English Premier League: Roy appreciates the focus at Liverpool
Liverpool’s manager Roy Hodgson has felt overawed by the attention his actions have recieved at the Merseyside club this season. Ever since his takeover at the club as the first team manager in the summer, Roy has been under pressure
to produce results and take Liverpool to a title charge but the Reds find themselves in the bottom three at the moment, something that has not gone down well with the club’s supporters.
Hodgson spoke about the players and the club as a unit while stating, "This football club has a lot of players who have played for Liverpool for a long time. Every other day they've probably read or heard some nonsense about them
and they seem to be a pretty hardened bunch. I'm relatively hardened but I've been spared too much at Fulham, where never a bad word was said. It is an interesting thing for me to get into the type of mindset Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard are so good
at. Having heard and seen it all before they are quite prepared to shrug their shoulders and write it off. It is part and parcel of the business of working for Liverpool Football Club. I am beginning to turn it around myself."
Roy’s own position as Liverpool’s first team manager has been under threat as Liverpool lost their last Merseyside derby against Everton just two weeks ago. It was a terrible defeat for the reds which has left them low on confidence
and morale but Roy is not giving up just yet. Last week, Liverpool gained two goals to one win over Blackburn Rovers, a win that added three more points to their total point tally of the 2010-2011 season.
Roy Hodgson spoke about the victory as he expressed, "I hope we carry on from where we left off last Sunday because I thought that was a good team performance and a great victory. It is very important from the first minute at the
Reebok Stadium we are as committed as we were for 90 minutes against Blackburn. Coming into the next quarter of the season, I'm hoping it won't be as traumatic as the first one has been. I am hoping by the halfway stage we will be starting to see a little
bit of light.”
Roy went onto say, "I do not believe naively we are going to win seven out of nine and fly up to the top of the table but I do want us to move from of the relegation zone. I want us to continue giving performances where we know from
first minute to last that we are going to be very difficult to beat and we are going to ask a lot of questions of the opposition."
The club’s new owners NESV and Hodgson himself has been forced on the back foot due to rumors that Torres and Pepe Reina can leave the club in the January transfer window. Hodgson described the stories saying, "There is no truth in
them, they have no meaning. Reina and Torres are excellent trainers and their commitment to the club is as good as ever. There is no question they are anything other than committed. It is destructive but it depends on how you deal with it. It is fantastic
so many people want to write nonsense about us because it must mean we are still a big club. The trick is to get on with the job, be happy and let the birds sing."
The ex-Fulham man further said, "If we can produce the performances and results we will definitely be stronger but we do still need to do a bit of work. If I am being honest, when I came to the club there were a lot of things that
needed changing. Not least of all the ownership issue - which was the major one - but there were a lot of things we wanted to do differently. Some of the things we asked to do will require the owners' permission and will cost a lot of money, so there is still
a lot of work to do."
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