"These Things Happen" – How Hodgson's England Were Doomed From Day One

Roy Hodgson did a glorious job of writing his own epitaph on Tuesday by kicking off his posthumous press conference as England manager with the admittance that "I don't really know what I'm doing here". But that was mere low comedy; the real insight into the mind of the FA's latest exorbitantly salaried managerial disaster had in fact come the night before.

If the problem with Hodgson could be boiled down, distilled and dripped by pipette into a three-word mantra, it would probably be: these things happen. By "these things", of course, he means abject failure on a grand and comprehensive scale. And by dismissing it as little more than an occupational hazard, Hodgson creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. As his record at the top level suggests, a man who convinces himself that defeat is inevitable and unavoidable is very likely indeed to encounter it quickly, brutally and very, very often.

It's worth returning, in the wake of England greatest major-tournament humiliation of the modern era, to Hodgson's analysis of England's last major-tournament humiliation, two years ago. "Had the ball not skidded off Gerrard's head and played Suarez onside, had we gone on to win that game 2-1, had we then gone on to beat Costa Rica, we might have been talking about a great tournament," anatomised Hodgson, discussing each game's pivotal incidents as though they were jolly unlucky coin-flips, rather than the direct consequence of his side's flagrant tactical and technical failings.

Praising his team for "controlling Luis Suarez well in general play" in the immediate aftermath of a match in which an emphatic brace from the very same Luis Suarez had knocked his team out of the World Cup was another bizarre glimpse into the mind of Hodgson. His is a world where you can make all the plans you want but, at the end of the day, you simply can't legislate for lady luck looking the other way – which, for some reason, she seems to do with maddening frequency.

The point here isn't to tear apart a couple of clumsily-worded quotes in order to kick a man while he's down, but to illustrate that Hodgson's England tenure was probably doomed from the off. International football is a precarious beast, defined by the finest margins – margins that Hodgson has always been keen to write off as the consequence of random chance.

It's an outlook that doesn't need a point of comparison to look shoddy, but is thrown into an especially unflattering light when one of his immediate peers at Euro 2016 openly threatens to murder his own defenders upon allowing the opposition striker a sight of goal.

In a game of such fine margins, it helps to instill in one's players a defiant refusal to accept the possibility – perhaps even the existence – of failure. Hodgson, in contrast, seemed to have contemplated all the many different forms of failure before the tournament had even started: "It is a bit like rehearsals for a play," he said after one of the warm-up friendlies. "The rehearsals might have been fantastic, but on the opening night everyone forgets their lines or the play, in some others ways, is a disaster. I don't know about refereeing decisions. I don't know if Dele Alli's going to chip over or hit the post when he has just dribbled past four players. I don't know those type of things."

After the final group game he rallied the troops once again. "We're not doomed yet. We're not doomed to penalties, we're not doomed not to take our chances," he said, leaving his audience in no doubt as to the operative word bouncing around in his head.

Hodgson's fatalism took full, bleakly inevitable effect over the past week, when his decision to decline a ringside seat at Iceland's final group game in favour of a scenic boat trip down the Seine came full circle. Three days later, England were haplessly unable to deal with Iceland's chief mode of attack: the long-throw to the big man (which was on full display, of course, at the Stade de France while Hodgson was drinking in the spectacle of Notre Dame). If ever a goal needed soundtracking by sarcastic applause, it was Iceland's second on Monday evening.

"I didn't see the defeat coming," Hodgson said on Tuesday, before revealing that he had drawn great encouragement from his side's three group-stage fixtures: a careless draw with Russia, a last-gasp win over Wales, and an insipid 0-0 with Slovakia.

Hodgson's four years glugging heartily from the FA's poisoned chalice has not been completely without its redeeming features. The qualifying campaign for this tournament was marked by his willingness to try out new systems, to loosen his customary shackles, and to embrace the many young players at his disposal. His side qualified with the best record in Europe and produced halfway exciting football with disarming regularity. That is no mean feat for any England boss.

And yet the nagging suspicion, vindicated over three tournaments, remained that an innately conservative and unassertive personality would always revert to type when push came to shove; that the instinctive, gawping awe induced by the big occasion would render him unable to make the bold in-game manoeuvres from which success and failure are carved in knockout football.

So it proved in 2012, when Andrea Pirlo was granted the freedom of Kiev to put on a two-hour masterclass in midfield puppeteering. So it proved in 2014, when Suarez was kept largely quiet "in general play" only to cannon his two clear-cut chances into the England net. And so it proved this time around, when England were repeatedly unable to deal with the most rudimentary form of Icelandic attack, when their captain's glaring ineptitude was allowed to pass uninterrupted for almost the entirety of the game, and when the squad's exuberant attacking wildcard was given just four minutes on the pitch despite his side needing a goal, and not threatening to score one, for more than an hour.

In each instance, England played with a rabbit-in-the-headlights incoherence that will have sent Vietnam War-style flashbacks reverberating around the minds of watching Liverpool fans, as well as showcasing the knee-jerk caution that ensured Hodgson's spells in charge of Blackburn and Inter Milan were as brief as his time at Anfield.

Pre-tournament, the hype centred on Hodgson's newfound boldness. The hype was semi-justified, too, but hindsight can now send that myth spiralling into oblivion. The central plot-point in that story – the inclusion of five strikers! – has now been exposed as a ruse to allow him to shoehorn his most famous player into the side in an alien position. Wayne Rooney was brought as a midfielder and listed as a forward for PR purposes. It was an empty gesture towards adventurousness that feels doubly cheap in light of how grimly reluctant the manager was to let Marcus Rashford loose on opponents, turning a blind eye to the Manchester United youngster's obvious excellence and the face-clawingly dismal output on offer from a knackered Harry Kane.

During the four-and-a-bit years of his reign, English football has faced a litany of problems, nearly all of them starker, more enduring and more deep-seated than Roy Hodgson. And yet it's hard to imagine too many managers conjuring quite the same show of uncompromising feebleness as that which Hodgson oversaw on Monday night. Each element of Iceland's imperious performance – their tactical cohesion, their clear blueprint for victory, their refusal to accept their place in the hierarchy – served to show up the exact opposite in their opponents.

As for England, they succeeded mainly in bringing to mind that old Woody Allen line about how 80% of success is just showing up. You imagine Hodgson likes to put the other 20% down to simple luck, and – would you believe it – England didn't get any of it on Monday night.

But hey, what could possibly have been done to change that? After all, these things happen.