Roy Hodgson vents anger at Javier Mascherano for skipping defeat

Posted Tuesday, August 24, 2010 by theguardian.com

Roy Hodgson vents anger at Javier Mascherano for skipping defeat
Liverpool's Javier Mascherano wants to go to Barcelona and Roy Hodgson is not happy about the player's state of mind.

Daniel Taylor Eastlands

Roy Hodgson expressed his frustration and annoyance with Javier Mascherano after Liverpool suffered their heaviest defeat to Manchester City for 73 years, losing 3-0 in a match in which the Argentinian is understood to have ruled himself out on the grounds he is chasing a move to Barcelona.

Mascherano was withdrawn after asking to see the Liverpool manager in the afternoon to reiterate that he wanted to move to Camp Nou. Liverpool have rejected an offer of 15m (£12.2m), with 5m in appearance-related add-ons, and an unhappy Hodgson warned Masherano that he will be kept at Anfield against his will unless the Catalan club meets his asking price of £25m.

"Javier Mascherano is not in the right frame of mind at the moment to play the game because his head has been turned by the offer from Barcelona," Hodgson said. "The fee that the club thinks is the correct fee and one that has been offered are very far apart and unless that can be resolved he might be unhappy for a long time.

"I'm not going to get involved in that. The discussions between the club and Barcelona are being held at high club level. As a result I don't really want to start speaking and saying things that may or may not be true.

"The danger of those questions is that I could give you an answer and if my answer is not 100% correct then all of a sudden I'm creating headlines. I have no wish to create headlines over the Mascherano situation.

"It's not the first time these things happen and there are a lot of clubs at the moment suffering from their players being courted by other clubs and players therefore being unhappy and required to fulfil their contracts. This has developed over the last few days. I haven't heard about the situation for the last two or three days."

A dismal evening for Liverpool, their heaviest loss against City since a 5-1 thrashing in March 1937, began with Gareth Barry opening the scoring after 13 minutes. Carlos Tevez then claimed to have got the faintest of touches to Micah Richards' header for the second before making it 3-0 from the penalty spot.

"I thought we played a good game tonight," Roberto Mancini, the City manager, said. "You need time to gel and improve, and we were missing four to five important players, but we played with a good mentality."

The club's owner, Sheik Mansour, watched his first game since buying the club in September 2008 and Mancini admitted it acted as a good omen but insisted it was too early to be talking about titles. "I'm sure it's a dream performance [in front of the owner]. With a good mentality, we can do anything.

"I'm very tired and don't have time to celebrate with the owner. He was very happy. This was his first visit, so to beat Liverpool is very good for him."

"I don't know this," Mancini said when asked if his side were now realistic challenges for the Premier League. "I think it's important to improve game after game, we need to gel. We need the time to become a strong squad."

Hodgson, meanwhile, refused to be concerned at the start to the season which sees the Anfield side having claimed just one point. "We are only two matches into the season. We had Arsenal in the first game which we had to play with 10 men [after Joe Cole's sending-off] and then a strong Manchester City side," he said. "It's a bit premature to start discussing how big the match is. Hopefully in the next 36 games we can take some points."

The former Fulham manager added: "I thought they [City] played very solidly and strongly throughout, they were very strong physically, they took charge of the game and we were always fighting to get back into it so you just have to accept they were better man to man.

"We were unable to produce the level of performance to get something out of the game and they will be very pleased with the result."