As Roy Hodgson trudged off the pitch last Monday night after Crystal Palace’s morale-sapping late defeat by Chelsea, he must have realised he was on borrowed time. Less than 11 months after his triumphant return to replace Patrick Vieira at his home town club, the manager who first visited Selhurst Park as a six-year-old in the 1950s could never have imagined it would come to this.
A campaign that has made the Premier League’s oldest-ever manager – a record he possessed even before answering the Palace chairman Steve Parish’s SOS call last March – increasingly irritable as his team struggled with injuries and poor form seemed to be taking its toll on Hodgson for several weeks. But news that he had to be taken to hospital for tests after falling ill during a training session last Thursday was an extremely concerning development. This season has caused the former England manager considerable anxiety and he has now confirmed that he will step down three months earlier than planned. “Given recent circumstances, it may be prudent at this time for the club to plan ahead,” he said in a statement.
Hodgson turned 76 three days before Palace’s first game of the season against Sheffield United but showed he still possessed all of his old fighting spirit during a confrontation with Max Lowe that ended up with him being punched in the ribs by a player 50 years his junior. “His abs are stronger than I thought,” said Lowe. “Apparently Roy said he was quite pleased at his reaction because he didn’t know he still had it in him.”
Although Hodgson, a Croydon boy who has never been afraid to show his nasty side, made a decent start to Palace’s post-Wilfried Zaha era after agreeing to stay on for another year, a bout of illness on the morning of the game against Aston Villa in September was a reminder of his vulnerability.
Hodgson said that the whole experience had been “frustrating and very disappointing”, mainly because they never quite got to the bottom of what had affected him. “After all the excellent treatment I received – the tests and the way people were racing around to really look after me and check on me – people can’t be 100% certain what caused that attack which put me suddenly in a hospital after expecting to have lunch and go to the game,” he said.
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