Fernando Torres has thrown his weight behind Roy Hodgson’s troubled Anfield reign and insisted the entire Liverpool squad are backing their under-fire manager.
The striker spoke out on the eve of today’s critical home game with West Ham and denied suggestions of a dressing-room split.
Reacting to claims that elements of Liverpool’s foreign contingent had already lost faith in Hodgson, and that they felt Benitez should have been kept on, Torres delivered a ringing endorsement of the former Fulham boss.
‘The squad here trusts in Hodgson and so do I,’ Torres told a Spanish radio station.
‘It is not simple to begin a project with a different coach in a club where it is required to fight for every competition. You have to adapt to new ways to create a winning team and that is never easy.
‘The team are reacting. Not everything has gone as well as we hoped, but if we can put three wins together in a row then the team will be at the right end of the table and we will be more relaxed and play better.
‘I have no problem with Hodgson. He’s a very serious coach who in the summer explained to me very clearly what he wanted from me. He has always trusted in me and that’s very important for any footballer.
‘Although he was here a long time, the (Rafa) Benitez phase at Liverpool is already history. It belongs to the past and now only the present is important to us.
‘For us, football is the only thing we can think about at the moment. We are not as high in the table as we want to be.
'So we need to put space between ourselves and the others. I’m sure we’ll do that and then we can start to look up.’
West Ham midfielder Scott Parker is rated a major doubt for the Anfield clash with a chest infection, though his possible absence is more than countered by the start of a month-long lay-off for Steven Gerrard following his hamstring tear in England’s midweek defeat by France.
Though Hodgson admitted being angry at an injury that happened 25 minutes after Gerrard was supposed to have been withdrawn, he revealed how his skipper had defused a potential row between club and country.
Such was the initial fury within Anfield that their head of fitness and conditioning, Darren Burgess, tweeted that Gerrard’s treatment was ‘absolutely disgraceful’.
But Hodgson said: ‘My thoughts on Steven are that I’m frustrated and disappointed to lose such a good player for a long period of time after a friendly.
'Anything other than “I’m disappointed and a bit angry†would be dishonest.
'But when I spoke to Steven this morning he was at pains to say to me, “Don’t prolong this debate. I know how you feel, but please say as little as you can and be as diplomatic as you canâ€.
‘He feels like me that it’s a sad thing to have happened, and he’s very disappointed about it, but he doesn’t want to give even more reasons for a debate to rage.’
Hodgson said Gerrard would not be rushed back from injury.
The striker spoke out on the eve of today’s critical home game with West Ham and denied suggestions of a dressing-room split.
Reacting to claims that elements of Liverpool’s foreign contingent had already lost faith in Hodgson, and that they felt Benitez should have been kept on, Torres delivered a ringing endorsement of the former Fulham boss.
‘The squad here trusts in Hodgson and so do I,’ Torres told a Spanish radio station.
‘It is not simple to begin a project with a different coach in a club where it is required to fight for every competition. You have to adapt to new ways to create a winning team and that is never easy.
‘The team are reacting. Not everything has gone as well as we hoped, but if we can put three wins together in a row then the team will be at the right end of the table and we will be more relaxed and play better.
‘I have no problem with Hodgson. He’s a very serious coach who in the summer explained to me very clearly what he wanted from me. He has always trusted in me and that’s very important for any footballer.
‘Although he was here a long time, the (Rafa) Benitez phase at Liverpool is already history. It belongs to the past and now only the present is important to us.
‘For us, football is the only thing we can think about at the moment. We are not as high in the table as we want to be.
'So we need to put space between ourselves and the others. I’m sure we’ll do that and then we can start to look up.’
West Ham midfielder Scott Parker is rated a major doubt for the Anfield clash with a chest infection, though his possible absence is more than countered by the start of a month-long lay-off for Steven Gerrard following his hamstring tear in England’s midweek defeat by France.
Though Hodgson admitted being angry at an injury that happened 25 minutes after Gerrard was supposed to have been withdrawn, he revealed how his skipper had defused a potential row between club and country.
Such was the initial fury within Anfield that their head of fitness and conditioning, Darren Burgess, tweeted that Gerrard’s treatment was ‘absolutely disgraceful’.
But Hodgson said: ‘My thoughts on Steven are that I’m frustrated and disappointed to lose such a good player for a long period of time after a friendly.
'Anything other than “I’m disappointed and a bit angry†would be dishonest.
'But when I spoke to Steven this morning he was at pains to say to me, “Don’t prolong this debate. I know how you feel, but please say as little as you can and be as diplomatic as you canâ€.
‘He feels like me that it’s a sad thing to have happened, and he’s very disappointed about it, but he doesn’t want to give even more reasons for a debate to rage.’
Hodgson said Gerrard would not be rushed back from injury.
