Roy Hodgson claims that he was told he “coached” too much during his horrendous spell in charge of Liverpool.
The current Crystal Palace boss is enjoying yet another Premier League renaissance after leading the Eagles to top-flight survival. He has certainly come a long way from his dire spell on Merseyside.
The veteran boss was named as Rafa Benitez ’s replacement in 2010 but lasted just six months. He was sacked with the Reds sat 13th in the Premier League after 10 losses throughout the first-half of the campaign. Hodgson has since revealed that Liverpool icon Jamie Carragher was clear on what he got wrong during his spell at Anfield.
Speaking on The Overlap, he said: “I think probably the most pertinent thing, and I wasn’t really aware of it at the time, but Jamie Carragher said: ‘You know what your big mistake was?’ I said: ‘No, go on. Tell me,’ ‘We’ve been coached,’ he said.
“‘We’ve had [Rafael] Benitez for two and a half years and it’s been pretty rigid – the coaching, the messages.’
“Jamie [Carragher] liked that. It wasn’t a criticism in any way, but he said: ‘You’d come in and you’d done the same thing.’ He said: ‘You’d have been better off adopting a different approach.”
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Since Hodgson’s stint on Merseyside, he has held five further jobs within the game including two separate spells with Palace and a maligned stint with England. West Brom and Watford also rank among his more recent employers.
That has given the 75-year-old plenty of time to reflect on his time as Liverpool boss and what he would potentially do differently if given the chance again.
“They [the Liverpool players] probably wanted more freedom, more training sessions whereby they weren’t required to constantly focus and take on board information,” Hodgson said
“Maybe, they wanted a few sessions where there was more play and the coaching would have been more subtle. I think if I were to think back to the type of coaching sessions we did there, I wouldn’t do that again.
“I’ve evolved a little bit from that and tried to find a way of getting the same messages, keeping the same philosophy but maybe in a slightly different way.
“But again, it’s wisdom with hindsight. It’s always very easy to get your decisions right with hindsight.”
Back to the present day and Hodgson will be keen to prove his managerial abilities once more by securing a comfortable finish for Crystal Palace. Ahead of their clash with Bournemouth, the Eagles sat 12th in the Premier League. Since returning to Selhurst Park, Hodgson had led Palace to four wins out of his seven games in charge.
