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THE bungling blazers at the FA have started the search for a new England boss to rescue us from the gutter – again.
But those with all the power at their fingertips don’t seem prepared to look past the end of their noses.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and, heaven knows, these are desperate times for all concerned.
So what does FA chief executive Martin Glenn do?
He puts Gareth Southgate in charge after promoting him from his job with the Under-21s. God help us.
Well, he can’t as it happens, so we are reliant instead on Glenn, vice-chairman David Gill and director of elite development Dan Ashworth to ride to the rescue and appoint someone capable of making our national side respectable again.
But these three wise men don’t appear to bring too many gifts to the table.
Bites
Gill is a flawed administrator at international level and someone living off a reputation built on the back of the success Sir Alex Ferguson created at Manchester United.
Glenn works in sound bites. He is the man who used to work in the frozen food industry and sacked Captain Birdseye.
Ashworth, meanwhile, had a mediocre playing career with Norwich before going on to bigger and better things behind the scenes at giant clubs such as Cambridge, Peterborough and West Brom.
How do these people find themselves in positions of such power and responsibility?
The FA’s shortsightedness has led us down a dead end road to the edge of a cliff.
We now need someone to think outside the box.
Promoting Southgate to caretaker boss was the easy option and he is in the running to get it full-time, while Glenn reckons Arsene Wenger is the perfect fit to lead England.
Wenger, who snubbed the FA’s approach in the summer, won’t leave Arsenal until the end of the season at the earliest, but could very well be using England’s interest to boost his chances of a new deal at the Emirates.
Southgate lacks inspiration, just as Roy Hodgson and Fabio Capello did before him. He is a hard sell to the general public because he lacks a stand-out achievement on his CV.
If man-management has to be the England boss’s greatest strength, then why don’t Glenn and his sidekicks look at cycling supremo Sir David Brailsford, or rugby’s Eddie Jones or Sir Clive Woodward? Granted, Woodward was hardly a success in an ill-fated spell at Southampton.
But does the England manager have to come from a footballing background? Does he even have to be full-time?
Let’s face it, we’ve won one World Cup, more than 50 years ago, and last reached the semifinal of a tournament in 1996. Generations pass without success and something needs to change. The obsession with having a boss who is English is antiquated. The Germans know a thing or two about football, so the FA should at least be targeting Jurgen Klinsmann. Klinsmann ticks a lot of boxes. He knows the English game well, is fluent in our language, has overachieved with the US team and would bring intelligence, drive and charisma to the role. With a World Cup winner’s medal as a player, he would have the instant respect of the squad. If Klinsmann can make the Americans a respected team on the world stage, then he could also do the same with our sorry lot. Provided he’s given the chance, of course. NOT SO WISE: The FA trio of Dan Ashworth, Martin Glenn and David Gill TYSON FURY is a pathetic imitation of another Tyson – but without the talent.
Mike Tyson was one hell of a boxer in his prime and ruled the heavyweight division in brutal fashion.
But he couldn’t handle the fame and fortune that came with holding one of world sport’s most prestigious and privileged positions.
Now we have another bad man dragging the reputation of the sport into the gutter.
Fury, it seems, has tested positive for cocaine and will now be stripped of his belts. Good.
It cannot come soon enough either, because rarely has there been a more insignificant champion in the history of boxing.