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Where does the fault lie when a team under performs?

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Last week Steven Gerrard claimed that the players were to blame for Roy Hodgson’s unsuccessful spell in charge of Liverpool last season, with numerous aspects of the club captain’s comments standing out’. Gerrard was quoted as stating, ‘It was the players underperforming and not delivering. That was the sad part.’

Indeed, Gerrard was keen to remind people that when Hodgson got the sack he was ‘one of the players who came out after he left and made sure people knew it wasn’t just Roy Hodgson’s fault’. However, quite simply the club was not a happy place to be while Hodgson was at the club with Gerrard declaring that under Kenny Dalglish there were now ‘happy faces from top to bottom of the club now and we move forward.’

Gerrard’s comments make for an interesting debate over the importance of a manager’s relationship with his players. When Dalglish returned to the Anfield hotseat in January, the clubs fortunes dramatically improved in the second half of the season. Granted Dalglish managed to ship out the misfiring Fernando Torres and bring in the inspirational Luis Suarez, yet were Roy Hodgson’s motivational skills really that poor in comparison to Dalglish’s?

Hodgson was not helped by the fact he replaced Rafael Benitez, a man who had stamped his own identity on the football club. Following on from the Spaniard was always going to be difficult.

It is not the first case of professional footballers underperforming for a manager of proven pedigree. Arguably the most high profile case in history is Brian Clough’s doomed 44 day tenure at Leeds United, a story of such significance that it had first a book then a film dedicated to it.

In 1974, the England manager’s job had just been given to Don Revie, a man who had spent 13 enormously successful years at Leeds United. Clough, despite regularly stating his aversion to the club, would be the man to take the job.

Clough alienated key players such as Johnny Giles and Billy Bremner by reportedly telling them ‘You can all throw your medals in the bin because they were not won fairly.’ Clough’s short spell at Elland Road included just one victory, giving him the unwelcome record of being Leeds least successful permanent manager.

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