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Why England's next manager can't possibly be English

Roy Hodgson's Palace are in strife (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
Roar Guru
11th July, 2016
15

Now that Euro 2016 is over, attention will soon turn to the resumption of the major European leagues and also the next round of World Cup qualifiers.

The English Premier League season kicks off on August 13th. The English team plays the first of their final qualifying group games on September the fourth against Slovakia.

These two dates are significant because at the moment the job described as “impossible”, and “more important than the Prime Minister” – the job of England football manager – is vacant. England FA officials and the media are in rare lockstep about the need to appoint an Englishman.

But who? A check of current managers in the Premier League reveals only five who are English-born. They are Steve Bruce (Hull City), Eddie Howe (Bournemouth), Sean Dyche (Burnley), Alan Pardew (Crystal Palace) and Sam Allardyce (Sunderland).

Of these, Bruce and Dyche are returning to the top flight after guiding their teams to promotion from the Championship last season. It seems remotely unlikely that the FA will dip into the lower leagues to find a coach for the Three Lions.

The only English-born manager of a national team that I can come up with at the moment is Harry Rednapp, who is in charge of Jordan, and also a consultant for A-League club Central Coast Mariners.

And so this candidacy of six includes five managers whose clubs are all at short odds to be fighting relegation in the upcoming season, and a controversial 69 year old who is on petro-dollars to guide Jordan for the next two World Cup campaigns.

The youngest is Eddie Howe, although he is, surprisingly, the third-longest serving current manager in the EPL, having guided Bournemouth since October 2012. he is surpassed only by Bruce who has been in charge of Hull City for three months longer and Arsene Wenger.

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Howe would seem to be the best choice if the FA are serious about the job going to an Englishman, though it would be an appointment that would be in itself controversial. He has performed miracles at AFC Bournemouth, taking the comparatively tiny club out of the Championship and into reasonably comfortable Premier League survival in their first season.

He fashioned a team that played with no little style as well, and was able to adapt when his side were leaking goals in the middle stages of the last campaign and looking likely to fall straight back down the expensive Premier League trapdoor.

It would be a meteoric rise for the young manager, who rescued his current club from Football League oblivion in 2009. A stint at Burnley preceded a return to Bournemouth and two promotions in three seasons to their current lofty position.

However, the notoriously conservative English FA may be reticent to anoint such a young and relatively inexperienced man to the job. Which leaves Sam Allardyce as the other logical choice of the five.

He is a man who has never experienced relegation from the Premier League is nonetheless viewed as a dinosaur to many in football. That’s probably unfair but there is the whiff of the staid in Allardyce.

Vastly experienced yet never a leader of a ‘big’ club with designs on titles, ‘Big Sam’ is the antithesis appointment to that of Howe, a manager at the other end of the age and style coaching bell curve.

With that list, it begs the question as to why the FA are not looking further afield. Perhaps the country whose political and economic ambitions have gazed inwardly of late are destined to view their football team the same way.

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