Fulham manager Roy Hodgson faces defining week but craves long-term success

By Jason Burt Published: 11:00PM GMT 05 March 2010

Big week: Fulham physical education instructor Roy Hodgson has worked wonders at the bar this deteriorate Photo: GETTY IMAGES

But he dismisses notions that what happens opposite Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday, in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, and opposite Juventus subsequent Thursday, in the last sixteen of the Europa League, will "define" his time as the club"s manager.

"For me, I"m afraid, I will regularly preach: do a great office each week, work inside of your budget, stay in the Premier League and, if you are propitious sufficient to have the sort of year we are carrying this year afterwards welcome it. Take it happily, try and do something with it," Hodgson, a sequence achiever, said.

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The Fulham manager, as any spectator of his methods will understand, is not in to the quick-fix, the day in the sun. He faces HR (Harry Redknapp) on Saturday, who won the esteem dual years ago with Portsmouth, overstretching themselves disastrously to do so, but he is not in to HP.

Indeed the 62 year-old launches a fixed counterclaim of Mohamed Fayed, Fulham"s owner, who would certainly deposit in one of his trademark, charming shirts should his bar reach a semi-final at Wembley Stadium.

"Not only a great office worker but a great office worker and he wants us to do well and has invested heavily in the bar to assistance us to do well," Hodgson said.

"At the same time he has a unequivocally essential commercial operation head and, similar to me, he does not wish one impulse of excellence to be completed by spending income that we cannot sustain. He wants tolerable success.

"If you ask me, what the success of Mohammed Al Fayed and Fulham Football Club is afterwards it"s a: saving the bar from practical extinction, afterwards b: removing them in to the Premiership and keeping them there for 9 plain years and a 10th one if zero unfavourable happens in between right away and May.

"That is a noble achievement. For me, achievements are something that are mostly brought about over a duration of years. The loyal magnitude of a club"s success is what it does week in, week out."

Which is all true, even if Fulham have additionally had their years of overspending, followed by prudence, by Hodgson in particular.

But that of their supporters is not dreaming, praying that the last esteem Hodgson picks up this deteriorate is not the physical education instructor of the month the second time he has been awarded the esteem he picked up on Friday for his achievements in February?

"All I can contend is that it will be great for me and, some-more importantly, it will be great for this football group and this bar since most of these players have been great professionals for a series of years, but they cannot unequivocally show you the CVs that their careers merit," he said.

"There are a lot of people in the group who are some-more honourable than me of a big impulse in their football lives."

This tie probably the diversion of the turn pits Hodgson opposite Redknapp, a physical education instructor he has well known for a little time and who he counts as a friend, and someone who "let him know" that Fulham"s office of Peter Crouch last summer was pointless.

"It was done transparent to be early on, by Harry, that he [Crouch] was going to Tottenham. And as it incited out Bobby Zamora has had a smashing deteriorate anyway. So I"m in no proceed sentimental there."

Zamora is one of five former Spurs players in the Fulham ranks so is there additional proclivity for them?

"When you encounter an old bar it"s regularly a motivating cause but the possibility to get to Wembley [for Fulham] for the initial time in twenty-five years is proclivity enough," Hodgson said. He has led a group out at Wembley once.

"I took Switzerland there for a accessible but my Wembley appearances have been limited," he explained.

Another one would prominence the conspicuous physique of work he has completed at Fulham, where he took over with the group obviously cursed to relegation and personification an unassuming character of football.

Hodgson has instituted a root-and-branch reform. It feels similar to a opposite club. "Over the last integrate of years we have done a flattering transparent matter of what we are about and what we wish to be," he said.

There is obviously an fad of what the subsequent couple of days hold initial Spurs, afterwards Juve, with the combined proclivity for Hodgson, a former Inter Milan coach, of receiving on a Serie A hulk again. For once, his solemn proceed cracks.

"It"s extraordinary that the dual games are behind to back," Hodgson said. "It"s similar to when you are a child and infrequently you get loads of candy since to you at one time by your aunts and uncles and afterwards you go weeks and don"t see them again."

Fulham fans are in for a treat.