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Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson has failed in the Premier League before - just ask Blackburn Rovers
Ex-players remember his shortcomings at Ewood Park

The same day Roy Hodgson was forced to step down as manager of Blackburn Rovers, he wrote a telling sentence in his programme notes.

“The way a manager behaves in times of crisis can often be the decisive factor in determining whether a team pulls through or slides deeper into trouble,” he commented.

But he lost his job at Blackburn in November 1998 with his side rock bottom of the league following a 2-0 home defeat by Southampton – the side that sold him Kevin Davies for £7.5 million – ending a tenure that remains a distinct blemish on his CV.

Blackburn went on to be relegated that season, just four years after winning the league title for the first time in 81 years under Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish.

Past and present collided last Sunday as Hodgson engineered a 2-1 win over Blackburn at Anfield that kept him in employment for at least one more week.

But if the 63-year-old is going to turn around his dreadful start at Liverpool – they are in the relegation zone after nine games – he must take heed of his previous failure in the north west.

He arrived at Ewood Park in 1997 having just taken Inter to the Uefa Cup final and was being dubbed by the press as the next England manager. He came to Liverpool this summer amid speculation that he was favourite to replace Fabio Capello and on the back of taking Fulham to last season’s Europa League final.

Life at Blackburn started well enough as Hodgson guided his new side to sixth place in his first season in charge, achieving Uefa Cup football for the following campaign.

It all went wrong over the course of three months at the start of the 1998-99 season as Hodgson lost the dressing room and, when he was unable to reverse a drastic downturn in results, lost his job having won just two out of 14 games.

Hodgson had cultivated a reputation as one of the best coaches around after a prestigious career that roared into life when he took Halmstads to the Swedish championship before successful spells at Inter and Switzerland, among others.

But his tenure at Blackburn was ultimately defined by his failure to handle the big personalities in the squad after trying to make sweeping changes to the way the club operated.

In 1998, two influential players – Graeme Le Saux and captain Tim Sherwood – were pushing for moves to London and became agitated when they were forced to stay at the club, in turn influencing their team-mates.

As speculation grows that the likes of Fernando Torres and Pepe Reina are fed up at Anfield, so does the prospect of Hodgson having to deal with unhappy star players.

“He was one of the best coaches I worked with but he was nowhere near being the best manager,” one former Blackburn player told Goal.com UK.

“The spirit just drained out of the team and nobody wanted to play for him anymore. We would come into work every day and be moaning about training before it had even started because we didn’t like his methods.

“Some players weren’t happy and it was obviously difficult for him – but you have to change things up when it’s going badly. He was too passive and was just hoping the results would turn by themselves.

“He wasn’t proactive enough to move away from his comfort zone of being on the training ground and organising how to defend set-pieces.

“Once two players squared up on the fight and he just stood there doing nothing – it was like he had no idea how to handle the players anymore, other than to tell them where they should be when he was pointing at a tactics board.”

The Blackburn supporters quickly joined the players in turning against their manager, their ‘Hodgson for England’ chants laced with large dollops of irony.

Then there was the spectre of Dalglish, which 12 years later is coming back to haunt Hodgson after the Kop ominously sang the Scot’s name during the 2-1 loss to Blackpool.

Hodgson took the reigns at Ewood Park two years after their historic title triumph in 1995, the club’s first in 81 years, and four years later they became the only team in the Premier League era to both win and be relegated from the top flight.

Dalglish had led Blackburn to an historic title triumph in 1995 by playing a firebrand style of attacking football.

Neither the players nor the fans could get their heads around Hodgson’s defensive tactics when he took over the reins and some have suggested it reflects a mentality suited to mid-table clubs.

“I've worked under him in the past and he's the best coach I've ever had,” former Blackburn star Lars Bohinen told Norwegian television last month.

“However, he focuses too much on the defensive structure of a team. He doesn't really have a clear philosophy when it comes to attacking football. He used a similar style of play at Blackburn Rovers, Inter and Fulham.

“Hodgson is the right man for a club that wants to defend a certain result, but I'm not sure whether he's the right man for Liverpool.

“His preferred tactics suit a club like Fulham, but he's not much into attacking football and creative players. I expect [Steven] Gerrard and Torres to continue suffering under Hodgson.”

There is no little irony in the fact that Hodgson’s greatest achievement in his previous job was getting Fulham to the final of the Europa League, a competition he does not want to be in at Liverpool.

The only way he can change perceptions that he is only suited to ‘smaller’ clubs is to prove he has learned from his experience at Blackburn.

Hodgson reflects on his dismissal – the only time he has been sacked in his career – as "somewhat harsh" but insists he has learned from his mistakes and "analysed those failures".

This time, he may not write it in his programme notes.

i think that article contains a reality we are all to aware of and are just waiting to happen.

even if we turn it round, we'll only get to 6th at the highest, and then anytime we look like really pushing on, roy will panic, get defensive, be in completely unfamiliar territory, fck it up, and well slip back down to mid table.

which leads me onto WHAT HAS GONE WRONG WITH THIS CLUB:

the answer: TIME!!!!

We are big into this philosophy of giving managers time, and giving players time. well... fck time. we give far too much time imo. we wait too long for the manager or player to all of a sudden turn into a genius when it has been clear for a year or two that they are sh*te.

time? i tell you what its time for, its time to start fcking people out of this club. people who disgrace the club.

I think you may be right Flames. I've been in Roy defending mode of late but yet again he has [oops] up with the press. His latest nugget is that basically we only have five good players (Torres, Gerrard, Pepe, Kuyt and Carra) the rest are basically expensive flops. Whilst this is mostly true you don't announce it to the fecking world and slap your own players in the face about it!! Come on Roy throw us a frigging bone to work with!

What does Hodgson think of the current Liverpool squad?
http://www.fansfc.com/story/26192.html

I agree with flames and whiskey.

Roy needs to go before the transfer window. We've given to much time (12 years) on rafa and houllier. Giving Roy a transfer kitty in january doesn't do it for me. Hel buy players that he feels will suit ha tactics and we all no how they've effected the team this season so far. People have got to open there eyes and realise that it's not going to get better under him. I'd rather have kenny in than Roy until the summer than have woy.

If Roy reverts back to his usual style of play on Sunday and fails to pick up 3 points then many fans who are unsure of there opinions about him, will surely come to the agreement that he isn't the man for the job.

been in the game for a long time emp, but not with a track record to suit liverpool. what are we waiting on, just move him on. he will never ever return this club to former glories. not ever. not even with 100 million to spend.

The standard of football has has been poor since Sammy lee returned but as he came from the boot room there's no way he should shoulder any blame as it's all Roys fault that they played so badly last year !.Some of the football we played last season was even worse than the crap we played under Houllier in 2004.
As to why we play negative and uncreative football is the players are coached in a dated robotic style that dilute's there natrual ability to attack.
And another frustrating thing for me why managers will buy a player like Meireles who should play in the centre and then decide that he can do an avarage job on the wing like Kuiyt,Cole eg when all we needed was a natrual winger it's not rocket science !.

paul_tomkins Indeed, in today's money, Blackburn spent £92m in 1998/99 Result? Relegation.

paul_tomkins At Blackburn, Roy also spent £10m in today's money on Nathan Blake, £13m on Christian Daily & £5.9m on Callum Davidson. Dahlin another flop

says it all really

That's a bit harsh isn't it lol

To be fair to Roy:
1. He kept the big names when it seemed likely no one could
2. He signed Meireles and Cole
3. He won all of his first 5 games in Europe (a club record), and did it with the second stringers to boot

If that was all we could say about him I would agree with emp and the rest who feel Roy just needs time with the squad before they all kick into action.

But.
1. Liverpool have won 2 games in 9 in the EPL, a far worse record than any previous manager
2. His defensive tactics and archaic training methods have caused significant unrest within the squad, so much so that the papers can print what they like and at least half of it will probably be true (or so it seems), forcing the owners to come out and make a face-saving statement about the next transfer window (which will also be likewise misquoted and misanalysed in the press)
3. But for the last game our football has been the worst in the league, and while we played football of a similar quality under Rafa on occasion, never have we looked so disjointed for so long.
4. Outside Meireles and Cole, Roy's transfers have been disappointing (to say the least)
5. Roy does not appear to know why he signed the players he did, given that those new signings who can play are played out of position, and those who can't are not dropped.
6. Lost to Northampton Town in League Cup - 'nuff said.
7. Despite trusting the second string at the start of his reign, Roy now excludes them from the first side (except for Babel!) rather than continuing to encourage them despite their lone defeat; this is especially true of the strong youth contingent

So the problems are many, and while perhaps we managed to play something akin to football last time out there are a great many other reversals that Roy needs to make. For a man getting on in years who has relied on the experience that got us into this hole, I honestly can't see him throwing it all out the window for a new approach. He will continue to aim for older and/or average players, he is not going to look for flair (even in players already in the fold), and will continue to have a safety-first approach to football that is largely out of character for LFC.

In short he is not the right man for the job; give him all the time you want, he will still not be the right man. We should just cut our losses and get rid of him before he makes a greater mess of things.

I'm with Flames. Get rid now while there isn't too much damage done. Hodgeson was always going to be a stop gap until the new owners came in , in my opinion, and I was willing to give him a go but nothing he has done in the league has made me think he can be here for the future.

Get a new man in, give him time until Jan to see who's good enough and who's not and then let him do what he has to do. Thats what I think anyway.