“Why did Roy Hodgson go to Bristol City?” This was the joke sent to him when, at the age of 78, he accepted the role of interim head coach at the Championship club.

“And the answer was . . .” Hodgson grins, sitting at his desk at the club’s plush training ground, before continuing: because he was frightened that Spurs might ask him.

Scudamore said the club needed “someone who’s been around football like you to steer us in the right sort of direction”.

“As it turned out, it’s become much more of a coaching job, really,” Hodgson says. “It’s probably been more of that than I possibly contemplated at the beginning. But I don’t regret that, because that’s what I like doing anyway, so it’s no hardship.

“Richard said: ‘I think what we need now is someone like yourself who can come in with a system that everyone knows works, you know, 4-4-2.’ A system which really and truly, however much you twist and turn around that, everyone seems to come back to.”