Liverpool boss Roy Hodgson has taken a swipe at Frank Rijkaard, questioning the Dutchman's managerial capabilities and defending his own record ahead of his side's game with Blackburn Rovers.
The 48-year-old's time at Galatasaray recently came to an untimely end after the Turkish club fell to four defeats in eight weeks and suffered elimination from the Europa League in the process.
The Dutchman has since been linked with a move to take the reins at Anfield, with the former Fulham boss thought to be heading for the chopping block after a run of poor results.
The Reds are currently in the relegation zone in the Premier League, and have also been dumped out of the League Cup.
Now Hodgson has hit out at suggestions that Rijkaard could be in line to replace him.
"I had two-and-a-half years of this kind of thing when I was at Inter when, every day, there would be stuff in the newspapers that someone was going to get my job," he said, according to The Mirror.
"If I took two-and-a-half years of that in Milan I can take two-and-a-half years of it here.
"It ended up with my being offered a new contract by Inter when I left for Blackburn.
"The doom and gloom that surrounds us is not coming from within the club, not from me and not from the players – it’s coming from people outside who are having a field day and delighting in the fact we are having a bad time.
"Rijkaard has just been sacked from Galatasaray - he must be a great manager to have been sacked by Galatasaray! What you are talking about is Frank Rijkaard’s agent putting his name around. It is all speculation."
Hodgson also defended his reign at Blackburn Rovers, where he was fired after 18 months in charge with the club at the bottom of the standings.
"At Blackburn, I took a team that avoided relegation by one point to the UEFA Cup when we finished sixth in the league," he said.
"That seems somehow to be forgotten when the next season we had a lot of injury problems and found that things were not going so well. But in that first season we were being feted everywhere and I was being tipped as the next England manager, but after a poor start the following season I didn’t get a chance to follow it through.
"I am sure that if I had been given a chance to follow it through, I would have dealt with that one too. You do get bad periods and I have been lucky in having had more good ones than bad ones.
"At Blackburn, 18 months of work got judged on the last two or three months when we did poorly. But that is the business.
"So many good things have been written about me over the last two-and-a-half years that it would be churlish of me to start complaining. But I wasn’t happy about the way my time at Blackburn was perceived."
Now the 63-year-old will go up against his former club Rovers when Sam Allardyce's charges visit Anfield on Sunday.
"Now it is up to the players who will be fresh from not having taken part [against Napoli in the midweek Europa League tie] to step up to the plate," he said.
"We have left more than two behind - there is [Raul] Meireles, there is [Glen] Johnson, there is [Lucas] Leiva; Jamie Carragher played half the game, Joe Cole only came on at the end.
"I think we won’t be taking any fatigue into the match. It doesn’t always work that way, but we won’t have that as an excuse if we don’t go on and win the game."
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