HODGSON: I’M NO LOCAL HERO
Croydon-born Roy determined to avoid Gross mistake at Eagles
ROY HODGSON insisted he is no Christian Gross as he seeks another Fulham style miracle to save Crystal Palace from the drop.
But the former Engl and boss warbed his first Great Escape across the capital took until the final day of a nerve-shredding season in 2009.
The new Selhurst Park boss saw close up there will be no quick fix after Palace became the first team to lose their first five top-flight games without scoring a goal The result and the performance proved the problems at the club run deeper than the identity of the manager.
They have lost nine of their last 10 Premier League matches under three different bosses, with Manchester City Manchester United and Chelsea their next three league fixtures.
Although quoted on the Palace website on Wednesday as returning to “the club ofon my boyhood”, Croydon-born Hodsgon claimed being a South Londoner was not the ticket to survival. “I didn't walk in here
as Christian Gross did once and say, ‘I’ve come on the train’,” he said of the former Tottenham boss. “I didn’t say I’m a local boy.”
But the oldest man ever to take charge of a Premier League club has the experience of keeping Fulham up in 2008-09 after needing seven games to get his first win.
“We started so badly,” the 70-year-old Hodgson.
“We lost the first three. It was a similar sort of thing: Arsenal, Manchester United, those type of teams. It was a squad of players we had to assess, organise, work out which ones going forward would be the ones that could help us out.
“Going forward, I’ll have a much better idea of the playing personnel, and that’s a very important factor.
“That was an important part at Fulham: looking at the playing personnel, working out who’s going to be good enough on the field and who’s going to be really ready to roll their sleeves up and die for us in this cause because we’re not doing to well. That will be the main thing.
“I still think we will be OK, and we’ll work to be OK, and this group of players will follow me and follow the others to make sure we’re OK. But it won’t be by the end of October, possibly, it might be quite a long way forward.
“Don’t forget at Fulham we got out of the relegation zone on the very, very last game of the season with a win at Portsmouth, so we lived with that hanging over our heads for a very long time, and we were greatly helped by the fans.”
Fraser Forster made stunning saves from misfiring Christian Benteke (below) and Jason Puncheon, while Ruben Loftus-Cheek showed more promise. Casting his mind back to his first match after taking charge at West Brom – against Wolves in February 2011 – Hodgson said: “I was lucky. We scored an undeserved equaliser, which papers over cracks.
“Unfortunately today the cracks were there, they weren’t papered over, and we got what we deserved, a defeat.” Palace midfielder James McArthur said: “He wants us to be much more solid as a team and we need obviously to try and be more clinical in front of goal.”
The returns of Mamadou Sakho and Wilfried Zaha will help at both ends. But it will be a season of playing catch-up. So was Hodgson told staying in the Premier League was essential?
“The simple answer is yes,” he said. “I’ve obviously been told from the club’s point of view that survival’s everything, that it would be unthinkable we go down, and we’re going to work during the months ahead to make sure it doesn’t happen.”