It's funny. You look at the table and see us in a comfortable position in the table on 29 points, and probably only requiring a couple of wins and a draw for safety. But I still have to shake my head and look twice because it doesn't feel as if we have had a good season.

Not sure how you can be the right person to represent a Country as a football manager but be the wrong coach. He’s either right for the job or he is not, unless of course you have come up with a new national role of ‘media representative’ who stays away from tactics but does all the press conferences, which is actually not a bad idea.

Personally I care not how a manager speaks in interviews, I’m only interested in how he coaches and inspires his team.

Lovely post.

100%. Jobs should be based on ability, not cronyism. Obviously, there should be some criteria to barr people with particularly shady backgrounds, but what kind of message does it send out when the FA appoint someone in their most important role, not because they are capable of doing the job, but because their face fits in all the right circles?

Then that manager goes on to drop a player from the world cup squad because his brother was racially abused by another squad member. His previous record has shown he's willing to overlook human rights abuses if there's a big pay check in it for him.... but he sounds like one of us, so that's OK?

Decisions like that put big organisation on a sticky wicket when it comes to their claims of promoting equal opportunity.

This is wrong.

Hodgson spoke openly at the time about leaving Ferdinand out. Alex Ferguson had confirmed publicly that Ferdinand struggled to play three games in a week (as players must in a tournament), and though Rio was willing to travel and be a sub, Hodgson said the following when asked why Martin Kelly, and not Ferdinand, had been called up to replace Gary Cahill once the latter got injured on the eve of Euro 2012:

'The truth is Rio Ferdinand never came into consideration. I had my squad of 23. I had the players I knew, in Cahill's absence, would probably be the starters, and I knew who would be the covering players. When it came to bringing another player into the squad, I wasn't going to bring in a player of Rio Ferdinand's age, class, background and experience to be a cover player.

"When you've played 81 times already for your country – though only a couple of times in the last few years and had a lot of injuries – I don't think those players go to major tournaments as travellers. They go as one of the first names on the team sheet. I had to be convinced that, if I was going to take Rio in my 23, he would be one of the first names on the team sheet. I couldn't be convinced that would be the case'.

He did the same thing with Ashley Cole in 2014 once he had decided that Leighton Baines was the first choice left back. Or had his brother been racially abused too?

As I've said repeatedly on this poxy thread, I fully respect the many fair and reasonable criticisms of Hodgson, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't, but it's not right to just make s*** up to throw at him.

This is wrong.

Hodgson spoke openly at the time about leaving Ferdinand out. Alex Ferguson had confirmed publicly that Ferdinand struggled to play three games in a week (as players must in a tournament), and though Rio was willing to travel and be a sub, Hodgson said the following when asked why Martin Kelly, and not Ferdinand, had been called up to replace Gary Cahill once the latter got injured on the eve of Euro 2012:

'The truth is Rio Ferdinand never came into consideration. I had my squad of 23. I had the players I knew, in Cahill's absence, would probably be the starters, and I knew who would be the covering players. When it came to bringing another player into the squad, I wasn't going to bring in a player of Rio Ferdinand's age, class, background and experience to be a cover player.

"When you've played 81 times already for your country – though only a couple of times in the last few years and had a lot of injuries – I don't think those players go to major tournaments as travellers. They go as one of the first names on the team sheet. I had to be convinced that, if I was going to take Rio in my 23, he would be one of the first names on the team sheet. I couldn't be convinced that would be the case'.

He did the same thing with Ashley Cole in 2014 once he had decided that Leighton Baines was the first choice left back. Or had his brother been racially abused too?

As I've said repeatedly on this poxy thread, I fully respect the many fair and reasonable criticisms of Hodgson, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't, but it's not right to just make s*** up to throw at him.