As usual, Roy Hodgson came over very well when interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sportsweek this morning. He insisted that he had to be pragmatic about Fulham’s progress and admits that it will be very difficult to regularly repeat last season’s seventh place finish.
To be one of the best seven teams in the league is going to be very difficult for us on an annual basis. The club is not necessarily geared for that. More and more money is being spent and the top four is rapidly becoming the top seven in terms of financial power.
It would be nice if we could treat our fans to a season when they are not biting their nails into the last two or three games and be a good enough team to occasionally spring surprises like we did yesterday.
Perhaps the best part of the programme was the way in which the panelists commended Hodgson’s stewardship of Fulham and concluded that even Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger would struggle to replicate what he has achieved. You can listen to the programme here.
It is part of a growing trend of praise for Hodgson, whose cerebral style was intially thought to be a little eccentric for an English manager. The journalists felt his continental achievements were all well and good, but that he had failed in his only major test in this country, at Blackburn Rovers. On Twitter, Henry Winter, always worth reading, painted the kind of scenario that would be unnerving if the FA actually had any sense:
#Liverpool under spotlight but credit to #Fulham. Tactical guru Hodgson to manage GB at 2012 Olympics and then..England? Capello leaves then
