NO SACRIFICE TO BE HERE!
Roy’s back and reveals his favourite Elton song
ROY HODGSON picked out Sir Elton John’s first solo No.1 as his favourite hit from the Rocket Man’s back catalogue, and the new Watford boss admitted: “It’s no sacrifice at all being here.”
When it’s raining stair-rods on the touchline at Turf Moor on Saturday, on his maiden excursion with the Hornets at 74, he may be forced to revise his mellow outlook.
And the former England manager faces a tall order – not just Burnley’s 6ft 6in signing Wout Weghorst – to save Watford from relegation.
But, as Hodgson admitted, he simply could not resist one last crusade, seven months after he bowed out at Crystal Palace, ostensibly heading into the sunset after a 45-year coaching career which began when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister.
He was not actively seeking an encore in the dugout when Hornets owner Gino Pozzo consigned Claudio Ranieri to the ejector seat and sent his SOS last week.
Hodgson, who has agreed a shortterm contract to the end of the season with a simple mandate: Keep Sir Elton’s Watford in the Premier League, said: “I was not being clever with my use of the (Sacrifice) lyrics. There is no analogy with the situation I find myself – it’s just a song I like. I wasn’t expecting any calls from Watford, or anyone else. I thought I would find it easier to resist but I was never going to it turn down as it was the siren call from the mermaid as the sailor passes by on his ship. It was out of the blue but I’m glad it came.
“Whether this is a case of the heart ruling the head, we’ll find out. It was a question of ‘Would it be fun? And could I do a good job?’ The answers were yes,
SLOWING DOWN? NO
NEW Watford manager Roy Hodgson insists he has not slowed down despite his advanced years.
The former England boss accepted a five-month deal, at the age of 74, to try and keep the struggling Hornets in the Premier League.
He said of his unexpected encore: “I was fairly happy in my life, certainly not looking to see what job would be coming available, and this one came out of the blue – totally unexpected.
“But I felt I was ready to take on an arduous task. You will have to ask the people who worked with me in the past, like Ben Foster or Tom Cleverley, they might say he has slowed down and he is not what he was, but I feel fine.” so I jumped in at the deep end. I can only hope that jumping in at the deep end won’t see me drowning.”
Sirens, mermaids, sailors and drowning may sound like a nautical distress call but Hodgson has seen enough on the training pitch in nine days with his new squad to be convinced they can reach dry land from the shipwreck of Ranieri’s 112-day reign.
Like Graham Taylor, another exEngland manager and the unrivalled patron saint of Vicarage Road, Hodgson has not been scarred by bitterness after his Three Lions reign came up short.
Taylor returned to Watford and added two promotions to his body of work after England ejected him, and Hodgson admitted of his four years in charge of the national team: “It was a strange time.
“Between tournaments it went well. Going into the World Cup in 2014, it was a younger, more exciting bunch of players and the results had been good... then the tournament comes along, we lose a couple matches, and all of a sudden it really is disaster time.
“You then have a similar build-up to Euro 2016 and we were really quite confident, thinking this could be our moment. But then Iceland comes along it blows everything out of the water.
“It hurts and it took me a while before I got any sort of equilibrium back.”