FA target three worst Premier League managers of season for England Under-21s role

Sarah Winterburn
Lampard defends Gerrard

The succession plan for the England job might involve the three worst managers of this Premier League season.

Gareth Southgate’s contract as England manager expires at the end of 2024 and the FA would ideally like to replace him with the England Under-21 manager.

That England Under-21 manager will no longer be Lee Carsley as he is expected to step down from the role this summer after the European Championship.

That will leave the FA searching for a new Under-21 manager and the names being proffered by the Daily Mail are literally the bottom three names on our ranking of the 32 Premier League managers this season.

Scott Parker – who was sacked by Club Brugge last week and prompted us to write about the ‘complete flop’ who proved blowing smoke up English manager arses is irresponsible hot air – is one of the names on the list, presumably on the strength of his 18 England caps rather than his career in management.

Also mentioned are Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard – both sacked from their Premier League jobs this season – as ‘it has long been the governing body’s ambition to draft more former international players under their umbrella’.

It’s a shame that it’s not long been the governing body’s ambition to draft in better coaches as Gerrard and Lampard have both been abject failures this season.

As we wrote of Gerrard last week: ‘We genuinely thought he was going to be good because he was good at Rangers. We’re mainly disappointed in ourselves for falling for it. A lesson learned.

‘The big problem, as well as just the general ropeyness, was that no matter how much he insisted otherwise, Gerrard clearly viewed Villa as a means to an end and loaded the squad with short-termist oldsters and left quite a mess for Unai Emery to sort out.

‘To make matters even worse for Gerrard, Emery has promptly gone and done precisely that. It’s a double whammy.’

And of Lampard: ‘He’s not the messiah, he’s a very average manager. Not the first manager who couldn’t prevent Everton being Everton and he won’t be the last, but he might be the only one feted to the very heavens themselves for taking a team that is 16th and steering them all the way to the giddy heights of 16th.

‘There were small yet undeniable signs of some progress earlier in the season. Some small hints that Lampard might be slightly prepared to take his medicine and try to build a team that was tough to beat first and worry about the rest later. That all went to shit, though, and by the time he lost El Sackico to David Moyes’ West Ham the end point of it all had become inevitable and not even a river of Henry Winter tears could wash away the inescapable mediocrity of Lampard the manager.’