Saturday, June 28, 2014

Roy Hodgson: the worst Liverpool manager ever?

Seems to be the sexy thing these days to ridicule Ole Roy Boy, but is he really the worst Liverpool manager ever?  Worse than Don Welsh or George Patterson? I'm not so sure, but I will say he is the worst since I've followed the club.  Let's take a look at his transfers:

Players InClubFee
Joe ColeChelseaFree
Danny WilsonRangers£2m
Christian PoulsenJuventus£4.55m
Brad JonesMiddlesborough£2.3m
Raul MeirelesPorto£11.5m
Paul KoncheskyFulham£3.5m
Players Out
Albert RieraOlympiacos£3.3m
Diego CavalieriCesena£3m
Krisztian NemethOlympiacos£1m
Javier MascheranoBarcelona£17.25m
Lauri Dalla ValleFulham£750k
Alex KacaniklicFulham£750k
Damien PlesisPanathinaikosUndisclosed
Charles ItandjeAtromitosFree

He brought in Paul Konchesky for £3.5m and sent youngsters Dalla Valle and Kacaniklic the other way to Fulham.  Konchesky was 29-years-old at the time and Hodgson thought he could be the solution at left back? He's Paul Konchesky, he couldn't even find a place in any other Premier League side when he left. Hodgson should have been sacked for buying him alone.  The worse part is Kacaniklic turned out to be a pretty good player and Emiliano Insua, who plays for Atletico Madrid now I might add, was sent out on loan to make room.

Out of all his purchases, Brad Jones solely remains at the club and really only Raul Meireles was a good buy.  I like Joe Cole, but he was also 29-years-old and frankly past it, Danny Wilson never panned out and was sent back to Scotland where helped get Hearts relegated last season, and Poulsen was a knob.

In defense of Hodgson, which I can't believe I just wrote that, he did get rid of some dead weight.  Riera wasn't working out, there was no place for Cavalieri, Nemeth's and Plesis' potential never came to fruition, and Itandje became a pariah for his disrespectful Hillsborough display.  The loss of Mascherano was a crushing blow, but he wanted to leave and Hodgson didn't appear to care if he stayed or not.

Roy Hodgson's 41.94 winning percentage is the worst of any Liverpool manager in the last 23 years and the worst in the last 58 years save Ronnie Moran's 10 match stint as caretaker manager in 1991 and the brief Houllier/Evans joint reign in 1998. Under Hodgson, we lost to Blackpool and Wolverhampton at Anfield. Blackpool was relegated that season and the Wolves avoided the drop by just one point.  We sat in 19th place 8 matches into the season and were eliminated from the League Cup by League Two side, Northampton Town.

There's no doubt Hodgson's term was a disaster. He sums it up best when talking about our 'amazing' comeback draw with Sunderland on Semptember 25th at Anfield: "The way we came back from 2-1 down was very commendable and towards the end of the game we were creating a lot of chances. We deserved our point." It was not even a deserved draw, but Hodgson seems content with it. A good manager would have said how we played like shite, our first goal shouldn't have counted, and our performance unacceptable and didn't meet Liverpool standards, instead of 'oh well, jolly good match, we got a point.'

Hodgson is clearly past it.  His tactics that have worked for him for '35 years' don't work for big clubs.  He was a failure with Liverpool and should probably go manage in the Championship.  His beloved Fulham are right there waiting and Felix Magath would most likely be happy to step aside.

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