When I think of Roy Hodgson as Liverpool’s manager, my mind is taken to a modest restaurant in the city’s Georgian quarter after he won his first match in charge of the club.
West Bromwich Albion had been beaten by a single goal at Anfield and Hodgson marked the occasion with a meal with Sheila, his wife, who was from Liverpool and came from a family of Evertonians.
Hodgson was fresh, or maybe a bit stale from work, and was still wearing his official Liverpool suit with the club’s badge on its pocket. His tie was red, and that made him stand out. I remember him standing up and jangling the keys in his pocket like a caretaker as he prepared to leave.
If he was expecting a warm reception from other diners, or even a hint of recognition, it never came. Nobody turned around. When I said to my now wife, “Look, there’s Roy Hodgson”, she carried on eating her bowl of pasta.
Had Hodgson been Rafa Benitez, the manager he’d succeeded, he’d have struggled to get out of the door. When Jurgen Klopp became Liverpool’s manager four and a half years later, he went for a drink at a bar just around the corner the night before his appointment and was mobbed.
Hodgson’s reign at Liverpool is the shortest of any manager in the club’s history. Barely four months after spotting him…
