If this is to be Roy Hodgson's final stint in his long, itinerant coaching career, then the oldest manager in the English Premier League is going out swinging.
As Crystal Palace plummets in the standings, the 76-year-old Hodgson is losing his temper — and maybe his love for the game.
Having to visit Manchester City, the English and European champion, on Saturday with a heavily depleted team has hardly improved his mood, either.
“We’re going through a bad spell,” Hodgson says, “and it looks like the bad spell will continue … it’s not going to be a good time for us.”
Hodgson’s mood hasn’t just darkened because Palace has lost six of its last nine league games, winning just once in that streak. Though that clearly hasn’t helped either.
After a miserable home loss to Bournemouth by 2-0 last week, a Palace fan threw a small missile at Hodgson as the former England coach walked off the pitch to jeers. Hodgson later said Palace supporters had been “spoilt” in recent years, a comment he said a few days later that he bitterly regretted and had left him “distressed.”
His most recent setback was losing to Liverpool 2-1 on Saturday, when Palace took the lead, saw Jordan Ayew sent off for two contentious yellow cards, conceded a deflected equalizer and then a winning goal in stoppage time.
Hodgson raged, saying he was “sick” of a whole range of aspects of the game such as handball interpretations, the clampdown on time-wasting and what he perceived to be the pettiness of fourth officials in the technical area. He added he is “not a great lover of VAR,” either.
“I’ve been in football a long time,” said Hodgson, whose first managerial role was in Sweden in 1976, “and games like today make me realize that when the day comes to leave it behind, I won’t be missing anything.”
When might that day come?
Palace is in 13th place and seven points above the relegation zone, pretty much the ballpark area in which the team typically finishes the season. The last eight end-of-campaign finishes? 15th, 14th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 14th, 12th and, last season, 11th.
It’s why the “spoilt” comment rubbed some of the team’s supporters up the wrong way, though for a club like Palace to survive fairly comfortably each season without ever spending anywhere near as much as the top teams in the league is quite commendable.
It seems, however, that the club’s leadership wants more. And Hodgson doesn’t sound too confident he can deliver anything better without heavier investment.
“I’ve got no doubts in my mind whatsoever that the group of players we have here … will keep this club in the Premier League,” Hodgson said. “But if you want to keep raising the bar and say that’s not good enough, that you’ve got be in the top 10, then that’ll be difficult for us.
“With the players we’ve got at the moment, I don’t know that’s going to be possible.”
Hodgson ended his first spell as Palace manager in June 2021 and was enticed back into coaching for a short but troubled stint at Watford in the final months of the 2021-22 season, when he failed to keep the team in the Premier League.
It was presumed that Hodgson’s career was over — he suggested that was the case so he could spend more time with his family — but he was enticed back in March when Palace, the love of his soccer life, came calling with the club plunging close to the bottom three.
He won his first three games in charge, lost only two of his 10-match stint, Palace comfortably avoided relegation and he was persuaded to sign a new deal covering this season.
For Palace, it was hardly a forward-thinking move but one that appeared almost a guarantee of league survival. When the club has thought outside the box and brought in younger managers such as Frank De Boer and Patrick Vieira, panic has set in at the first sign of trouble and the hierarchy has called for a more experienced head like Hodgson.
Yet it sounds like even Hodgson, one of soccer’s longest-serving, well-travelled and highly respected managers, might have had enough and doesn’t like what the game has become.
He’ll take an ailing Palace squad to Etihad Stadium missing Ayew through suspension and key players such as playmaker Eberechi Eze, holding midfielder Cheick Doucoure and goalkeeper Sam Johnstone through injury.
Asked how confident he was of getting a result, Hodgson gave an answer that summed up his state of mind at the moment.
“It was going to be a tough ask anyway,” he said. “Now it’s become quasi-impossible, I would think.”
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Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Steve Douglas, The Associated Press
