Roy Hodgson reveals what Carragher said his “big mistake” was at Liverpool

Roy Hodgson has revealed what Jamie Carragher said was the manager’s “big mistake” during his short spell at Liverpool.

A plethora of errors were made by Hodgson and those above him, during the manager’s six months at Anfield.

On the pitch, Liverpool won just 13 of his 31 games in charge, losing nine of those 31.

Now, Hodgson has revealed what his centre-back, Carragher, has since said about his time on Merseyside.

Speaking on The Overlap, Hodgson said: “I think probably the most pertinent thing, and I wasn’t really aware of it at the time, but Jamie Carragher said: ‘You know what your big mistake was?’

“I said: ‘No, go on. Tell me.’

“‘We’ve been coached,’ he said.

“‘We’ve had [Rafael] Benitez for two and a half years and it’s been pretty rigid – the coaching, the messages.’

“Jamie [Carragher] liked that. It wasn’t a criticism in any way, but he said: ‘You’d come in and you’d done the same thing.’

“He said: ‘You’d have been better off adopting a different approach.’

When Hodgson came to Liverpool, he used largely the same methods that had worked at his previous club, Fulham.

Looking back, he wishes he had applied a slightly different approach.

“They [the Liverpool players] probably wanted more freedom, more training sessions whereby they weren’t required to constantly focus and take on board information,” Hodgson added.

“Maybe, they wanted a few sessions where there was more play and the coaching would have been more subtle.

“I think if I were to think back to the type of coaching sessions we did there, I wouldn’t do that again.

“I’ve evolved a little bit from that and tried to find a way of getting the same messages, keeping the same philosophy but maybe in a slightly different way.

“But again, it’s wisdom with hindsight. It’s always very easy to get your decisions right with hindsight.”

No matter how much hindsight he has, the ex-England boss can’t turn the clock back, and never exhibited any of the qualities need to be a successful Liverpool manager.

His time at Liverpool won’t become more positively tinted with time, either.