England’s Hodgson has dig at Liverpool’s recovery system

Following Fatigue-gate, a term coined by Coral writers, Roy Hodgson has hit out at Liverpool’s training methods, due to Raheem Sterling complaining of tiredness, prior to England’s Euro 2016 qualifying match against Estonia. The player will hope to return to duty for the Reds next game away at QPR, a fixture the Merseyside outfit are odds-on at 8/13 to win.

“Raheem might say it is something that is becoming ingrained in him and that he felt the need to talk about being tired more than he would normally do,” Hodgson said. “We have never had any problems with that [Liverpool’s policy] but I don’t think there is a lot of medical evidence to support the two-day recovery so, if you want to, you might want to research that.”

Hodgson went on to speak about Germany’s methods, following their impressive World Cup campaign in Brazil, which resulted in Die Mannschaft beating Argentina in the final. Joachim Low’s side face Republic of Ireland in their next Euro 2016 qualifying game, and are odds-on at 1/4 for victory.

“Certainly the Germans who everyone admires so much, they don’t do it, that is for certain. We did it from the start because we had people such as John Terry, Ashley Cole, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard who I felt would be better off having an extra day,” Hodgson continued.

“I would expect players not to take it for granted that there will be two-day recoveries but on the other hand it could easily be like this time when we did virtually nothing in terms of what I consider to be training the day after the San Marino game and only 40 minutes, including the warm-up, the day before the Estonia game, and that was at a fairly low-level intensity.”

The England manager also suggested he should speak to Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers to work out common ground after the Northern Irishman was reportedly angered after Daniel Sturridge was injured on international duty in September.

“I think I should speak to Brendan but it really is very simple and I am sure he understands the situation,” Hodgson explained.

“He [Sterling] has played a lot of games recently and it is the first year in the Champions League for Liverpool for a while, so the games have obviously been quite high-pressure games. Brendan has been talking about the pressures Raheem has been under and the fatigue that may have set in, so I am pretty sure he will be dealing with Raheem over the next month as he sees fair.