The Jeff Stelling Show

Roy Hodgson does not think Liverpool treated him badly. He says so plainly — no antipathy toward the club, no sense of being hard done by, and a clear view that the problem was his own handling of it.
What he does think is that the appointment should never have been made. Kenny Dalglish was there, a Liverpool legend, very happy to take the job. If the people who hired Hodgson had been a bit wiser, or a bit more calculating, he says they’d have concluded that whatever they thought of him, this one had to go to Kenny.
He tells Jeff Stelling it wasn’t a happy club to walk into. The ownership was under criticism, and Rafa Benítez - the man he was replacing - was still popular with supporters.
His own mistake, as he sees it: he arrived on a high. Finland had gone well. Fulham had gone extremely well. It had been a long run of nothing but pats on the back, and he assumed the same approach would simply transfer. He says now it’s dangerous to take a job on a high, and that he should have thought it through far more carefully - probably starting with winning the fans round before asking them for patience.
On the squad he inherited: Gerrard and Carragher aside, he says they weren’t the household names you’d expect at Liverpool, and that Fernando Torres was no longer the Torres of previous seasons. He doesn’t think seventh was nailed on.
And on Dalglish, who replaced him and won the League Cup: no complaint at all.
This is the full episode. Fifty years of management, four national teams and more than a thousand club games - and a career Roy Hodgson says he never once saw coming.
He didn’t make it as a player. He was 28, back from two years in South Africa, with coaching badges and no idea what to do next. Then a friend who’d gone to Sweden recommended him for a job at a club that had exhausted every other option, and he won the league in his first season with fifteen players and a handball coach as his assistant.
Five league titles in Sweden and Norway followed, before English football had any idea who he was. Then Switzerland, who hadn’t reached a World Cup since 1954, and who he took to one. Then Inter Milan, where a mistranslated word made the front page of the Gazzetta and he discovered that twelve years in Scandinavia had prepared him for none of it.
He talks about Fulham - mathematically relegated with three games to play and somehow surviving, then a European final two seasons later, beating four clubs who’d come down from the Champions League on the way. About Crystal Palace, Wilfried Zaha, and being the oldest manager in the Premier League at 77. About the England job: forty-odd qualifiers and three defeats, and what happened every time he arrived at a tournament. About Iceland, ten years on, and why he no longer lets it bother him the way it did.
And about where he is now. He’s a UEFA observer. Keith Andrews invites him to Brentford’s training sessions and he sits in on their team meetings. Last season he got a call out of the blue asking him to take Bristol City’s last seven games, at 79, and he said yes - because he’s always loved being on a training pitch with players.
It was six magical weeks, he says. And now he misses it.
He’d jump at another call. He just doesn’t think one is coming.
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Paolo Di Canio was the most professional man at West Ham. He didn’t drink, he ate properly, and every Sunday he brought in his own personal trainer from Milan for two hours of stretching and warming down.
Which is why he spent his mornings complaining to the manager about everyone else 🤣
Harry Redknapp tells Jeff Stelling that Di Canio would come to him before training, appalled, to report what his teammates had been up to the night before. Twelve pints and four kebabs, among other things Redknapp says he can’t repeat on camera. We’re supposed to be professional, boss. You have to speak with him.
Then the other side of him: catching the ball at Everton instead of scoring, Stuart Pearce first through the dressing room door wanting to rip his head off, and Di Canio out on the pitch taking a standing ovation from the Everton supporters while his manager did a live interview saying how proud he was.
That’s one story from an hour of them on this episode of The Jeff Stelling Show.
Also in this episode:
The story Redknapp says he’s never really told - Tottenham second in the league, a call from Daniel Levy on the way to Old Trafford, and then the owner Joe Lewis ringing the team hotel to tell him what he thought of Robbie Keane. If he plays tomorrow, I won’t even watch the game on television. Redknapp played him anyway.
Ron Greenwood travelling to an FA Youth Cup semi-final on the youth team coach rather than with the first team, and the West Ham academy that produced six England internationals - all sold after Redknapp left.
Martin Edwards ringing to buy Rio Ferdinand from Bournemouth, not realising he was on loan, and offering a million pounds.
Signing Paul Merson for a quarter of his wages. Signing Kanu off a phone call with Tony Adams insisting he was finished, then two goals on debut and the winner in an FA Cup final.
Three weeks of daily abuse from roadworkers at a T-junction after crossing from Portsmouth to Southampton, and Rupert Lowe’s plan to turn Clive Woodward into a football manager.
Being odds-on for the England job with England players ringing him to take it, and ending that season with no job at all.
Managing Jordan, where nobody in the squad spoke English.
The jungle, the 'wallaby wing', and Noel Edmonds being first out.
His nan taking bets off the whole street when betting was illegal, and what he thought she’d have made of him winning the King George.
And the dinner party where someone paid £250,000 to get Eric Cantona in a room, and Cantona said eight words all night.
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Sean Dyche is out of the game by choice - “fun employed”, as he puts it - and he has a theory about why modern football has stopped making sense to him.
It isn’t Pep Guardiola. He’s clear about that. Guardiola never told anyone to copy him, does it with exceptional players, and Dyche rates him. The problem is everyone else.
He watches League One and League Two sides being pressured into playing out from the back, goalkeepers who want nothing less than the ball on the edge of their own box, and games where both teams try to play for forty-five minutes, it finishes goalless at half time, and the goals only arrive once somebody abandons the plan ⚽️
Then they go up, they get relegated, and they say they played the right way 🤷‍♂️
His answer to that, which he has been shouting at radios since his playing days: stay up playing the wrong way 🙌
He tells Jeff Stelling that supporters have been brainwashed into believing there’s only one acceptable style, and that brand has become more important than getting the job done. His example of good management is Mikel Arteta - not for the philosophy, but for ripping it up when it wasn’t going to win him anything. He’d love Arteta to admit it out loud 🏆
Also in this episode: the 6-0 at Chelsea that was the lowest moment of his management career, and the two weeks that took him from there to beating Liverpool. Being nominated for manager of the month for Nottingham Forest on a Thursday and told he should be sacked on the Friday. Why he says he instigated his own exit at Everton. The three free transfers that built Burnley, a training ground promised standing on a bridge, and a community department that grew from one person to 110.
Plus a penalty in an FA Cup semi-final having not scored in four years, Elton John introducing him from the stage, and a working theory on how to get anyone into curry 🍛
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Chris Kamara spent a weekend convinced he'd lost his job. He'd been standing in the corner of the pitch at Portsmouth rather than up on the gantry, back to the game, when the red card was shown. Jeff came to him live. He had no idea it had happened 🤷‍♂️
He rang the producer on the way home. Ben Shephard told him they were showing it on Goals on Sunday and Kamara begged him not to. By Monday morning it was on Chinese television, Dutch television and Fox Sports 😅
He's back with Jeff Stelling for the first time since leaving Soccer Saturday, and they go through all of it on this episode of The Jeff Stelling Show 🙌
On his health:
He's open about where he is now. Three years ago he couldn't have done a show like this. He's been to Monterrey in Mexico three times for treatment on his brain, and his family have told him that's enough - that he should stop chasing the person he was and accept the person he is now ❤️
He describes what it was like when the apraxia first took hold. Thinking he had dementia or Alzheimer's. Knowing the words were there but not being able to get them from his brain to his mouth. Doing Soccer Saturday through lockdown with his memory going, and being so embarrassed he wanted to walk away from everything 😢
What got him through was asking for help, which he calls the best thing he ever did. He says he never believed in mental health until it happened to him, and that bottling it up does nobody any good. He's now patron of six charities and is pushing for AI funding to support children who can't speak, because speech and language therapists are spread so thin that most see a child once every six months 🙏
And the rest of it:
José Mourinho ringing him at home the night he'd refused to say a word to 5 Live after Chelsea's controversial game against Burnley - and telling him he was coming on Goals on Sunday tomorrow and Kamara was going to say it for him. Then Sean Dyche ringing an hour later with the opposite version!
Getting Bradford promoted as caretaker from 16th in the table, with fans on the pitch at Hull and a winner in the fifteenth minute of added time 🏆
Growing up in Middlesbrough in the sixties, when the police would arrest his father because neighbours told them a burglary was probably down to the black family round the corner.
Plus the stories of Jeff and Kammy together - Gaelic football, Sri Lanka, a broken Aston Martin, 32 miles in a pair of loafers, and the only man alive who still gets away with calling Jeff Stelling "Carly" 🤣
If anything here sounds familiar, you don't have to deal with it alone. Samaritans are free, 24 hours a day, on 116 123.
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David Seaman was 39, captain of Arsenal, and had just played in an FA Cup final. He didn't know it was his last game for the club 😢
He'd been on year-to-year deals for four years, which suited him and suited Arsenal. Every summer Arsène Wenger would ring with an offer. This time Seaman was on a beach in Portugal when the call came: stay as third-choice goalkeeper, take over as goalkeeping coach from Bob Wilson - and accept a 75% drop in wages. He said no, went to Manchester City, and found a club where nobody knew what the players were eating 😅
That's one story in an hour of them on this episode of The Jeff Stelling Show 🙌
He talks about arriving at Arsenal in 1991 to replace a fans' favourite, and being sung at by the supporters who'd soon be cheering him - "Lukic is better than Seaman, you'll never play for Arsenal" - while his contract was already signed. He explains how Sir Alex Ferguson rang him first, and how close he came to being a Manchester United goalkeeper instead 😱
He describes walking into a dressing room with Tony Adams, Steve Bould, David O'Leary, Nigel Winterburn and Lee Dixon, and having to prove himself on the training pitch before any of them would have him. Eighteen goals conceded in a title-winning season. Adams still calling himself invincible despite missing the one game they lost - because he was in prison 😳
Then Wenger arrives. The players had never heard of him, thought he looked more like a schoolteacher than a manager, and were openly suspicious. Within weeks the diet, the nutrition and the training had changed everything. Seaman saw him lose his temper exactly once, at Old Trafford, five goals down at half time, with Ray Parlour laughing like a schoolboy in the corner 🤣
There's the save Peter Schmeichel called the best he'd ever seen, and why Seaman's face was deadpan afterwards. Three penalties saved against Sampdoria. Nadal at Euro 96, and watching Stuart Pearce walk up knowing what had happened in 1990. Nayim from the halfway line. Ronaldinho, and standing on the pitch with half an hour still to play wondering whether he was about to be treated the way Beckham had been in 1998 💔
And the moment that still stands as his worst in football - which isn't any of those. It's being released by Leeds at 19, by his own club, with no idea what he'd do instead. He tells the Arsenal academy players the same thing now: follow my path, look where I got to 🙌
Plus David Raya, Ben White and the art of blocking goalkeepers at set pieces, why goalkeepers will never be good with their feet, Bob Wilson's coaching tricks, the origin of "Safe Hands", and a 42lb carp 🎣
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