Just when will England have a decent team?

They are one step from a new manager, with Southgate waiting to be confirmed, but...

GARETH SOUTHGATE will have to wait to receive official confirmation that he is the new England manager. The Football Association are resisting the notion that, once the Spain friendly is out the way on Tuesday, the coronation can proceed.

There is a process to follow, candidates to be interviewed — even if no-one can think who there might be on the list who was not interviewed three months ago — and meetings to be conducted.

Southgate is not even clear yet whether he will be making his own PowerPoint presentation or whether four years with the Under 21s and four games with the senior team is sufficient for the FA to know what kind of man they are getting. Certainly there is no date booked in his diary to discuss terms.

FA chairman Greg Clarke, chief executive Martin Glenn, technical director Dan Ashworth and League Managers’ Association chairman Howard Wilkinson are scheduled to convene this week and start the process.

No-one seems clear whether Ralf Rangnick will fly over from Leipzig, where the team of which he is director of sport sit joint top of the Bundesliga; whether Brendan Rodgers will be invited down to St George’s Park to be asked about availability in June; whether Sean Dyche is now a contender, as he sits above Eddie Howe in the Premier League; or whether Steve Bruce, having taken over at Aston Villa, has been crossed off the list.

For now, the FA insist Southgate will have to wait. ‘For me, it’s no issue,’ he said. ‘My priority was to win the game against Scotland. I’m pleased for the players that we’ve done that and I’m pleased for the country because I know what it means to everyone.

‘There are often appointments at clubs without interviews and some young coaches don’t get opportunities because they just appoint managers and appoint coaches without actually seeing what is out there. So it would be hypocritical for me to say the FA shouldn’t go through that process.

‘But I’ve tried to avoid any of those conversations. My experience in football or in life is do what you’re doing as well as you can and then maybe opportunity comes. But if you don’t fulfil the task you’re asked to do, it’s a non-starter anyway.

‘I don’t know what the process is going to look like for everybody involved, so until then it’s a difficult question to answer. All I know is that I’m asked to take the game on Tuesday and that gives them time to go through whatever process they want to go through.’

Publicly he is coy when asked if he definitely wants the job. ‘I’ve avoided answering that because I don’t think it’s necessary,’ he said. ‘You just have to do the job. I’ve seen people in this sort of position before talk about how much they want the job and it becomes an irrelevance if you don’t prepare the team well.

‘So it’s not really my decision. But I have loved doing it. And I’ve seen some signs of progress with how we’ve played.’

Privately, he is, of course, ready to talk. What does seem clear though is that, at the end of process — which could even take weeks according to the FA — Southgate will be the new England manager.

What is less clear is just what he will do with this collection of players who, in brief moments, can look like a bright, quick, incisive and thoroughly modern team, but who spend most of the time teetering on the brink of calamity and often toppling the over edge of that precipice, as against Iceland.

If a player could personify the team, it might be John Stones. No-one could deny there is real talent, potential to be great even. But whether our nerves and Southgate’s will survive the maturing process is quite another issue.

It was clear on Friday that Southgate’s England will be a team who pass out from the back. Not since the days of Terry Venables and Glenn Hoddle, the managers under whom Southgate played his best international football, has there been such an explicit commitment to subvert the norms of English football and attempt to engage with an alternative way of playing.

The problem is, of course, that aspiration seems to outstrip ability. Against Slovenia last month, it was Eric Dier, Jordan Henderson and Stones passing their way into trouble. On Friday it was Stones and Gary Cahill, though Wayne Rooney and Dier also contributed.

Southgate’s stamp on the team will be progressive. The results, however, will not be — starting with pass-masters Spain on Tuesday — unless Stones and his colleagues learn quickly. ‘For years we’ve talked about not being able to play out from the back,’ said Southgate. ‘And if we’re to be different, if we’re to progress, we have to encourage players.

‘But he [Stones] also knows what I think of some of the things that he did against Scotland.’ A dressing-room dressing-down, then? ‘That’s not for me to discuss,’ said Southgate, before adding:

‘Not for that, in particular, no.’ Southgate, though, has laid out the way he wants to play; coincidentally it will sit well with Ashworth and his blueprint for English football, even though it is said by those close to the situation that Southgate’s vision for the game does not precisely mirror Ashworth’s.

‘I believe we have the technical ability to play out,’ said Southgate, ‘It is decision making and positioning sometimes, recognition of the moments to commit to it and the moments to play past the first press. We want bravery but not stupidity. We have to find that balance.’

Southgate’s aspirations for Stones are as high as can be imagined. ‘What we have to remember is that he’s 22. In central defensive terms, it’s nothing. If we want to have a Mats Hummels, a Jerome Boateng, a Gerard Pique — I can remember managing a team against Pique at the age of 22 when he played for Manchester United and he wasn’t the all-round real deal.’

Pique was 21 at the time, a 2-2 draw at the Riverside, but the point still stands.

Now Stones has Pep Guardiola, the high priest of passing football who schooled Pique, to nurture him. ‘He has the perfect manager to work with and hone him,’ said Southgate. ‘For all of our defenders, that is what we want to encourage. Anyone who has seen the U21s play know how we believe what is the right way to go forward.’ Southgate’s real issue, therefore, is not getting the job but what to do with it once he has it.

He is right that there are bits of England which invite encouragement. ‘There are signs of how we would like to play,’ he said. ‘We have certain attributes in the team which lend themselves to playing in a certain style. In the top two thirds of the pitch we did that really well.

‘Raheem Sterling interchanging positions was a real problem. He was excellent. I know Adam Lallana got the man of the match but him, Wayne Rooney and Raheem behind Daniel Sturridge were a real problem, difficult to pick up.’

But making the leap from a ragged collection of potential players to serious contenders looks as huge a chasm as ever. And even if they can bridge that divide, their mental fragility will surely undo them in Russia 2018.

The man who missed the crucial penalty against Germany in the semi-final shoot-out at Euro 96, the last time England seriously looked like winning anything, will surely appreciate those problems more than most. Now it is his job to solve them. And that is a more formidable task altogether.