5. The Wrong Formation
Throughout the 2014 World Cup qualifying campaign, Hodgson was generally criticized for being defensive and conservative, especially in competitive matches. He had endured the same accusations at Euro 2012, but there he had no choice, as his squad was ravaged by injuries. To his credit, he addressed this issue in the final two crucial qualifiers versus Montenegro and Poland, where England played some of the most enterprising football of his tenure. Afterwards England learned their World Cup group opponents and Hodgson had the remainder of the Premier League season and friendly matches to observe the players form at their clubs and formulate the best way to use their skills in the national team. The performances of Liverpool with their contingent of English players using a 4-4-2 diamond system adopted by Brendan Rogers basically provided Hodgson a clear blueprint to use in the national team. He shoudl have followed it in the same vein that Spain, Italy and Germany embraced the club styles of Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich - after all, club partnerships clearly work in international teams. Unfortunately in friendly matches versus Chile, Germany, Denmark, Peru, Ecuador and Honduras Hodgson never tried this and it lead to a host of problems, which were exposed criminally in the defeats against Italy and Uruguay.