Tough job but someone has to do it
England’s players were left confused by the decision-making of Roy Hodgson and bored by his preparation for games during the Euro 2016 campaign that plunged the country’s football team to a new low.
Hodgson and his assistants, Ray Lewington and Gary Neville, stood down minutes after the worst defeat in England’s history against Iceland, following a catalogue of errors that baffled members of his squad.
Not even captain Wayne Rooney, who had supportive words for Hodgson in the aftermath of his departure, knew what the 68-year-old was going to do next, as he chopped and changed his side without explanation and kept players in the dark over his plans.
It emerged that: Members of Hodgson’s squad found his training sessions boring and repetitive.
Rooney was left in the dark over the manager’s plan to drop him from the team to face Slovakia.
Players were left perplexed by Adam Lallana’s omission from the Iceland game.
Coaches celebrated Iceland’s goal against Austria that set up Tuesday’s humiliating defeat.
It amounts to a damning indictment of the manager’s stewardship of England’s Euro 2016 campaign which ended in embarrassing fashion in Nice.
Hodgson’s biggest gamble of the tournament by far was to rest Rooney for the final group B game against Slovakia and yet the 30-year-old was given no indication that he might not start the match ahead of the official announcement to the players.
Given his seniority within a young squad, Rooney may have expected to be given a heads up as to what was to follow but was just as stunned as many of his teammates when Hodgson announced his team to face Slovakia.
Rooney feels he produces his best form when he is playing regularly and had communicated that view to Hodgson ahead of the tournament. It was no coincidence that he produced by far his worst performance in the Iceland defeat after effectively having been given a week off. Wanted: Someone to turn around the fortunes of football’s most consistently underperforming international team.
The search for a new England coach was under way yesterday as Roy Hodgson, Wayne Rooney and co arrived home after their shock exit from Euro 2016 after suffering a 2-1 defeat to Iceland in the round of 16.
It was a depressing scene for the English footballers as they strode off their plane on a wet day at Manchester Airport; their heads hanging low and without a manager after Hodgson resigned in the immediate aftermath of their loss.
Equally, England players were puzzled over the decision to drop Lallana for the Iceland match as the feeling within the squad was that the Liverpool man had been one of their better players in the group games.
Lallana and his Liverpool teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Nathaniel Clyne know
There aren’t too many obvious candidates to replace Hodgson in the role often labelled ‘‘The Impossible Job’’.
Gareth Southgate, the coach of England’s under-21 team, is an early if underwhelming favourite to succeed Hodgson. There’s talk of Sam Allardyce, Alan Pardew and Eddie Howe – all current English Premier League managers and all from different parts of the age spectrum.
But the list of genuine contenders is short, considering that being the manager of England is usually the highest-paid coaching role in the international game. only too well that Daniel Sturridge does not like to play out wide, and yet the striker made both his starts on the right of a front three.
Sources at Anfield have also felt for some time that Sturridge operates better as a substitute, which was backed up by his goalscoring introduction against Wales. That theory was overlooked
The English Football Association hasn’t rule out the possibility of a non-English replacement for Hodgson and has insisted that rootand-branch reform wasn’t necessary.
‘‘We’ll be looking for the best person for the job,’’ said the FA’s CEO, Martin Glenn. ‘‘We need a new manager. We don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are a lot of good things that have been done.’’
The FA will look to have its new man in place well in advance of England’s next match, a World Cup qualifier away to Slovakia on September 4. by Hodgson and his staff, as the 26-year-old started the next two matches and struggled to make an impact.
Rooney hinted that Hodgson did not make the most of the resources available to him, when he said: ‘‘It’s difficult to see now, but we do have a good squad, an exciting squad, and whoever comes in will