cracker, but with four successive victories and a rare defeat of the Premiership Champions, could it be that this style of football might be effective enough to actually improve on our 7th placed finish last season? Particularly when a win over a Wigan team sitting in the relegation zone could have put us at least 5th in the table – a remarkable turnaround after our recent spell in the bottom three.
If Hodgson has been successful at anything during his tenure as Liverpool manager, it has been lowering, nay demolishing expectations and he moved swiftly to ensure that anyone contemplating giving him support was immediately dissuaded.
An 8th minute lead after a spritely opening was quickly forgotten as Hodgson reverted to type, instructing his team to retreat into their own half, hoof long balls to no one and invite Wigan to attack for the remaining 80 minutes. That Wigan scored was no surprise. That they only scored once was a sign of their own lack of quality.
After it seemed the penny had dropped regarding Christian Poulsen, Hodgson brought the useless tosser on at half time. True Meireles was struggling as a central midfielder being played on the right wing but even struggling, Meireles is twice the player Poulsen is. Poulsen is shit and Hodgson wasted nearly £5m on signing him. Having seen him struggle in previous League games, bringing him off the bench here was an act of gross negligence – a sackable offence in itself.
Wigan were there for the taking yet Hodgson with his small club mindset was happy to take a point.
“It would have been harsh on Wigan had we won it and they can probably feel the 1-1 result flatters us more than them,” said Hodgson.
The man makes these statements as though commenting on something over which he had no control. Why did we allow a situation where defeat would have been harsh on Wigan? Why didn’t we put in a performance that would have resulted in Wigan deservedly losing? Surely Hodgson can join the dots and see that the likes of West Brom, Sunderland, Blackpool, Bolton and Wigan can all feel as though they deserved to win against us - clearly indicating that our approach in these games is the reason. In fact, the only team this season that deserved to be beaten by us on the day was Blackburn. Chelsea dominated us last week and but for failing to take their chances and the brilliant finishing of Fernando Torres, they would have won.
Hodgson then went on to bemoan the size of his squad. “You can put it [the result] down to Napoli, Blackburn, Bolton and Chelsea with a small squad of players.” Small squad? Hang on there, Hodgson, would this be the same squad that you were saying was too big not so long ago?
“We were unbelievably over-staffed when I came to the club and truth be known, we still are over-staffed,” said Hodgson back in September.
It’s quite clear that the man gives no thought to what comes out of his mouth either before or afterwards. It’s just one garbage statement after the next.
I said after the Chelsea game that he shouldn’t be sacked even if we lost to both Wigan and Stoke but I’m now reneging on that position. When I wrote that, I just didn’t expect us to totally revert to how we were playing before our recent run and for the manager to be so culpable in that.
He is a meandering buffoon and I’m just so exhausted with the debate around whether to sack him or not. This ship has now sailed. Hodgson has to go. The only question is when rather than if. To me, the answer is as soon as possible. I no longer care that some will call his removal harsh. He will cause more damage than good the longer he stays.
NESV need to carefully select Hodgson’s successor and in the meantime put Kenny in charge or even Sammy Lee – neither could do worse than the fucking idiot in situ right now.
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