Enjoying the view from way up on high

Blackburn fans must have expected Roy Hodgson to move heaven and earth, not to mention mountains of Jack Walker's money, to bring Paul Ince in his slipstream from Inter Milan. Instead, Hodgson will today warn his players about the motivational qualities, as much as the leg biting tackles, of Ince, the unreconstructed heavy metal performer among Liverpool's Spice Boys.

Hodgson says: "Of course we were interested in him but Sherwood is in a similar mould and I just felt that bringing Ince here would have led to selling someone else. He's an excellent buy for Liverpool. He is not only an outstanding player and character on the field, he has those leadership abilities which can persuade other players to give that little bit more than they otherwise would have done."

Ironically, Ince is also the last player to have been photographed in the infamous dentist's chair in Hong Kong, since from afar, Hodgson was beginning to become concerned that the reputation of English footballers as lazy old soaks was a justified one.

He says: "To read the English newspapers was to get the impression that the English footballer was some sort of drunken hooligan and that the social disease of drinking was totally rotting the game.

"So far, I seem to be working with good athletes. I've warned them that alcohol and football don't mix, though I'm prepared to be disappointed with them down the line.

"Footballers today are athletes-cum-pop stars but without the athleticism, they won't become pop stars. If all you need to do to earn £100,000 a year is not become a piss artist, you'd have to have a particularly addled brain not to stay sober."

Hodgson was also pleasantly surprised to find that, rather than looking to clock off at opening time, having run off the previous night's lager in a two-hour session, Blackburn's players have responded almost without complaints to his two, sometimes three, daily sessions.

"It's better than I feared," is how he puts it, and his fears were that the Italians' monastic approach to both training and dietary needs would turn out to be stradas ahead of the English.

"I was concerned that the players here wouldn't have the same desire to be serious, even studentlike about the game." So far, he'd mark them as generously as an Alevel examiner, though as a man who seems to hold a stick behind every complimentary carrot, he adds: "that's not to say I won't be bemoaning their shortcomings in six months' time."

But can Blackburn actually win the title? "I couldn't say," says Hodgson. "It would be foolish to quash the dream but if you are asking me for a serious professional opinion, I can't give it. I haven't been here long enough to assess all the other teams."

He's also experienced enough to know that the lush green playing fields of early season can easily turn to turnip fields by winter. Which is why, for the time being, he's just enjoying the view from the top.

Guardian Service