Hodgson hates stats but oldest Prem boss in history is as good as ever at doing the same old things
SunSport's Chief Sports Writer hails the Palace chief who has stuck to what he knows for 43 years and become one of the greatest managers for clubs below the Prem elite
YOU can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
But you certainly can get him to perform the same trick again and again and again.
Roy Hodgson, who last weekend became the oldest dog to manage in the Premier League, won’t start jumping through blazing hoops at 71.
Take Saturday’s visit to Leicester — sit back, concede 65 per cent possession, play half as many passes as the opposition, get out-shot 27-7, use the defensive shape you’ve worked on all week, every week, win 4-1 and turn up your nose at every statistic other than the scoreline.
It was vintage Hodgson — a manager who has repeated himself for 43 years and is now, literally, peerless.
Hodgson’s resilience is extraordinary. Few could have walked away from the wreckage of England's Iceland debacle, or before that his Liverpool sacking, without a sackful of self-doubt.
But despite his bumbling-uncle image this is a man of fierce intelligence, a significant ego and a steely determination to prove himself right.
An outcast in his homeland for many years, due to his lack of a first-team professional playing career, Hodgson has since proved himself an outstanding manager of small to medium-sized Premier League clubs.
At Fulham, where he reached a European final, and at West Brom, he earned adoration. At his own boyhood club, Palace, the love was already there.
Last season Palace lost their first seven games, four with Frank de Boer as boss, but under Hodgson they missed a top-half finish only on goal difference.
Ask anyone close to Hodgson to name his most redeeming feature and you’re likely to hear about his visceral hatred for stats in football.
While he still enjoys a decent working relationship with players young enough to be his grandsons — they tend to share his love of big expensive watches — Hodgson is said to have less time for the brigade of performance analysts employed by all major clubs.
And Heaven forbid the young journalist tempted to confront him with even the most innocuous stat.
It is then merely a question of responding with either withering sarcasm or outright hostility. So it is probably unsurprising to learn the stat Hodgson hates most was the one which said that, at 71 years and 198 days, he had overtaken Sir Bobby Robson as the Premier League’s oldest boss.
Behind the scenes the Palace manager has been quietly seething about this.
No man likes to be reminded of his own mortality and certainly not one still as fiercely in love with his training-ground trade as Hodgson.
Earlier this season, when Palace were struggling to score at home and some fans were getting restless, there were murmurings from those close to Hodgson that this could be his final season.
Time has not mellowed Hodgson, who still takes criticism to heart as much as ever. He was starting to feel his age and considered jacking it in.
Now those murmurings have stopped. Palace are blessed with Michy Batshuayi, the proper centre-forward who had been their missing cog, and are on a six-match unbeaten streak.
Some Palace fans now believe this team could be as good as Steve Coppell’s legendary side of the early 90s.
For all Hodgson’s reliance on defensive shape, Wilf Zaha, Andros Townsend and Luka Milivojevic are seriously good footballers.
And the thrashing of Leicester was achieved without brilliant young English full-back Aaron Wan-Bissaka or gifted German playmaker Max Meyer.
Win an FA Cup quarter-final at Watford and Hodgson will take a club side to Wembley for the first time.
For all his tribulations at the 2014 World Cup and Euro 2016, he never lost a competitive match there in four years as England boss.
After Iceland, many assumed Hodgson would never be seen again in top-level management. Some had said the same after his brief spell at Liverpool.
But while he has coached many players from the world-class elite, this was not his forte.
That has always been the endless repetition of training-ground drills which allowed those just below the elite level to over-perform significantly.
Hodgson truly is a grand old man of English football — and the statistics prove it.
But if you see him, please don’t mention them.
ENGLAND (MIDDLE CLASS) ACT
THE night was still young when I left Cardiff around 8pm on Saturday.
Yet a Welsh colleague told me two of his cousins had celebrated by head-butting each other so hard that both were now bleeding profusely in a city-centre boozer.
In the infamous Chip Alley it was difficult to sidestep the pavement pizza, while a homeless man’s dog was wearing a huge daffodil ruff around its neck and a local woman was gleefully whipping a man in an England shirt with the pole of a Welsh flag.
You could easily imagine that Dystopia was the name of a village between Merthyr Tydfil and Ebbw Vale.
England had been beaten at rugby, largely because it had been a bit loud and the other lot were pretty fired up. Which doesn’t suggest Eddie Jones’ men have the makings of World Cup winners.
Witnessing the glorious chaos in and around the Principality Stadium, it became clear that Twickenham is simply too middle-class an environment to breed the best.
Ban all the posh types and England could rule the world.
PUEL'S GOLD
THERE was one consolation for Leicester City as they sorted out the departure terms for sacked Claude Puel — at least the whispering Frenchman didn’t need the usual hush-money clause.
Puel’s attitude towards cup competitions helped turn the crowd against him, with his wholesale changes for the FA Cup defeat at Newport contributing to his exit.
Yet Puel had led Southampton to a cup final two years ago, might have won it but for a poor refereeing decision, and was still sacked at the end of that season.
He can be forgiven for being confused about a scrambled sense of priorities in the English game.
NO KOP OUT - CITY SLICKER
LIVERPOOL should have been bolder against a weakened Manchester United but they were not — and Jurgen Klopp was correct to brand the match ‘f*****g s**t’.
The nine-point lead Liverpool held just after Christmas has been reduced to one, yet it doesn’t feel as though Klopp’s men are choking, bottling it or getting weighed down by 29 years of hurt.
It just feels as though Manchester City have more good players.
NO TASTE FOR CARABAO
THAT’S four League Cups in six seasons for Manchester City — who have now won the trophy more times than Manchester United.
Yet Pep Guardiola still sounds faintly bemused the competition even exists. And after two seasons of sponsorship, I’ve still never met anyone who’s actually tasted Carabao.
AN EVEN CLOSER SHAVE
IN a magazine interview to promote his use of shaving razors, Harry Kane reveals he owns two houses.
One is a family home, about ten miles from Tottenham’s training ground. The other, where the England captain stays during the week, is even closer to his workplace.
It sounds an unusual situation. But one which many blokes might fancy if they had Kane’s money.
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