Roy Hodgson says: 'The England manager's job is not impossible'

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<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/49291?ns=guardian&pageName=Roy+Hodgson+says%3A+%27The+England+manager%27s+job+is+not+impossible%27%3AArticle%3A1715875&ch=Football&c3=Obs&c4=Roy+Hodgson+%28football%29%2CWest+Bromwich+%28Football%29%2CPremier+League+%28Football%29%2CEngland+football+team%2CHarry+Redknapp%2CFabio+Capello%2CFA+%28Football+Association%29%2CFootball%2CSport&c5=Football+World+Cup%2CPremier+League&c6=Paul+Doyle&c7=12-Mar-10&c8=1715875&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Football&c13=&c25=&c30=content&c42=Sport&h2=GU%2FSport%2FFootball%2FRoy+Hodgson" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Roy Hodgson is not ruling himself out of the running to succeed Fabio Capello after reviving West Bromwich Albion's fortunes</p><p>Roy Hodgson is exceeding expectations. Again. When he surprisingly accepted West Bromwich Albion's plea for help a month after his unhappy departure from Liverpool last year, his mission was to rescue this archetypal yo-yo club from another downward spin. They were only a goal above the relegation zone. Under Hodgson's guidance, they finished eight points clear. This season, with 11 games to go, the Midlands club are 13 points away from danger and looking up rather than down. That is a big "boing" forward for the Baggies. Perceptions of Albion are changing.</p><p>"I've said to the boys we're going to find it harder to have that underdog epithet when we go to play matches, which can be quite handy sometimes when you go to the bigger clubs," says Hodgson, who takes his team to Manchester United on Sunday in search of a fourth win in a row. "You can sometimes see [the opposition] go out on the field thinking: 'This isn't going to be particularly difficult today,' and then suddenly you perform above your status and take them by surprise. We've lost that now: I don't think Alex's team will be expecting an easy game against us. Now teams prepare for potential defeats against us."</p><p>Sir Alex Ferguson is, indeed, conscious of the threat posed by a side that, in their past three games, have scored five against Wolves, four against Sunderland and beaten Chelsea. "West Brom are in good form just now," the Scot says. "We respect that. Roy Hodgson always has his teams well organised. He couldn't win [during his time] at Anfield. Sometimes the timing is bad for certain jobs and that was bad timing for him. But you cannot dispute his credibility, his ability and the career he has had."</p><p>While West Brom have seldom been so unworried about the drop at this stage of a Premier League season, Hodgson's success has filled fans with a new kind of dread: that their manager could be lured away. Already this week the former chairman of the Football Association, Lord Triesman, has suggested that Hodgson should be the new England manager. Victory at United may lead others to echo that call. Hodgson himself has warned against the folly of appointing someone on the back of a short-term winning streak and has suggested the FA take a broader view and "get someone with the right profile assembled over a long period". The thing is, Hodgson looks attractive from that angle, too.</p><p>Not that Hodgson is touting himself for the job. He is at pains to stress he is "neutral, blank" when it comes to the identity of the long-term successor to Fabio Capello, declaring: "I do not rule myself in or out." But nor has he ruled himself in or out of West Brom. His contract expires around the time Euro 2012 kicks off. The club would like him to sign a new one and clearly Hodgson is happy at The Hawthorns, but there is a sense that if England came calling, this 64-year-old – who has thrived in many different lands but never embraced the comfort zone – may see it as his crowning glory.</p><p>Certainly the easy thing would be to count himself out of the reckoning for the England job. There is such popular support for Harry Redknapp that, unless the Tottenham manager announces he does not want it, anyone else who were to get it would risk being denounced as an impostor. Hodgson was treated like that by some Liverpool fans in 2010 when he surrendered folk-hero status at Fulham to replace Rafael Benítez at Anfield, where large sections of the crowd remained loyal to the Spaniard and viewed his successor as a cheap stooge of a despised regime. Add similar resentment to the expectation that accompanies the England position and you would have a recipe for intense pressure.</p><p>Even without such resentment, the England manager position is called the impossible job. Hodgson, mind you, thinks that is a misnomer. "I don't think any job is impossible," he says. "It's true that if it's always going to be that if you win the World Cup or European Championship you're a success and if you don't you're a failure, then you're bedding yourself for a lack of success because there aren't many coaches who have won those things and there are thousands who haven't. But England have won a major tournament – only one, but they've still won one – and we are working in a league where football of a very high quality is played and we are producing players who most people would regard as top European standard, possibly world standard. So impossible? No."</p><p>Hodgson is one of the few English managers to have experience of successfully leading a country, having masterminded Switzerland's improbable run to the last 16 of the 1994 World Cup and elevated Finland to previously unreached heights more than a decade later. It is typical of his fair-mindedness, and perhaps of his confidence in his coaching abilities – he is a hands-on gaffer who directs training himself – that he does not overstate the value of such international experience.</p><p>"No," he says when asked whether there is much difference between managing a club and a country. "It's still about team preparation. There might be more meetings and situations where you're required to represent the country in some way that wouldn't necessarily happen to you if you're a club manager, but other than that I haven't found any differences in my approach between running a club side and a national team.</p><p>"With a national team you've just got to be even more focused on what's most important because the time you've got with the players is limited. Otherwise the approach is pretty much the same and the top club managers will always be capable of being top international managers, perhaps even more so than in the other direction because there might be some international managers who wouldn't relish the pressures of the job on a daily basis."</p><p>Undoubtedly Hodgson can excel at either role. West Brom fans hope he continues in his current one. The FA could do worse than ask him to do the other.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/roy-hodgson">Roy Hodgson</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/westbrom">West Bromwich</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/premierleague">Premier League</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/england">England</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/harry-redknapp">Harry Redknapp</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/fabio-capello">Fabio Capello</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/fa">The FA</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/pauldoyle">Paul Doyle</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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