I’ll never tire of berating Hodgson, but I have left him alone for years now, but he just can’t help himself can he?
Even the way he frames his complaints shows his muddled thinking. As you say, he completely glosses over the fact that it was Ayew in the wrong, but he pushes the blame onto Van Dijk, then doubles down by bizarrely suggesting that Van Dijks standing within the game should prevent him from acting the way he did?
Every week we have players either throwing themselves to the floor on the slightest contact, feigning injury, wasting time, hacking at our players and in general using gamesmanship to gain an advantage over us. But in Hodgsons world, we aren’t allowed to do anything about it?
In terms of the game, I’ve seen (again bizarrely) claims that we deserved nothing, which implies that Palace deserved something? We’ve played poorly on occasions this season, but when taking the opening 16 games into consideration, there’s some mitigating circumstances.
We’ve been embedding new players, including a new midfield, we’ve been at the wrong end of some horrendous reffing that has led us to playing with 10, or even 9. That’s before we get to other decisions. We’ve had some tough aways, many after international breaks, with of course our 12.30 heavy quota that other teams just don’t seem to get to the same extent. We’ve also come through a European group, with the rotation and the Thursday/ Sunday schedule.
Let’s hope that with a bit more time between games - and as KH said, our Christmas schedule doesn’t look too bad - let’s just hope that we improve further. But if we’re all honest, only the most optimistic would have predicted we’d be top in mid December.
