Having enjoyed an almost perfect start to his interim return to Bristol City, Roy Hodgson suffered his first defeat as Robins boss since 1982 on Saturday afternoon as Norwich City came from behind to condemn the Reds to a first loss in four Championship games.
Against the Canaries, City couldn’t have asked for a better start. A special Sam Morsy strike with just over a minute played meant that Hodgson’s side headed back down the tunnel at the interval with the advantage. Unfortunately, a 27-minute spell after the restart saw the contest flipped on its head.
A Mohamed Toure hat-trick was followed by a Jose Cordoba header to put Philippe Clement’s side well on their way to all three points. By the time Sam Bell turned home the Reds’ second deep in injury time, Ashton Gate had long since started to empty, with the substitute’s goal simply a consolation.
With that defeat, what were already admittedly slim hopes of a top six finish have now been laid to rest. Instead, City will play the final three games of the campaign and Hodgson’s interim tenure with very little – beyond personal and club pride – on the line, starting with Tuesday night’s trip to Southampton.
The Saints, on the other hand, are in the midst of what looks set to be an exhilarating run-in. Tonda Eckert’s side’s 19-match unbeaten run has fired the Robins’ next opponents up to fourth in the table, one point adrift from the automatic promotion places, and into an FA Cup final against Manchester City.
Ahead of what is likely to be a tough test for the Reds, here is a full transcript of everything Hodgson said to the print media after the full-time whistle against Norwich…
Roy, every time you’ve spoken to us, you’ve said you enjoyed the first half more than the second. I’m sure that was the case today.
Yeah. I mean, we weren’t able to hold onto that one-goal lead [for] long enough, and I think there were signs of them getting stronger even during the first half. When they got that equaliser early in the second half, it bolstered them and encouraged them to keep going because we’ve got a grip on this game, because they had quite a grip on the game for long periods of the second half.
All we could do really was to keep going, keep fighting and try to deal with the corner kicks and the balls into the penalty box. Of course, the second goal was a real disappointment in the sense that it came from us trying hard to get a winner. We had our centre-back up quite high and had quite intricate passing play on the right-hand side of their penalty area. But, of course, when the cross was cut out and cleared beyond our midfield players, they were in on goal with a very quick and powerful counter-attack, with these very powerful front players they had.
That was a blow because it meant that now we were facing a bit of an uphill challenge, but I can only say that I thought the players kept going, and I thought even at 4-1 when another unfortunate goal was conceded from the header and the deflection, they didn’t throw in the towel, they kept going.
I made a few substitutions. It was interesting to see those players that came on, and I think scoring the second goal was worthy of the way we played during that period of time, because before the goal, there were a couple of other good chances. But it is a defeat; the dream of the unbeaten run is over, and unfortunately, this league – it seems to me – it is possible to go on unbeaten runs, but then there are a lot of teams that start off an unbeaten run, but then they slip up.
We’ve seen it with Middlesbrough, we’ve seen it with Ipswich, and they’ve got to get going again. All we can do now is be hopeful that this defeat today doesn’t impact too much on a lot of the good things that I think I’ve seen the team doing in the first three games.
How far along the road are you to getting a dossier that you want to present at the end of the season? It’s such a short spell, seven games; you’re four into it now, and sometimes they say you can learn more in a defeat than you do from a win.
You’re absolutely right. I don’t know that a dossier is going to be required of me; I don’t know that anyone said to me when I came in, ‘We need you to provide a dossier of the players.’ Obviously, I will know more about the players after seven games than I do now; they might ask my opinion about some of them, and I’ll be very happy to give it, of course.
But I think, in general, if you’re looking at what these lads are trying to do from above, they’ve already halted a slide, I think they’ve shown an enthusiasm for trying to do what we’ve asked them to do – that’s good news that they’re a willing bunch, they’re a receptive bunch, they’re capable of taking new ideas and new thoughts on board – that’s got to be a positive thing for the people above me at the top of the club who are preparing already for a new season and hopefully, maybe a complete change in the way things have been.
Do you see that there will need to be a lot of change to the squad [this summer]? There’s obviously a nucleus here of players; you will presumably advise on what positions need to be strengthened.
I think that would be a question for the sporting director. I think that will be on his board, and I think it will certainly be between him and whoever’s chosen as new manager to look very closely into this squad of players and make those decisions.
It won’t be me telling them what they should be doing in that respect.
In terms of that learning, Roy, do you feel you have learned more from that game today than you would have done in the wins?
Yeah, it’s a good question, but it’s a little bit of a cliché, you know, that you learn more in defeats than you do in victory. I don’t know, I think I learn [in] every training session, I learn [in] every game, so everything’s a learning curve if you like. I don’t know that one learns more.
I think you have to be careful sometimes as well because in a game like this, you put substitutes on and it goes a little bit better, so all of a sudden you dismiss a lot of the good work [that] the guys that you’ve bought off do because they’ve had to do it from the start of the game. It’s easier to come on for 20 or 30 minutes than it is to play from the start.
The players are very disappointed and dejected after the game. I think they had bought into the dream that, right, we’ve got seven points from three games, this is going to go on and on and on. I’m more realistic. I’ve always known that every team you play against is as capable of beating us as we are of beating them.
That’s a lesson that they will also have to digest, and in particular now for the next three games, make certain we put this game to bed in the sense that, okay, an unbeaten run, a dream run ended, but this is the Championship. We’ve got three more Championship games to play, and we’ve got to get back to doing what we think we need to do to get a result in those games.
You say about putting it to bed, but I’d imagine there would have been plenty in that first half you’d have been happy with, especially going forward.
I think there were moments in our attacking play where it looks positive and it looks like we’re on the way to doing something a bit more. But with attacking play, it’s all about the last pass, the last control in the penalty area, the level of the cross and I’ve got to say, that’s where Norwich taught us a lesson in terms of the quality of the finishing.
The cross and the strike for the first goal, the counter-attack and the very good cross for the second goal, a very good header at the back post for the fourth goal, so, to be fair, you do realise that at the end of the day, your moves are one thing, but for your moves to succeed and be regarded as good moves, you need something at the end.
To be fair, we haven’t looked like scoring an awful lot of goals in the games before this, but we got two today and probably had another three or four good chances. If we can keep scoring two and creating two or three more decent chances, with our defensive set-up and the way they work hard, we will get some more points.
Is it good to have a game so quickly after an afternoon like today?
Well, I don’t know about a game at Southampton. First, you meet Norwich, who are on a run of about 10 or 11 games and one defeat, and I think it’s seven away games, six victories and one draw – maybe seven and one now – and now we’re playing Southampton, so I think I’d have preferred to have met a less formidable opponent.
But you play against who you’re told to play against, and we’ll be ready.
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