• 16 Jul 2024, 1:05 p.m.

    Does Frank Lampard have a style of play? And broad acceptance seems optimistic.

  • 16 Jul 2024, 1:12 p.m.

    I listened to a podcast last week - can’t remember which, Guardian football weekly possibly - and the journalist on there seemed pretty sure that the FA don’t want to pay as much for the next manager as they did to Southgate (£5m per year). Their purse strings need to be tightened for reasons that he didn’t expand on.

  • 16 Jul 2024, 1:18 p.m.

    There's a massive opportunity here to make a huge step forward on gender diversity (which is non existent in elite men's football) and get a great manager by appointing the first woman to manager England. There are two candidates who would be excellent. Certainly they would be better than Gerrard or Lampard.

  • 16 Jul 2024, 1:20 p.m.

    Given this team is now one of the world's best with questionable coaching, it would seem like a false economy not to give the strongest squad probably most of us have ever seen the best coach they can find. A tournament win in two years would more than cover the costs of an elite coach.

  • 16 Jul 2024, 2:10 p.m.

    The coaching under Southgate was done by Steve Holland. Highly regarded within football, but not more widely known or appreciated. Certainly not to Don Howe levels. Southgate was manager. Management is about building a team (I mean backroom staff, as well as playing staff) and environment, managing up and down the command chain, taking input from multiple sources, and making decisions.

    I don't agree with that. He's widely liked by many sections of the football community. Recognised as hard working, and serious. Sure there are plenty of people who would hate the appointment of anyone. As they did when failed club manager Southgate was appointed. For me club football is not international football. Totally different job. Ideally an international manager will have experience of that environment. Many successful international coaches/managers have, without having any notable club success or even background (think of people like Klinsman).

    Has a preference for high pressing committent to attacking play. Not great at shutting the back door. It would be the flip-flop that the people clamour for on the tactics front. Until they would hate it because we lose games that we shouldn't.

    Not sure that can be true when we couldn't pick for the squad a fit left footed left back, nor any fit full back that could actually defend. We have some great players. We also have some massive problem areas that need to be solved. Not by the likes of Keiran Trippier, I mean.

    This attitude that we are a great team that is being held back by an intangible unspecified failure of the manager, that tends to always happen under every manager in my lifetime needs to really give way to the recognition that at any time there are always going to be excellent teams at the top end of any era. They are also trying to win. They often have advantages (technique, workload, used to playing in baking heat). We need to try to be the bes that we can be....not fever dreaming about how we could definitely win everything if only all those bloody foreigners had as limited an understanding of football as our over entitled fans.

    We have won absolutely nothing in my lifetime. Nothing. Let a coach/manager build a team. Enjoy the uncertainty of competitive sport. Value the contribution that people are making, and how hard they are working. Stop being know nothing pricks. This is also unlikely to change in my lifetime.

  • 16 Jul 2024, 2:30 p.m.

    We won Le Tounoi de France in 1997.

    What a night.

  • 16 Jul 2024, 4:44 p.m.

    Bit of outside interest is a good way to get a pay rise.

  • 16 Jul 2024, 8:37 p.m.
  • 16 Jul 2024, 8:49 p.m.

    It's true, the idea of a woman manager of a men's team, nevermind the national team, is so unthinkable to many that even suggesting it is going to get clicks and controversy. I think in 2024 the world could handle it though.

  • 17 Jul 2024, 2:05 p.m.

    TV did the idea of a female as manager of a men's team 35 years ago.

  • 17 Jul 2024, 2:28 p.m.

    The Manageress was an excellent TV program.

    I have no problem with a reasonably qualified female (or black, or indeed any other personal characteristic) coach being appointed to any position. The devil is in the detail of that statement. Oft quoted 'not much of a player' top managers (like Klopp or Wenger) tend to have played as second or third tier professionals - or been potentially top professionals who suffered injury. They have been around, and trained with elite footballers. The good ones know what is required in all aspects from mentality to external scrutiny, and have proven that they know that with successful high level coaching, before being appointed to elite positions.

    The notion that you will parachute in a sub tier six U17's level coach, is either clear trolling or so fundamentally stupid that it doesn't really require comment. It requires sectioning.

    To get one of the top jobs in world football you probably need to have a distinguished tier one level career, that provides you with experience physically of the level...or have demonstrated a coaching appreciation of the level. We need to see more female coaches in the elite levels of the game. But we also need to see more from minority backgrounds. There are not a lot of jobs going around, compared to the numbers of retiring professionals with coaching badges.

  • 17 Jul 2024, 3:27 p.m.

    I think we are talking here about the manager of the Lionesses, which is an elite national team or Emma Hayes. Nobody is suggesting a female manager without elite experience should be appointed, any more than a fatty from down the pub should be (in AI Southgate's words).

  • 18 Jul 2024, 2:14 p.m.

    It's an interesting discussion and one that was had down here in the last few days in the context of rugby league and State of Origin. Most of the best coaches here in the NRL were either passable first graders or reserve graders. Only one of them, Wayne Bennett, was a 'tier one' player to use your language. Most of the others - Ivan Cleary, Michael Maguire, Craig Bellamy and Trent Robinson - were ok players but had other skills which were transferable to coaching.

    Being a prodigious talent as a player doesn't necessarily mean you'll be a great coach, unless you have those other skills.

  • 18 Jul 2024, 2:44 p.m.

    I think you might be slightly misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm definitely not talking about only 'elite' players being suitable....I'm talking about experience and knowledge, and a proven understanding of players who operate at that mental and physical level. Which can be demonstrated to have been learned...but not by everyone.

    There's a lot of hard work and learning that can qualify you as a coach...but if you've been in football you've come across coaches with all the badges, and absolutely no fucking idea at all. The good ones pick up all sorts of little physical and mental cues, over time...the unspoken detail...they develop an instinct for saying and doing on average things that improve situations, rather than make them worse. Of all the tier seven level coaches in the world, there will be a couple who can make this transition to a higher level. Dropping one of them into a tier one job, and hoping you've got one of the right ones is a big ask. Football is show me, not tell me...which is why players, and coaches work up the levels. With the best will in the world womens professional football is nowhere near the physical and mental levels of mens professional football. No reason a female coach couldn't work their way up into the mens professional game....as people like Russel Slade (a teacher from nottnum) did. Almost none have though....for a range of reasons.

    It's just not sensible to drop a tier six U17's coach into a top job. In fact it's fucking mental. Even if it turns out that U17's coach is one of the rare ones that works their way up...we'll talk when they have.