...the alternative was Harry Redknapp

It didn't have to be if the FA didn't say 'we need an English man next'. The English coaches are even worse than the players.

England performed only slightly worse than expected in a tough group.

Better sides than England are also going home.

Hodgson was the best footballing choice - other than Hoddle. He doesn't do Pashun. Can always get a #2 to do the Pashunning.

People are forgetting that both Terry and Cole (albeit as standby) rejected England. The England manager should not beg, or even persuade, anybody to play for his country.

The problem is he doesn't have much choice. The so called wonder stars haven't lived to their names.

The unproven players need the experience of a high pressure game so they know how it feels.

The FA encouraged him to play youth players as they are the next generation for 2018 and a few World Cups after.

Yes we were doomed to qualify and doomed to lose two tight games against higher ranked opposition and we were doomed to tie with the group leaders. Now onto being doomed in the Euro qualifiers.

The problem is too many England players are happy to sit on the bench / in the stands for a Champions League side rather than play first team for a lesser side.

Lack of match practice.

As per Spain re Casillas.

...as an also ran. What's he ever won on the big stage?

To be fair to him the ship was sinking long before he got appointed so he's not solely to blame. The whole structure of football in this country is based on making top dollar from selling tv rights to the premiership. The national team and youth development is pretty much just a lip service that tags along for the ride.

Arguably as much as Redknapp who was the alternative.

So what was Neville's job?

I love it when people try to defend the indefensible with finger pointing.

Neville had something Hodgson could only dream of, namely a career on the pitch. Hodgson achieved exactly nothing in that regard, unless of course a stint in the Crystal Palace youth team with zero first team appearances at a time that predates colour telly makes him an inspirational figure to players.

An alternative, not the only alternative.

Apparently that was the shortlist. I think the FA even said that in the end they didn't have a shortlist as Roy was the man for the job.

Realistically it was only ever going to be Hodgson or Redknapp; or if they both turned the job down, maybe at a stretch Stuart Pearce or Alan Pardew.

At best, Redknapp's style of play would have gotten us a win against Costa Rica, but we'd likely have experienced heavier defeats by Italy and Uruguay. And the other two guys would probably have failed to even get England to the tournament in the first place.

Yes indeed.

Brave plucky England.

So how come Costa Rica managed to deal with higher ranked opposition?

I wonder if we still had Erkison and Co we might have achieved better? Or is it the English mangers tactics.

I think it's the players not understanding your on the world stage. There is no passion in playing for England. There club managers say ' Don't do this becareful blah blah, then they listen to the people which feeds the mouth, as they don't get much money for playing for England.

Eriksson would have got us to the quarter-finals again and then got knocked out. Hos tactics were better than Hodgson's but not world-beating.

hodgson was never going to get anything out of the young lads we have coming through

he's the fa's type of man though and will keep his job to the next championships and doom us there too

Tabloid sting. Was caught on camera saying he'd quit the England job for a club in Dubai or something. But yes.. he was a good manager for England. But I think we had a decent team then too.

Oh well. At least Spain and Italy both went home at the group stage too. Makes it a little easier to stomach.

He's too old, he hasn't got the agile mind anymore. He's 66. A lot of people retire at that age, but he's trying to win us the World Cup? Was never gonna happen.

I haven't heard a single positive reason to keep Hodgson, only that 'there is nobody else'. I don't see much progress either, in fact we have probably gone backwards. We were decent at Euro 2012, then stuttered through one of the poorest groups in qualification, followed by our worst showing at a World Cup since 1958. He is uninspiring, a journeyman and pushing 70, we need a younger coach in now.

I think the Gerrard appearance was for sentimental reasons. He's the England captain and Roy wanted to give him one last tournament appearance in an England shirt with no pressure on him. The same applies to Lampard.

This World Cup marks the end of an era for England and the beginning of a new one. As I said earlier in this thread, for the past couple of years England have been in transition. Roy's taken over at a difficult time and I don't think any manager could have done much better with this squad.

Hodgson stepped in and cobbled a squad together for the euros and probably surpassed expectations in that tournament. We went out on penalties to Italy who went on to comfortably beat Germany. Going into this World Cup, we had a weak squad - particularly defensively - and a horrible group that even better England sides of the past would have struggled in. Have we disgraced ourselves? No, not really. We lost narrowly to Italy and Uruguay who are both better teams than us and we haven't beaten a top side in a tournament since 2002. In both games, it was our defence that cost us. I thought we played mostly well against Italy and we also showed character by drawing level after going behind in both games.

After this World Cup there can be no more excuses though. The youngsters should get better, we can lose the old deadwood and Roy should have learnt something from the past couple of tournaments. We've got an easy qualifying group for Euro 2016, which gives Roy the opportunity to try different things and we really should have a reasonably good settled side in a couple of years.

I think some of the younger players coming through look half decent and we've also got the Ox and Walcott to come back. I think we badly missed both of them in this World Cup. I also think we are desperately short of quality strikers and I really hope Roy starts to look at others besides Rooney and Sturridge. I have to say that I'm not too convinced that Sturridge is good enough.

At the end of the day, no one expected much of this rather makeshift England side in Brazil and those low expectations were proven to be right. I'm happy to give Roy the chance to rebuild and I will judge him by what happens in the next couple of years.

The post match comments were so small time and cringeworthy.

Roy Hodgson - utterly useless. He didn't say "well, actually we lost cos we're not good" - he just waffled on with no sense of accepting his fault for our debacle in Brazil. The guy should be sacked tomorrow. Let him go back to managing some club team like West Brom. **** off from England. We don't want him!!!!!

The trouble is most premier league teams only have maybe 3 or 4 english, so at the top level we only have maybe 80 players to pick from. And we dont have enough quality forwards. There just arent enough decent english players.

To be fair if you worked as a team leader in a company and your team didn't perform well and you were brought in for an appraisal I doubt you'd say 'because we're no good. I don't deserve the job'