by Molby's bellybutton fluff » Sun Jun 27, 2010 1:25 pm
Once againI'll say that I don't think Hodgson will be our manager, but since everyone keeps going on about him I checked out his record on Wiki. In actual fact, it's much better than people on here think.
He won the Swedish league title with a team called Halmstads, twice. Apparantly they were rubbish and relegation material when he took over. Winning the league with them was one of the biggest surprises of all time in Swerdish football apparantly. He won five leagues with Malmo, and the club liked him so much they named a corner of their ground after him. They also offered him the job for life. He knocked the then Italian Champions Inter Milan out of the European Cup while at Malmo, causing a magor shock. After that he went to a Swiss team who I'vwe never heard of and during his time there knocked out Real Madrid and Celtic. He is credited as being one of the founders of the zonal marking system (you can't have everything) and is often used by FIFA and UEFA as one of their technical coaching directors, being respected by football people throughout the world as an excellent and knowledgeable coach.
Hodgsons next job was at Switzerland as the international manager. He took the team to the 1994 World Cup finals, and on the way there they lost only one game in the qualifying group which contained Portugal and Italy. The italians were managed by Saachi, and were defeated in the World Cup final on penalties. Hodgsons Switzerland team took four points off them in qualifying, it would have been 6 but they let slip a 2-0 lead in Italy. This was the Swiss's first world cup since 1966. They qualified out of the group at the finals, but were beaten in the last 16 by Spain. They then easily qualified for the Euro 96 tournament, but Hodgson left before it to take over at Inter Milan. At their best, the Swiss got as high as 3rd in the FIFA rankings under Hodgson.
At Inter, Hodgson was brought in to arrest a terrible decline, and succeeded in taking them to 7th from a releation slot and qualified for the EUFA Cup. They got to the final of it the following season, losing on penalties over two legs. the team which Hodgson had carefully built up went on to finish second in the Italian serie A the following season, and win the Uefa Cup. He is still loved by fans and the board at Inter.
He then left to go to Blackburn. I've copied and pasted what it said there.
In the 1997 close season, Hodgson was tempted by Jack Walker to replace Ray Harford at Blackburn Rovers.Rovers had finished 13th under Harford the previous season – only 2 seasons after winning the title—and had been in danger of relegation; Walker wanted Rovers to challenge consistently for European football. In the 1997–98 season—his first season in charge – Blackburn finished 6th, qualifying for the UEFA cup and appeared to be in the ascendancy. However, Hodgson's second season with Blackburn would prove to be disastrous, both for the club and for his personal reputation within English football. Hodgson spent £20m in the summer of 1998 to strengthen the Rovers side[8]. A succession of poor buys – notably the £7.5 million Kevin Davies—coupled with injuries and dressing room unrest led to a disastrous start to the season. He was sacked in December 1998 with Rovers at the bottom of the league table.[9] His final game was a home defeat to Southampton.
Anyway I'm running out of puff now, but he has done well since then as well. I don't think he will be our new manager, but he isn't exactly a muppet and if he is to be our boss, I won't be having pops at him before he's even taken the job.