Plotting The Great Escape

When Roy Hodgson agreed to take the job of Fulham Manager from December 30th 2007, he accepted a very difficult mission. Assuming responsibility for a group of players low on confidence, out of form, and scrapping for points at the bottom of the Premier League, he had just one month to reinforce the squad and only a further three to transform fortunes, instil his own ideals and save the Whites from exiting the top-flight for the first time since 2001.

There was no miracle formula and there would be no overnight revolution, the process took time and, if you believed the media, became a lost cause on more than one occasion, but Roy never lost faith, and crucially, neither did his players. Suddenly, as the season neared its climax, Fulham began playing the kind of football the Club is famous for, and winning games again. The team were exhibiting form worthy of Premier League status, but the only question was whether they would run out of time before accumulating enough points to beat the drop. In the end it was an extremely close call, but, with just 14 minutes of the season remaining, ‘Roy’s boys’ did enough to edge above their rivals.

It’s the Wednesday after the dramatic finale at Fratton Park when Fultime sits down at Motspur Park with the architect of the greatest of relegation escapes and the Fulham Manager is already obviously busy working on plans for the new season. We’re just one window in a packed schedule of meetings, but he is as congenial and considered as ever as he fields our questions on an achievement that will long in the memory of Fulham fans…

First of all, congratulations on a wonderful achievement; has the magnitude of what you have done for Fulham Football Club sunk in yet?

Yes, I think it’s beginning to sink in, but strangely, I don’t know whether it’s the adrenaline or the excitement and tension of it all, but over the last few days I seem to be having more difficulty sleeping, and I’ve been starting my working day much earlier than I’m used to doing, in the middle of the night! I’m conscious of the fact that we’ve been able to do so little planning and preparation for next season because of being uncertain which league we’d be playing in, so it is a busy, busy time now, because I want to get so much done as quickly as possible.

You’ve been in the game for a long time, at many different clubs, experiencing various successes of one kind or another, but is this your greatest achievement in terms of defying the odds?

It ranks very highly, and I have to say that although all we did was escape relegation, and at that, on goal difference, the feeling during the game, after the game, and especially when we knew we were still in the Premier League, was more as if we’d won something than that we’d just survived. It was almost like winning a promotion, or a championship. So, I have to say that in my list of achievements, and I have been lucky to have had a few, I will always remain very proud of this one. But at the same time it just means that the work has to really kick on from here.

Surviving this year against all the odds is something we can all be happy with, but we don’t want to be in that situation every year, so the important thing now is to try and improve even further so that next year we’ve got a team that doesn’t worry every week whether they’re going to be in the bottom three. We’d like to have a stronger platform. I’m not saying we’re going to fly up the table and start challenging the top teams, but I’d like us at least to be in a more comfortable position more often.

Despite the excitement, you looked quite calm when Danny scored, but what was going through your head?

Well, I thought I’d save my jumping around and jubilation until the end. I was so conscious of the fact that there was a long time to play and it wasn’t over. I was thinking more in terms of getting a message out to the players to make sure that they concentrated for the next few minutes and that they didn’t allow the euphoria of scoring the goal to bring about what it brought about when we took the lead against Derby when they immediately equalised, and the following week, when we got back into the game against Sunderland, but before we could even digest that we’d let another in. I wanted a. to ensure that wasn’t going to happen and b. to think very carefully about what options I had on the bench, how tired certain players were, and whether there were changes that would help us secure the victory. So my mind was working overtime. I’d also go as far as to say I was thinking I didn’t want to jump up quickly in case the goal was ruled out for offside or something! So there was a lot going through my head, but I was as pleased as anybody, of course.

It’s interesting that you emphasise the point about delivering a message of calm to the players, because that approach of composed focus was so evident in the build up to the last few games and seemed to make a significant difference…

I tend to save my emotions for when they’re most valuable, i.e. on the training field, or in the dressing room when a show of emotion might help produce a result. The emotion you show during the course of a game on the bench is only for the TV cameras, because the players don’t benefit from it. In fact, if you were flying around screaming and shouting on the touchline it could affect them negatively. Where you can affect them is on the training field and in your team talks before, in the middle, or sometimes after games. I tend to save the emotional side of my character for those times, albeit that it’s a big effort for me to avoid the temptation to be jumping up and down, screaming and shouting. Over the years I’ve learned that you’re better off trying to husband that emotional quality that you might possess, which I do, because I’m a temperamental character, and use it to good advantage rather than waste it for the benefit of a TV camera. I notice more and more that the top coaches are as aware as I am that every move they make is monitored. They keep their emotions in check and they save it for when it counts.

From the day you came to Fulham you appeared to have a clear vision of how you wanted the team to ‘play their way’ out of relegation, would that be a fair observation?

I  think that would be saying too much. From the first day we knew what the task was and we knew how difficult it was going to be. The first month, to some extent, was still not my team or my work. If I was going to take full responsibility for everything that’s happened, I’d want to do that from the 1st February, when some new players had come in and I’d had a little bit of time to assess the situation. The work of trying to save the team really began then, but of course, by that stage January had gone very badly and we were even further down the road to ruination. But our mantra all the way through has been that we can only get out of this one way, and that is to play good football and be good enough to win the matches.

There’s no magic wand or formula, if we were going to survive in the Premier League it would be because we were good enough to do so and I’ve been very heartened by the generosity of McLeish and Coppell in particular who have said, “All credit to Fulham, they produced the results, they produced the performances when it mattered and they deserved to stay up.” I think that’s really how we’ve done it. We haven’t done it in any false or manufactured way, we’ve done it by trying to give the players a clear vision of how we’d like them to play, a clear vision of a football that we think could be a winning brand of football for this group of players, and then getting them to buy into that, getting them to believe it, and then, most important of all, continuing to play it, even when things weren’t going 100% right. It’s not something where you can say, “We tried that and it didn’t work this week, so let’s try something different next week.” We know they believed in it on the training field, they showed us that and we saw it work in games.

We had to accept that there were games where a defensive mistake was made, or something goes against you, but we made it clear that that doesn’t alter our philosophy. We have a clear playing style, we stick to it and you boys, you show that you’re good enough as Premier League players to keep this team in the league. The players were happy to buy into that because they do believe it, they regard themselves as Premier League players so I said to them all along, “You think you’re Premier League players, I think you’re Premier League players, the coaching staff think you’re Premier League players, but there’s no way we can survive unless you get out there each week and play like Premier League players.”

Playing our way out of relegation was a brave approach, after all, ‘common wisdom’ states that you have to scrap and battle in a relegation dogfight…

I think we have scrapped and battled. We haven’t played scrappily and we haven’t played a battling type of football, but there’s been plenty of fighting spirit out there. People show their fighting spirit in different ways. There are players who can show it by flying around and knocking opponents over, or being extremely physical, and there are players who show it by chasing down hopeless balls, or losing the ball but making a big effort to run back after it. Our players have done it the way they can do it. When you have a midfield of Simon Davies, Jimmy Bullard, Danny Murphy and Clint Dempsey there’s no point saying, “You’ve got to get stuck in and knock people over and make your presence felt,” because that’s not the way they play. They make their presence felt by getting the ball, playing good football and hurting the opposition with their skill, so that’s what we tried to do. We haven’t got a great deal of physical presence so we’ve had to play with what we’ve got.

At roughly 4:05pm on April 26th, 2-0 down at Manchester City and with other results going against us, we were relegated. But you’d just delivered the half-time team talk that would see us overturn a 2-0 deficit to win 3-2. What did you say to the players that day?

Many-a-time in the half-time interval my talk was based on the fact that we’d been a bit unlucky to go in a goal down, but I didn’t do it on that occasion, I said “Let’s be realistic, it’s 2-0 so we’ve got to score three goals to have a chance, it’s one hell of a task, so let’s give ourselves a simpler task. Let’s make certain we go out and we continue to give a good account of ourselves, and let’s set ourselves the objective of making sure we don’t lose the second-half.”

I was just hoping that if they bought into that objective and we got a goal, that might just be something to cling on to and that’s exactly what happened. We went back out for the second-half and we played with the same approach that we had for the first 20-25 minutes. It was still 0-0, but we were looking more likely, then all of a sudden we got one. On the bench the first thing we said was, “We can get a result here” and the players must have felt the same way. Then, of course, when we got to 2-2 we were opening ourselves up a little bit, but we had nothing to lose in a way.

There were chances at both ends in the last 10-15 minutes, but we had no choice. City, if they’d wanted, could have settled for 2-2 and pulled everyone back, making it very hard for us, but to be fair to them they attacked in the same spirit that we did, and it made it a very entertaining last 15 minutes for the neutral, though less so for Eriksson and I, because we saw so many goal chances at either end!

Was that match the turning point in Fulham’s season?

Funnily enough, when Joe got the winner from that excellent pass from Danny, when he sped onto it, kept his head, and blasted the ball, with his wrong foot past the keeper from a narrow angle, with very little time left to play, you just thought, “Maybe someone’s on our side.” Ok, there were two tough matches left and basically we had to win both, so we hadn’t achieved anything yet, but suddenly, the door which looked as though it had been closed in our face was just opening a little bit and that gave us a chance.

Then the fact that we beat Birmingham and the other results went as they went meant that fate, suddenly, for the first time in a long time, was in our hands and we all agreed, “We’ll settle for this.” After Sunderland, if somebody had said “You can go to Portsmouth in the last game and if you win, you stay up,” we’d have all signed in blood. I think we were determined to seize that chance, we were determined to prepare well for it and give it our very best shot, and what pleases me most about that game was the intelligent approach that the players adopted. We stressed that we had to be careful, that we weren’t going to win just because we needed to.

I thought at half-time 0-0 was a pretty correct scoreline and I was just hoping we could keep playing that steady football, denying them chances and relying on the fact that there was enough skill and quality in our team to get us a goal at some stage during the second-half. It came 11 minutes plus stoppage time from the end, but I would have really been happy if it had come in the 92nd minute like I did at Man City!

Having your own plan is one thing, but one needs the right kind of personalities to respond to the demands of a relegation battle too. How would you assess the attributes exhibited by your players over the last few months?

I think they’ve shown enormous character to come through. They’ve shown mental strength, because it’s not easy to play when you’re being criticised all the time, and I think they’ve shown a lot of reliability. We’ve had a fairly stable team for the last five or six games and they’ve proved to be very reliable, because even in the games we’ve lost it’s been a solid, reliable performance from a team that, when it goes on the field, knows what’s required to win the game, and I think that’s a hard quality to show when you’re under the cosh. So all credit to the players, all credit to their fighting spirit, all credit to their desire and I think it’s also a credit to the Club.

You’re very popular with the Fulham fans, obviously for your part in achieving survival, but also for your ideals about how the game should be played, the manner in which you conduct yourself and your apparent passion for the Club. How much has the battle over the past few months meant to you?

It’s meant a lot to me personally. In this job there are always going to be lots of opinions about you from people who don’t know you, but I’m quite proud really that people have made reference to the behaviour of others, not just myself, but my staff, and the players too, because I think that’s important. I don’t think we want to become a rowdy sort of club. We want to appeal to the football supporter, to the man who loves his football and loves Fulham, but we don’t want to appeal to people who want us to start misbehaving. I think we’re duty-bound to preserve as much dignity as we can in the game and I’m pleased that people have picked up on that, because I think everybody at the Club works at it. Every interview I’ve seen from a player on TV, or read, people are saying the right things and they’re behaving properly, and I think that behaviour is important; it might even almost have got us a fair play place in the Uefa Cup.

As far as the fans are concerned I’ve been more and more impressed by them. I’ve been impressed by the fact that every game since I’ve been here has been a sell out, which I don’t think is an obvious thing when you’re at the bottom of the table. With one or two minor exceptions all of our performances have been greeted with, if not jubilation, then respect from the public, which, of course, is great. And towards the end, those people who travelled away, and those who stayed behind after Birmingham to acclaim the team, I found that very touching. I’ve been brought up in a hard school football-wise and I’m more used to people behaving like that when the team’s at the top of the league, so to get the reception that we did after Birmingham speaks volumes of our fans and proves that we have a major responsibility to perform for them.

To me, that means giving our best every week, trying to play good football, trying desperately to win games and never letting them down with mediocre performances. I don’t think we can necessarily guarantee results and I’d like to think that our fans are the type of fans who can live with that and if I go on the evidence of the last two months I’ve got to say they’ve been quite magnificent. It’s good to know that they’re appreciating our style, because it’s very easy to keep that going, because our style is our style. I read a lot of letters and I find it very heartening that there are enough intelligent people and enough football people out there to appreciate football, and not just the “We win, therefore I’m a fan. We lose, change the board, change the players, change the coach” mentality. I find that very hard to live with.

A lot of people in football in this country are putting a lot of time, a lot of effort, and not least, an awful lot of money into football clubs, so it’s quite strange that the fans are screaming at them just because their team loses a few games.

You’ve had a few days to enjoy the success of survival, but one supposes it’s a case of ‘the real work starts now’?

Yes. We’ve lost some players so there is a void we’ve got to fill. We’ve got a nucleus of a team, which I’m very pleased with but if we’re going to do better next year then we need to bring in some reinforcements, players that will help the team and help the others show what they can do. The work has been going on already. Even though we haven’t been able to plan like we’re planning now we know exactly where we are, we have actually, over the last couple of months, been working quite hard on potential transfer targets, though it had to be quite nuance, because some of the targets we’ve always known we could forget if we were in the Championship, or, if we were in the Championship we’d need one type of player more than another. But the real serious work, or the implementation of that spade work, can begin now.

Most important of all, the fans need to know that we have been very active in profiling the type of player we want to bring to the Club, in which positions, and we’ve been very proactive in identifying where we can make the squad stronger. So now it’s up to Mr Al Fayed to decide how much he can agree to the ideas we have. He’s been very generous to this Club and it’s important for us now to present our plans to him logically, sensibly and find out to what extent he wants to push on with them. But we will be targeting some new players and certainly I hope that next year the squad of players I’ll be working with will be even stronger than the squad I’ve had this year.