Carragher’s “big mistake” revealed by Hodgson

Roy Hodgson has revealed what Jamie Carragher said was the manager’s “big mistake” during his short spell at Liverpool. During his six months at Anfield, Hodgson won just 13 of his 31 games in charge, losing nine of those 31. Now, Hodgson has revealed what his centre-back, Carragher, has since said about his time on Merseyside. Speaking on The Overlap, Hodgson said: “I think probably the most pertinent thing, and I wasn’t really aware of it at the time, but Jamie Carragher said: ‘You know what your big mistake was?’ ‘We’ve been coached,’ he said. ‘We’ve had [Rafael] Benitez for two and a half years and it’s been pretty rigid – the coaching, the messages.’ When Hodgson came to Liverpool, he used largely the same methods that had worked at his previous club, Fulham. Looking back, he wishes he had applied a slightly different approach. He added: “They [the Liverpool players] probably wanted more freedom, more training sessions whereby they weren’t required to constantly focus and take on board information. Maybe, they wanted a few sessions where there was more play and the coaching would have been more subtle. I think if I were to think back to the type of coaching sessions we did there, I wouldn’t do that again. I’ve evolved a little bit from that and tried to find a way of getting the same messages, keeping the same philosophy but maybe in a slightly different way. But again, it’s wisdom with hindsight. It’s always very easy to get your decisions right with hindsight.” Despite having hindsight, Roy Hodgson never exhibited any of the qualities needed to be a successful Liverpool manager and his time at Liverpool won’t become more positively tinted with time.