Roy Hudgson expressed issues on communicating with the team

Roy Hodgson speaks out on his England managerial reign which ended with the excruciating defeat to Iceland this summer, declaring that at times his players simply didn’t understand his instructions in the way that he imagined.

The 69-year-old has not discussed England since he appeared at a press conference against his will in late June.

The analysis of Hodgson's reign was largely unforgiving as England's major-tournament woes continued, but the well-travelled boss believes he had developed a system to overcome the issue of his squad not understanding his instructions.

But Hodgson, reflecting on four-year tenure in the Uefa coaching magazine The Technician, suggests that he ‘overestimated’ how much his players grasped his instructions and would ask them to recite them back to him, to ensure that they had.

One of the things I’ve learned in the last two years was overestimating players’ understanding of exactly what you want,” Hodgson said. “You have to make certain that they themselves take ownership of the situation.

“In the last couple of years with England, we filmed the training sessions, we filmed the games in wide angle, and we started having meetings in smaller groups. The goalkeepers and the defenders. The midfield players and the attackers. Sometimes defenders and midfield players. Sometimes midfield players and attackers. We went through things but we got them to tell us back what we had been telling them.”

There actually seemed to be uncertainty from the manager himself, not least when he made six changes for the Euro 2016 group stage match against Slovakia, resting Wayne Rooney and Dele Alli when England needed to win to qualify as leaders.

But Hodgson focuses on the need for players to take ownership of the messages their coaches are trying to deliver.

“We will work on it in training but then I want the player in the unit meeting, when he sees fit, to say: ‘I should have gone out there; I should have gone quicker there.’ Or ‘I’ve gone too fast. I should have slowed down there. I’ve gone so quickly. That the guy’s gone past me before I can hold him up with the ball.’ That type of thing. We got the players to take ownership.”

Hodgson also tells fellow coaches in the publication that the written press are “dangerous” and an entity against which you “cannot win.”

He also states the importance of not rushing to comment in the aftermath of a match and making observations you later regret.