Well, thats just the trouble. England expects to get knocked out on penalties, and meanwhile the search for a new manager carries on.

I did like the way Paul Wilson in the Observer compared the FA to Dad’s Army. I don’t know all the characters in the FA well enough to know how accurate all the comparisons are, but I can see Brian Barwick as Captain Mainwaring and David Dein as Private Walker, the wheeling-dealing spiv. Best of all was Trevor Brooking (pbuh) in the role of Sgt. Wilson.

There has been a lot of rubbish talked about what sort of person should get the job, so I might as well add to the rubbish myself. I think that what England needs is not a manager but a coach. In a football club, the manager has to scout for talent, and having found it work out what he can afford. Half the job is to do with acquiring the players for a team. The England manager doesn’t have to do that – he can have his pick of players without worrying about any cost constraints, and usually at least half the team selection is obvious.

I don’t necessarily think that Scolari was the best choice for us, but not for the reason a lot of pundits give – that he doesn’t understand English football. Lets face it, the one team England will not have to play is England, so why not have someone who can understand the rest of the world.

Maybe they should do what West Ham do whenever they lose a manager, and install Trevor Brooking as a caretaker? They could do worse. Or they could just go for Allardyce. He is popular enough, and it would make a change to have someone doing it who really, really wants to do it.

By the way, with Rooney out of action for a while, the campaign to draft Dean Ashton or Marlon Harewood into squad starts here.