SOCCER:ROY HODGSON has risked alienating the hard core of Liverpool's support by saying the continuing protests against the club's American owners are not helping Liverpool's cause as they grapple with their worst start to a season in 18 years.

Protesters grouped under the Spirit of Shankly banner have been campaigning for more than two seasons for Tom Hicks and George Gillett to quit Anfield, although Hodgson said the demonstrations added to the pressure.

Spirit of Shankly will be staging mass protests before and after the next two home fixtures – against Sunderland this afternoon and Blackpool next week – “to give out the strongest message yet to those responsible for the demise of our club”. Hodgson, only two months into the job and struggling with budget constraints and the humiliation of a League Cup defeat at home to Northampton, said it was one more issue to deal with.

“The protest does not help but it is something I have had to live with since I came to the club,” he said. “I, like everyone else at Liverpool, would be very happy if the ownership situation was clarified and in particular if we got a very good owner that could help us move forward. It is a major issue for a group of people who are very much anti the owners and anti the current people who are trying to solve the situation.

“I knew the situation existed before I arrived and it doesn’t help. But it is often the case that when things are conspiring against you there is always an extra thing to come in and make it that little bit worse. It tests our mettle, our desire and strength. I am very confident that the strength of this club, the strength of the playing staff and the people around me is more than enough to come through this period.”

Hodgson rejected the accusations made by Alex Ferguson about Fernando Torres “making a meal” of a challenge by John O’Shea during Sunday’s defeat at Old Trafford, although the Manchester United manager was adamant he did not call the striker “a cheat”. Hodgson, who enjoys a good relationship with Ferguson, said it was “one of Alex’s inflammatory little digs to make his victory even sweeter and our defeat even harder”.

He added that Ferguson might have attacked Torres to “deflect attention from Nani, who certainly on one or two occasions was playing for fouls. Fernando Torres is not a cheat, he has proved that time and time again.”

Analysing a defeat by Northampton that ranks alongside their FA Cup exit at Worcester City in 1959 as the worst in the club’s history, Hodgson conceded it suggested the squad he was bequeathed by Rafael Benitez was not deep enough and that it would take several transfer windows to rectify the situation. “The criticism levelled against the depth of the squad I can understand,” he said. “People saw the squad playing on Wednesday night, we lost the game and people will make their own conclusions.”

Gerard Houllier, who managed Liverpool from 1998 to 2004 and is now in charge of Aston Villa, sympathised yesterday with Hodgson’s difficult start having experienced similar humiliation in the League Cup and said he intends to give Liverpool’s manager a call.

“I need to tell him I lost to Grimsby at home – and we didn’t go to the penalties,” Houllier said. “He doesn’t need my advice. He needs to have a good glass of wine with me. Sometimes it’s a blessing as it’s an opportunity for change . . . He will be all right. The boys like him. They will play for him.”