ROY HODGSON insists he is not feeling the strain and has dismissed the furore over his expletive-peppered outburst at a press conference last week. Ahead of his country’s first and most difficult Euro 2016 qualifying fixture, against Switzerland in Basel tomorrow, the England manager also admitted he will consider moving Wayne Rooney, his captain, into a midfield role — but not yet.
Hodgson had accused reporters of talking “f****** b*******” when negative statistics from England’s victory over Norway on Wednesday were quoted to him. He maintains that his industrial language was in no way a reflection of any strain he was feeling. “Goodness me. What sort of world are we living in? You are scraping the bottom of a barrel to say something negative there,” he said.
“Listen, I’m a football coach. I played non-league with dockers whose every other word was a swear word. I just thought I was with mature enough people to understand that a swear word, which I thought was probably used at the right time, should not provoke a fit of moral indignation.
“ I wasn’t arguing with anybody, I was making my points: strongly, yes, I accept that. I will put the message forward quite strongly, even a little bit aggressively, sometimes.
“But there was no need for me to be upset and there was no ill feeling. I swear all the time, I swear in front of my wife, I never used to but I do now. My vocabulary is good enough to allow me not to but there we are. It’s 2014. People swear — and I swear.”
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“The pressure is the pressure,” he said. “I don’t know I can feel more pressure than I put myself under to work with the team and do my best for the team,” he said. “Am I going to forget the World Cup? Of course not. Going out like we did scars you, but there’s no point wallowing in the fact that you have received that scar.”
Pleading for a respite from the “air of negativity” he believes has dominated coverage of his team, Hodgson promised that if people back his young team then, in time, they could “lift our heads a little bit out of this gloom”.
On Rooney’s role he acknowledged the case put forward by Paul Scholes for the striker to be redeployed. Hodgson said: “There’s no point in discussing Rooney’s position in a year’s time. What interests me is Rooney’s position on Monday. I’m not prepared to dispute the fact that, in time, he could move back. But at this moment he will be playing the centre- forward position on Monday.”
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Rooney is likely to be partnered up front by Danny Welbeck, after Daniel Sturridge withdrew from the squad with a thigh injury.
Hodgson’s main selection dilemma revolves around whether he should retain the 20-year-old John Stones, following his promising debut against Norway, or move Phil Jones to right-back and reintroduce Phil Jagielka at centre-half.
The indifferent form of the men’s team raises the possibility that their female counterparts could draw more fans for their game against Germany at Wembley on November 23 than turned up for last week’s Norway match at the same venue. Within the Football Association there is cautious optimism that the gate for the friendly, against the reigning European champions, could exceed 50,000.
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Only 40,181 spectators, a record low for a men’s international since Wembley re-opened, attended the fixture on Wednesday last week.