How mean of Bristol City.
There was poor old Roy Hodgson, quite happy in the Common Room of the Dun Coachin’ retirement home when they called him.
He was just finishing a 500-piece jigsaw of the Flying Scotsman leaving Edinburgh Waverley station resplendent in its LNER livery when that nice young lady who brings round the hot towels for an armchair wash down told him there was a phone call for him.
Scammers love to target the elderly, but this wasn’t somebody from Bangalore trying to sell Roy double glazing, it was somebody offering him a job!
It wasn’t Waitrose, who like to employ senior people, valuing the maturity and life experience they bring to the table when it comes to dealing with their difficult middle-class customers in Haslemere or Wilmslow who just can’t find the organic humous and stuffed Halkidiki olives ANYWHERE! Older workers always turn up on time and are more reliable than entitled Gen Zers.
No, this was Bristol City, a Championship football club asking somebody in an age group that often has a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ label safety-pinned to their shirt collar, to breathe life into their season.
The Robins’ campaign had gone flatter than a witch’s teat, from flirting with the play-offs around Christmas, to mid-table anonymity by spring.
Life in the Championship doldrums cost Gerhard Struber his job and with nothing to play for City gave themselves time to cast the net for a manager to guide them next season and looked for a safe pair of hands to see out the current campaign, even if those hands had become more accustomed in retirement to slotting annoying tricky jigsaw pieces or making sure you got the Painting by Numbers colours right.
Out of retirement came Roy at 78, two years after his last job at Crystal Palace and back to Ashton Gate where his managerial career started in 1982.
It might seem mean of City to drag the tartan blanket off Roy’s lap but don’t forget this is a man of vast managerial experience, having headed 22 different teams in eight countries.
He was damned for failing to make the most of England’s Golden Generation, having crashed out of Euro 2012 at the quarter-finals to Italy on penalties and in the 2014 World Cup where England failed to get out of the group stages.
The wasting of the Golden Generation, amid accusations of bottling the inclusion of John Terry and Rio Ferdinand in the same squad and distasteful jokes about monkey and spacemen which upset England’s black players, Hodgson would have realised England – who had risen to their highest-ever third place in the FIFA rankings and sank to a lowest 22nd since 1996 – jig was up when they crashed out of Euro 2016 to the Cod fishermen and sauna operatives of Iceland in the last 16.
Having saved Crystal Palace from relegation in 2021, Hodgson left at the end of the season, proclaiming; ‘I really am stepping away from football for a while, but who knows what the future may be. I’ve seen so many people retire with all the fanfare blazing only to surface somewhere in a fairly short period of tie. I would prefer not to do that.’
Four months after his appointment in May
Older people can get a bit forgetful sometimes, and in March 2023, Hodgson returned as Crystal Palace manager until the end of the season.
And that was it. Until Bristol City called him out of retirement, and the old sausage must have something about him as the Robins won their first two games under him and have drawn the other.
City midfielder Scott Twine said: ‘I think he came in knowing we were obviously in a bad run of form and wanted to keep it as simple as possible.’
Makes sense. No point in risking confusion in somebody who might get confused as to which arm and leg need to be inserted in the Common Room hokey-cokey.
But hey! it’s easy for FSOM to make cheap snipes at a man who has taken on a role at a Championship club at an age when most men regard a victory as having only to get up once a night for a pee.
Especially when FSOM – a much younger man than Hodgson by some years – ended his own managerial career not long ago.
For all Hodgson’s experience in 40-odd years, FSOM would like to have seen him cope with some of the issues that chewed FSOM’s melons: truculent 19-22 year-olds who left him with nine players on a Sunday morning having had 16 on Saturday evening, Sunday morning divas who possessed the entitlement of their Premier League idols – not seeing any need to pay match fees when kit, pitch hire and referees all had to be paid for and leaving FSOM £500 in the hole when he wrung the curtain down.
And worst of all and the final straw for FSOM? Copying their Premier League idols by producing scissors in the dressings rooms and cutting holes in the back of the socks to let their calf muscles breathe, even if most of them missed leg day at the gym for the last five years and had less muscle than a flamingo. And whine the following week that there were no socks without holes!
Hodgson must have a few marbles rolling around up top if he wants to take on another managerial role at his age.
With any luck FSOM can ease into Hodgson’s chair in the common room, put the plaid blanket over his knees and finish off that jigsaw.
Is that nice young lady with the car coming to take us out later?
Have I had my tea yet?
