It should be no surprise given the extensive experience and CV that Roy Hodgson has to his name, but Fulham’s success is still greeted with bewilderment. Why? Hodgson has managed international teams and in Italy. Among the teams he coached is current Serie A champions Internazionale.  Hodgson inherited the reins at the West-London club when they were odds on to get relegated.

Lawrie Sanchez left the club and the rest is the stuff football fairytales are made of. Hodgson engineered the great escape – securing survival on the last day of the season. Hodgson improved the squad, but did so within the economic constraints of a small club. Shrewd purchases – such as Ghanaian international John Pantsil and striker Andrew Johnson helped to turn the Cottagers around.

After flirting with relegation when he arrived at the club, Hodgson turned the Cottagers around. The next season – last season- saw Hodgson lead his team into qualification for the inaugural Europa League. The qualification rounds of that competition meant that this season was going to be a long and tiring one. While Hodgson makes no bones about the fact that his priority is the Premier League, he has steered his team to an impressive run of thirteen matches unbeaten in their Europa League run. It is eve n more remarkable as it has been achieved at the same time as reaching the quarter-final of the FA Cup and in the middle of a debilitating injury crisis.

Preparation:

Tonight, Fulham face the most important match in their European run. UEFA Cup champions Shakhtar Donetsk are rested – they were for the first leg too. “What makes it important is that we were playing such a good team,” said Hodgson; “a team that’s had a couple of months to prepare for this tie. To be quite frank we haven’t had two months to think about tie; we’ve had three days. We haven’t been able to give this match as much thought and attention as I’m sure they’ve been able to do, because for the last couple of months they’ve not had league football and they’ve been really focusing on this tie.”

Fulham’s preparations were thrown into disarray by a UEFA regulation that deprived them of a player. “We’ve got one, who plays for the Under-19s, but he wasn’t allowed to be on the UEFA list because we loaned him out for the month of January to get some games, thinking that he could come back and play in this fixture, but UEFA don’t recognise loans,” said Hodgson. “They regard it as a transfer. They refused permission to put him on the list.”

The Injuries Situation:

This was far from the end of Hodgson’s woes. Injuries have affected the club. Johnson and American international Clint Dempsey are out to long term injuries and Pantsil is still recovering. “A lot of the side is missing,” said Hodgson. “My chances of making changes in the team have been taken away by the injury situation. Now it’s a question of recovery. This all comes at price – the price to succeed is tired legs. Our next two days is going to be very much a question of trying to get ourselves back ready physically and mentally for the next challenge.”

The schedule doesn’t help either. “This is I think our third week in a run that we’ve played three matches in a week and we’ve got another three weeks ahead of us with three matches in a week,” Hodgson said after securing a famous win in the first leg against Shakhtar. “We’re doing it with a very small squad of players as a result of injuries, so I think that any credit that the players get for getting themselves through this period is very well deserved and I’m certainly not going to be the one to dampen down any praise that is likely to come their way.”

Hodgson accepts that his team are doing better than expected. “It’s exceeding definitely what we’re entitled to ask of the players,” he said. There’s some very tired people out there.” Even if Fulham’s impressive European run ends tonight, nobody should take credit away from a manager who has done a fantastic job with depleted resources – Roy Hodgson.