The view from Fulham

Fulham season-ticket holder and author Richard Allen explains why he is disappointed to see Roy Hodgson leave Craven Cottage, but believes the Londoners' loss is very much Liverpool's gain...

Football teams have personalities, don't they? 

Fulham's is, I think, derived largely from our beautiful old stadium and its riverside location. 

The football at Craven Cottage is usually pretty decent and away fans seem to enjoy their visits. Fulham are an affable club, and if you ignore QPR and Brentford (it's for the best) you really won't find many supporters with a bad word to say about us.

So it is with Roy Hodgson, who was in many ways the perfect manager for Fulham. One of the game's gentlemen, Hodgson is always fair in his post-match interviews, never looking for excuses, never seeking to apportion blame. 

He is well-read, well-travelled, and a football man through and through. His position as Fulham manager seemed entirely right, meant to be.

It didn't do any harm that he got results. When Hodgson took over in January 2008 we were in trouble. Lawrie Sanchez had done a few things right but results had been poor and the team demoralised.  

Hodgson came in, restored order, and patiently oversaw one of football's great escape acts, stewarding the team to survival on the last day of the season with a flurry of extraordinary wins.

Great stuff, of course, but it got even better.  

The next season (2008-09), Hodgson took essentially the same squad up to seventh place, which qualified us for the Europa League.

Now, Fulham being Fulham, a lot of fans worried that the extra games might land us in some kind of relegation trouble, but not a bit of it. In 2009-10 we finished safely in mid-table and took to Europe like a duck to water, scorching a path through the likes of Basel, Roma, Shakhtar Donetsk, Juventus, Wolfsburg and Hamburg, before finally coming unstuck in the final against Diego Forlan's Atletico.

It was an incredible season, doubly so if you have a look at the team that played in the final: Schwarzer, Baird, Hughes, Hangeland, Konchesky, Duff, Etuhu, Murphy, Davies, Gera, Zamora.  

With no disrespect to those players (quite the opposite), to the untrained eye they might resemble a group of cast-offs and nearly men, players whose careers have been rescued from bad situations or from relative obscurity. 

But under Hodgson they formed a resilient, brilliant team, solid enough to stand up to Shakhtar Donetsk's pinball football from outer space, determined enough to find four goals in a row to clobber Juventus, and good enough to hammer Manchester United 3-0 in the league (our second straight home win over Sir Alex's team). I'm shaking my head in wonder while I write this. 

So it's fair to say that we're disappointed to lose Hodgson, arguably our best ever manager. But that's football isn't it? 

Fulham's loss is Liverpool's gain. You have brought in a good manager, and just as importantly, a good man. 

Cheers for everything, Roy.

Richard Allen is a Fulham season-ticket holder and has self-published four books about Fulham. The latest, looking back at the 2009-10 season, contains a 50-page overview of Roy Hodgson's early career, and can be purchased for only £5 at www.godsfoot.com.