Mr.Hodgson: "We signed Meireles and the day after he went for 10 days away with Portugal and then came back for two days and made a substitute appearance against Birmingham.
He had two training sessions and played on Thursday night and he played again on Sunday so it is very early for me to make very strong judgements about where his best position is.
The work we do on the training field will show me how best to use him."
This is the manager whose team is putting shambolic performance after shambolic performance but look a totally different proposition when Meireles (the Portugese central midfielder who has played that role for his past club and his country) and Lucas are in central midfield. And he signs a player who he doesn't know how to use? Madness.
Mind-boggling. Could understand it with a utility player (say a Stevie Nicol). Could understand it with a multi-functional player brought through, say, the Ajax system like Babel or a Clint Demsepy or even with perhaps Joe Cole. But.. yeah.
And yet, for some reason I'm being informed by the mass media that this man was the right man for the job and hasn't been given enough time at Liverpool whereas Benitez was absolutely terrible. This follows years of being told that Benitez was totally wrong to have one of the best defensive records in spite of his team scoring lots of goals, but when the reverse happened under Hodgson it was a 'good thing'. And let's no get on the subject of defending set pieces.
Idiots. Just glad that there's now some decent stuff to read on football being put up on the web and the odd very good discussion show or article on one the broadsheets.