London: New England coach Roy Hodgson has made an instant impression on his players simply by speaking in his mother tongue, following Fabio Capello's struggle to get to grips with the English language.
According to defender Joleon Lescott, Hodgson is already a better communicator than his Italian predecessor, whose stumbling, truncated sentences remained a feature of his news conferences after four years in the job.
"The biggest difference would be the communication side of things," Lescott told reporters yesterday. "Obviously his first language is English, so it is easier for him to communicate and he gets his point across pretty well."
Hodgson, who succeeded Capello as manager at the start of the month, took training at Manchester City's Etihad Stadium yesterday ahead of his first match in charge against Norway tomorrow.
"Every manager has their own styles and their own way of dealing with things," midfielder James Milner said. "The current manager has spoken to a lot of the lads and said what he expects of them and explained how he wants us to play.
"Individually, he has also pulled a few to the side and explained what he sees going forward.
"The current manager has his own style and it's very different to the old one, but that doesn't mean one is right and one is wrong.
"You have to get as much as you can out of these managers because you can only learn from them."
With England's first match at Euro 2012 less than three weeks away, Hodgson has a number of injury worries.
Liverpool defender Glen Johnson limped out of yesterday's session, while Manchester United striker Danny Welbeck trained on his own and left the session early.
Should Johnson fail to recover, it could lead to a first cap for his Liverpool team-mate Martin Kelly, who was called up as cover on Tuesday.
