Roy Hodgson’s conservative, safety-first approach is becoming increasingly outdated in the Premier League

As urbane and conversational as Roy Hodgson so often comes across, there can be a real spikiness there when it comes to perceptions about his football. There was a classic such example after Crystal Palace’s 1-0 defeat to Chelsea, when he was asked about his side’s attacking freedom given the fact that the Eagles have only scored five goals at home this season, with two of them coming from penalties.

Hodgson completely rejected any negative interpretation of such stats, in a rather robust way.

“You’re using a fact of goal-scoring to make a point I don’t agree with,” the Palace manager snapped back. “We’re certainly not playing with less freedom. Analyse the home games, we’ve had far more possession, goal-scoring opportunities but we’ve not converted them. We’ve only scored five goals at home, but that disguises a lot of football that’s been played. Am I happy that some of the possession has only given us five goals, and should we have had more, then the answer is a resounding yes.

“Look at all the teams down and around us, and we’re all in that situation. There’s not a team down there, certainly in the bottom seven or eight, who have a good record in front of goal. One or two may have scored a few more, but pretty much we’re all in the same ball park. We haven’t conceded that many.”

The issue with all of this – and especially Hodgson’s abrasiveness in argument, at least – is that interpretation does come down to intention. Palace are 15th in shots on target, at a mere 3.8, and are 14th in terms of possession. Those even basic figures don’t quite warrant Hodgson’s response, and the reality is that it’s still difficult not to just think that he is fundamentally more concerned with stopping the opposition rather than starting attacks himself.

As regards that “freedom”, he might reasonably point to the surging breaks of Wilfried Zaha and Andros Townsend and the exhilarating counter-attacking football against Manchester City, but that’s kind of the point. The space for that generally only opens up for a Hodgson team when the opposition get so frustrated they start exposing themselves more. If they score first – something which does make the City match even more of an outlier – it generally spoils their safety-first gameplan.

And the reality is that such a gameplan tends to more often produce matches as miserable as the 1-0 defeat to Chelsea rather than those as riveting as the 3-2 win away to City. It is likely going to be enough to keep them up, but is it enough in general? Some increasing frustration from the Palace crowd would indicate otherwise.

There is a wider point here, too, that may become even more relevant. Whatever about Hodgson’s personal image, his football is anything but urbane in the current context. It is of a style closer to Sam Allardyce or Tony Pulis, that the Premier League is beginning to move away from.

Southampton could prove influential there. Under huge pressure and looking like they could finally slip back down to the First Division, they could have taken the easy decision and gone for one of those managers like an Allardyce, or a Pulis, or a Hodgson. They didn’t. They went for something more progressive in Ralph Hasenhuttl. It is admittedly a risk, but nowhere near as much as it used to be, and is the way things are going.

More and more clubs are turning away from that conservative safety-first style. There is a danger that those that stick with it could get left behind, even if it is enough to stay up this season.