Roy Hodgson admits to Liverpool job ‘mistake’
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Roy Hodgson has admitted he made a ‘mistake’ as Liverpool manager.
Hodgson was appointed to the Anfield hot seat in 2010 amid ongoing financial turmoil caused by the club’s erstwhile owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett.
The journeyman coach’s arrival proved unpopular as he succeeded Rafael Benitez while also presiding over the Reds’ most abject post-war period.
He lasted six months in the role before being replaced by Kenny Dalglish, who had been the overwhelming choice for the role the previous summer.
But future England boss Hodgson, now 78, believes that the situation was not helped by refusing to tailor his approach to the new role on Merseyside.
“I don’t think I dealt with it very well,” he told The Rest Is Football podcast.
“I think [Jamie] Carragher summed it up well.
He said, ‘You came in also wanting to coach us, we’d just been coached for three years by Benitez.’
“Maybe someone who came in with a softer, more human approach and less coaching-oriented [would have been better-suited].
“But of course I’d had a lot of success during that period, so I think I didn’t research mentally, ‘Right, what is this job?
It’s been working, let’s keep it going.’ Which was obviously a mistake.
“But it’s one of those mistakes I have to forgive myself in a way simply because I don’t how I could have washed away the feelings and the work that had got me there.”
He added: “I always thought Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard were on board what we were trying to do… but I might have tried to get more out of them.
“[Ask them] ‘Look, how has it been?
What do you think needs to be changed here?’, and even get their ideas about some of the players.
“I did it very much as the old-fashioned manager/head coach, my responsibility, I’ve got to do it.
I think I’d have done that.”