Watch Bournemouth v Crystal Palace on Monday Night Football
Monday 1 October 2018 18:36, UK
A year on, Roy Hodgson admits he wondered whether Crystal Palace's wretched start last season was "too much of a burden" to bear.
The word crisis crops up a great deal in football, perhaps too easily, but there was plenty of justification when it was thrown Palace's way 12 months ago.
After losing Sam Allardyce in the summer, new boss Frank de Boer had been sacked four games in without a point or a goal on the board, rock bottom of the league, with claims and counter-claims of broken promises dragging the club's name down yet further.
But then enter Hodgson, a man who has made a career from building clubs of Palace's size, albeit with his own stock at a low ebb following an embarrassing end to his England tenure.
It turns out the two were made for each other. To spoil the story, Palace finished 11th and Hodgson was, in some circles, mooted for the Manager of the Year gong. But there were times when fate looked like twisting in a very different direction.
Palace would lose another three games after Hodgson arrived - conceding 10 goals and scoring none - before a shock win over champions Chelsea in October kick-started their season.
It coughed and spluttered at times, and relegation was still a real concern once they lost four games back-to-back in March to drop back into the relegation zone after throwing away a 2-0 lead to lose at home to Manchester United.
Although they would eventually escape and, despite his optimistic demeanour in public, Hodgson told Sky Sports ahead of Palace's trip to Bournemouth on Monday Night Football this week, that the seeds of doubt were firmly planted in his mind during those barren runs.
He said: "There were moments when I thought this was the right job to take on and we're going to be fine, then you'd run into one of those patches.
"That happens if you're not one of the top teams, losing three in a row, going to places where it's hard to get a result, and at that moment you think maybe this handicap we had at the start is going to prove too much of a burden.
"There were many moments of the season which were difficult because you think, 'have I bitten off more than I can chew, or had too big a chain around our ankles to release ourselves from it?'
"Sometimes you have to divorce results from work and performance. Partly that's because there's a lot of hazard when it comes to results, it's not an exact science.
"But also you've got to believe that if people work hard consistently, and the right way, show the right attitude, and play football you know is going to make you capable of winning, you've got to believe in that and hope it wins the day for you."
Ultimately, that hard work has continued into this season, and although sitting 11th after six games would normally be seen as a decent start for Palace, it is one for which they would have given their collective right arm last season.
That has raised expectations ahead of the visit to Bournemouth, especially when any credit in the bank would be doubly useful with a tough November including games against Chelsea, Spurs and Manchester United on the horizon.
But Hodgson is cautious about placing extra significance on their October games to pick up points, and more confident than some of their prospects against the big sides.
He said: "When you play the big teams, who are going to finish above you in the table, I think it's wrong to concern yourself about what it's going to be like when we play them. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.
"A club like us, and I think we proved last season, is never doomed. I don't think we're ever out of it. We lost to Tottenham, Manchester United and Liverpool here, but in each game I think if you asked the opposition managers, we could have got something from all three.
"We didn't, so the statistics prove something different to how it felt, and for now Bournemouth will be a difficult fixture for us. I would be surprised if the top teams, when they go down there, aren't adopting a similar approach that it will be difficult to win.
"We can only take it one game at a time, and be sure if we don't get any points from Bournemouth, that we're asking why not, where did it go wrong and what did we do wrong, then taking it on to the next one."
