by NANNY RED » Sat Nov 20, 2010 10:51 am
Afraid of upsetting your next empolyers arewe Roy .
Roy Hodgson has refused to stir up Steven Gerrard row | Football | The Guardian
Roy Hodgson declined to enter the row over Steven Gerrard's hamstring injury yesterday after the Liverpool captain urged him to draw a line under Fabio Capello's costly decision to persist with the midfielder against France.
Liverpool expect to be without their influential captain for four weeks after he suffered a hamstring tear in the 84th minute of England's friendly defeat on Wednesday, despite a pre-match agreement between Franco Baldini, the general manager, and Damien Comolli, Liverpool's new director of football strategy, that he would play only an hour.
Hodgson called Darren Burgess, Liverpool's head of fitness and conditioning, naive and foolish for the Twitter outburst that labelled England and the Football Association amateurish and incompetent in the immediate aftermath of Gerrard's injury. However, after a personal intervention from Gerrard, the Liverpool manager refused to reveal his true feelings on the matter, other than to say he was "disappointed and a bit angry" and did not expect an apology or a call from Capello.
"My interest is Liverpool FC and Steven Gerrard is very much an important part of that," Hodgson said. "When I spoke to him this morning he was at pains to say to me: 'Don't prolong this debate, please say as little as you can and be as diplomatic as you can, I know how you feel.' He feels, like me, that it's a sad thing to have happened and he's very disappointed about it, but he doesn't want to give even more reasons for a debate to rage.
"I respect that and secondly I understand it's going to happen and there's going to be debate and discussion about the value of friendly matches. I'm not stupid, I just don't think it's a good thing for me to get involved in, especially in this situation."
Gerrard has already begun rehabilitation work to recover within four weeks. "He doesn't accept for one minute that this will take a month," said his manager. Though Liverpool remain privately aggrieved at Capello's handling of the issue, and the FA has confirmed its insurers will reimburse the club for Gerrard's wages while he is sidelined, Hodgson said there is little to be gained by prolonging the dispute.
"You have to accept when there are midweek international games and your players are called up that it's a fear you always have. I don't know that I'm being diplomatic, I'm simply refusing to prolong a debate. Our fitness coach, Darren, in his naivety and his frustration was foolish enough to voice an opinion on a Twitter page and that's led to these two days of vitriol and I think it's time that it stopped.
"I can do nothing about Steven's injury, he can do nothing, it's a fact of life and we've got to live with it. I'm just determined to focus on a very important game against West Ham."
Liverpool's central midfield options against West Ham have also been reduced by an ankle injury to Jay Spearing and the suspension of Lucas Leiva following his dismissal at Stoke last weekend. That 2-0 defeat prompted more calls for Kenny Dalglish to replace Hodgson as manager, but the man chosen to succeed Rafael Benítez as manager this summer claimed the antagonism has been fuelled by the media rather than anaemic performances.
"I am not getting into the fans. If I am to be frank, the way you have been writing has made my position a lot worse than the fans," Hodgson said. "You can take that as you want. Every time I speak to you about fans, you seem to have a complete monopoly on how every fan thinks. How many of them? There will always be a certain number of people who wanted a different manager and are probably still unhappy they did not get that manager.
"I have every faith in Liverpool fans. Every manager who has come to this club has been well supported by the fans. Every manager has gone through periods where the team has not achieved what the fans would like them to achieve, so I have no fears in that respect. I understand that they are not happy but we are in a position where if I were a fan I wouldn't be either."
Fernando Torres, meanwhile, has said Hodgson retains the full support of the Liverpool squad and that he has no personal issue with the manager. In an interview with a Spanish radio station, the striker said: "The squad here trusts in Hodgson and so do I. It is not simple to begin a new project with a different coach in a club where it is always required to fight for every competition.
"You have to adapt to new ways to create a winning team and that is never easy. I have no problem with Hodgson. He's a very serious coach who in the summer explained to me very clearly what he wanted from me. He has always trusted in me and that's very important for any footballer."
HE WHO BETRAYS WILL ALWAYS WALK ALONE
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