I've read none of this thread so please forgive any duplication but as an Englishman living in Scotland, I've had my fair share of conversations about this subject over the last month and thought I'd share my views here.
I warmed to Hodgson very quickly. This was primarily down to him being good to his word. He said he would pick on form and he did - Clyne, Lambert, Rodriguez, Lallana and Bertrand were all called up on the strength of their performances in our shirt. The same is true of the Tottenham players. He also said that he would be loyal to players who performed well for him in an England shirt, regardless of how they were doing at their clubs (within reason) - Smalling, Cahill, Townsend, Lallana (again), Hart, Sturridge and Henderson could all be said to have benefited from that approach. On the back of this philosophy, he managed to field an effective and sometimes exciting team that produced some tremendous results. The Euro qualifying campaign was in fact perfect.
Hodgson then wobbled. He failed to remain true to the methods that had delivered those results and and a perfect qualifying campaign. Shoehorning Rooney into midfield and gambling on Wilshere's fitness were, in my opinion, crazy decisions which ultimately cost us. The question here is why did he do it? He didn't appear to be someone who would bow to external pressure, whether it be the usual media nonsense or from the FA. In fact, was there even any media pressure? I wasn't aware of any in the build up to the tournament which makes his decisions even more peculiar and goes some way to explaining the alleged unrest in the camp - he had backtracked on everything that had got the team to where they were. Despite this, I thought that we were terribly unfortunate against both Russia (in particular) and Slovakia so there could easily have been a different outcome. Instead, we're left with a post-mortem which I believe would be entirely unnecessary had he simply stuck to his principles. Why he didn't, I guess we'll never know but what we do need now is someone strong enough to do it their way without any interference. For my money there's only one candidate - Big Sam.