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Interesting stuff for your reading pleasure!
Parrot

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
‘We kept Palace in top flight with passion – and Rottweilers in dressing room’
Veteran manager Roy Hodgson tells Paul Hayward how he turned club around after losing first seven games of his reign
The day after Crystal Palace fans immortalised him on banners and in song, Roy Hodgson was spreading the credit for one of the great turnarounds in English top-flight history. Losing the first seven games without scoring a goal but still surviving was Palace’s version of Manchester City’s 100 points.
Still aglow from saving a club who are a “10-minute walk” from his boyhood home, Hodgson spoke in detail for the first time about how he turned Palace’s season around after taking over from Frank de Boer in September. At the heart of the transformation was a pact that allowed senior players to keep order in the squad while Hodgson concentrated on coaching the side to 44 points and 11th position. Sunday’s 2-0 win over West Brom ended with ecstatic approval from the fans of the manager’s work.

Clear favourite: Roy Hodgson applauds the Crystal Palace fans after they unveiled banners (below) hailing the fine job he has done at Selhurst Park
In central London, where we met the next afternoon, Hodgson, 70, explained the formula he used back in the dark days of autumn. “We phased it in the sense that we were anxious not to come in banging drums and having meetings and saying – right this is all wrong at the club, we haven’t got enough discipline and we haven’t got enough that,” he said. “We played that pretty much low key. And made it pretty clear the recipe for success in our opinion – that’s me, Ray [Lewington, his No 2] and young Steven Reid [his assistant] – was going to happen on the training field.
“We said – that’s where we expect you to go along with us, to share our enthusiasm for the task, to share our enthusiasm for training. Share our passion for it. But also – take on board our ideas for team play. It’s the field of play, that’s the be-all and end-all. I would be less concerned with trying to sort out every other little problem that might have arisen around the club, and I must say I got tremendous help there. Like you always do when you go to a club, you put together a little group of senior players who’ll give you some background. I was very lucky. There was Damien Delaney and Jason Puncheon and Mamadou Sakho and Wilfried Zaha – they were the main four, representing different aspects of the club.
“They said, ‘People will always say things have not gone well, there’s a lack of discipline, a lack of this or that – but it’s not really true. What we need, we think, is more guidance on the field of play as to what you, the coach, want. The other side really isn’t that bad. Why don’t you leave it to us, we’ll deal with that. You just concentrate on your coaching side and we’ll back you up’. That was very good, I think. So I never had that problem of – ‘He’s late and has he paid his fine?’ That’s for the Rottweilers we’ve had in the players’ group.”
This partnership between senior pros and a manager with 40-plus years of experience could be a template for other struggling clubs. And as Palace began planning straight away for next season, Hodgson turned his thoughts to keeping forward Zaha, the most gifted of those team leaders, at Selhurst Park.

Zaha was scintillating at Palace at times this season and Hodgson believes there are sound reasons for him to stay. “What people don’t know so much is that he had two quite serious injuries,” England’s previous manager starts out. “He played against Chelsea, in our eighth game, after getting injured in our first. Then of course he did it again. A very similar injury.
“He’s tried very hard to become more of a team player to give us more in terms of what we
have asked from him defensively, what we’ve asked in terms of balancing his game, because he is fantastic on the ball. He can go past one, two, three players with ease. We’ve tried to work with him on that to balance it out, so that sometimes when he draws players he passes it instead of trying to go through the three of them.
“Little things like that. He’s worked at that. But he’s a special character, and very special to the club, loved by everybody. He’s got all the plaudits. He does deserve it. But I think he would be the first to admit there are other players who deserve plaudits too. He’s not a massive egoist who thinks, ‘It’s all about me’. He’d be keen to share it with others.”
Hodgson wants Palace to stop flirting with relegation. “I think we need help in terms of the squad. We need to strengthen because we are going to lose players, we’re going to lose some quite important ones, not least Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who goes back to Chelsea.
“You can’t flirt with relegation every year. We’ve got to become a more stable team who people would expect to finish somewhere between eighth and 16th every year.”

To that end, Zaha’s game-changing abilities are invaluable, and Hodgson maintains that wages are not the only issue for his best player to consider.
“The way our club’s evolved, the wage bill is quite high, a lot of the players are earning decent money, so I don’t know that it’s going to be that easy for clubs to come in and take him away in the sense of – ‘Blimey, if I go there I can get my wage doubled or trebled,’ which does happen with some players.
“He has moved beyond that. He’s being paid what he deserves for a club like ours. The clubs in our ballpark wouldn’t be able to tempt him away with more money, that’s for sure.
“Once again you’re talking about the really big-money clubs who can attract anyone in the world – then it will be up to Wilf to decide how he weighs that up, against playing somewhere where’s he very comfortable, and is respected, in a decent team playing the right sort of football, which suits him, vis-à-vis taking a chance and going to one of these other clubs.
“I know Crystal Palace will do everything in our power to thwart any moves. We certainly don’t want to sell him or need to sell him.
“He also knows his place in our team is assured, his status in our team is assured. He’d have to be taking quite a giant leap of faith into the unknown because he wouldn’t know at the so-called bigger club what his fate was going to be, and he wouldn’t know to what extent he might be a victim of the home-grown rule, where they’re keen to get decent players in their squad because they’re home-grown.”
This is clever diplomacy: selling the dream of staying at Palace in kind and supportive terms. It reflects also the strength of the bond Hodgson has re-established with his local club after similar feats of escapology with Fulham and West Brom.
“A lot of the players who’ve done so well aren’t necessarily the big names,” he says at the end of a tough campaign impeded by relentless injuries.
“James Tomkins, Luka Milivojevic to name two. James McArthur, Andros Townsend – they’ve had fantastic seasons. And on top of that we’ve discovered the Martin Kellys are much better players than people gave them credit for. Patrick van Aanholt is a better left-back than people thought at the time.”
With a World Cup approaching, and disquieting memories of England overlaid by pleasing thoughts of Sunday’s end-of season party, Hodgson shares the credit too with Palace’s fans. “It’s a passionate crowd,” he says. “I’ve never thought too much about my roots because I’ve travelled so much, and I’m a man of the world, with all the places I’ve been, but coming back here I’m reminded: roots are important.”

Mr Cadbury's Parrot says "Hello"

This post has been merged from a topic called 'Roy Hodgson' by Midlands Eagle

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This post has been merged from a topic called 'Roy in telegraph today' by Midlands Eagle

We'll miss Damo, an intelligent guy and a leader

Mr Cadbury's Parrot says "Hello"

Yeah, a good read. Thanks for posting.

Will this be five? It's gonna be five! It IS five!

Freedom of the Borough of Croydon

RH awarded the above today.

And on being a recipient of the award, Hodgson said: “It is a great honour to be awarded the Freedom of the Borough and I would like to thank Councillor Newman and his colleagues for awarding it to me.

"I could never have dreamt that my journey in life would take me from walking to Selhurst Park with my father and sitting on the crossbar at the Holmesdale Road End, to managing the club I have always supported and to being recognised by Croydon Council for my career in football.

Congratulations to Roy Hodgson.

Will he be able to drive his sheep through the streets of Croydon?

Overheard a bloke at Selhurst last week saying Roy had one game to save his job.

He'd heard a whisper Roy had lost the dressing room.

Which goes to show what utter tosh people talk at football.

Well done all at cpfc today.