Roy Hodgson picked out Sir Elton John's first solo No.1 as his favourite hit from the Rocket Man's back catalogue, and the new Watford boss admitted: “It's no sacrifice at all being here.”
When it's raining stair-rods on the touchline at Turf Moor on Saturday, on his maiden excursion with the Hornets, at 74 he may be forced to revise his mellow outlook.
And the former England manager faces a tall order – not just Burnley's 6ft 6in signing Wout Weghorst – to save Watford from relegation.
But as Hodgson admitted he simply could not resist one last crusade, seven months after he bowed out at Crystal Palace, ostensibly heading into the sunset after a 45-year coaching career which began when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister.
He was not actively seeking an encore in the dugout when Hornets owner Gino Pozzo consigned Claudio Ranieri to the ejector seat and sent his SOS last week.
“I was not being clever with the (Sacrifice) lyrics,” insisted Hodgson, who has agreed a short-term contract to the end of the season with a simple mandate: Keep Sir Elton's beloved Watford in the Premier League.
“There is no analogy with the situation in which I find myself - it’s just a song I like. I wasn’t expecting any calls from Watford, or anyone else for that matter.
"I thought I would find it easier to resist, but I was never going to it turn down as it was the siren call from the mermaid as the sailor passes by on his ship. It was out of the blue but I'm glad it came.
"Whether this was a case of the heart ruling the head, we’ll find out. Something coming up quickly like this was a question of 'Would be fun? And could I do a good job?'
“The answers were yes, so I jumped in at the deep end. I can only hope that jumping in at the deep end won’t see me drowning."
Sirens, mermaids, sailors and drowning may sound like a nautical distress call, but Hodgson has seen enough on the training pitch in nine days with his new squad to be convinced they can reach dry land from the shipwreck of Ranieri's 112-day reign.
Like Graham Taylor, another ex-England manager and the unrivalled patron saint of Vicarage Road, Hodgson has not been scarred by bitterness after his Three Lions reign came up short.
Taylor returned to Watford and added two promotions to his body of work after England, and Hodgson admitted of his four years in charge of the national team: “It was a strange time.
“Between tournaments it went pretty well. Going into the World Cup in 2014, it was a much younger, more exciting bunch of players and the results had been good... then, of course, the tournament comes along, we lose a couple matches and all of a sudden it really is disaster time.
“You then have a similar build up to 2016 and we were really quite confident going into 2016, thinking this could be our moment, but then Iceland comes along it blows everything out of the water.
“I was fortunate in the sense I was a little bit older maybe could get a little bit more perspective to it, but it certainly hurts and it certainly took me a while before I got any sort of equilibrium back again.”
