Five reasons why replacing Gareth Southgate as England manager is a brilliant job

There goes Gareth Southgate. I must remember to thank him.

Confirmation of Southgate’s departure from the England job after eight years, 102 games and the most consistent spell of deep tournament runs in the nation’s history is probably for the best. For Southgate and his sanity, and for England.

Southgate has done vast amounts to transform the perception of the England squad both internally and externally, but while taking England deep in four successive tournaments is an achievement absolutely not to be diminished, failing to nab any one of the four does probably mean it’s fair enough for someone else to have a go now.

There are no guarantees they will be as successful as Southgate, but it probably is time now to see if anyone else can finally end all the years of hurt and take that one final step that proved beyond him.

One important question, though. Why would anyone actually want the job? It is often a thankless one, as Southgate himself would attest after the events of the last month.

The other, more miserable list is here, but there are five reasons why a top manager might fancy a crack at it…

Loads of really good players
The first and most obvious thing about the job. One of the problems of being an international manager is that you kind of get what you’re given.

It’s almost moot to debate whether it’s an easier or harder job than club management; what’s definitely true is that it’s wildly different in terms of job spec. The time spent with the players on the training ground is far less, with far more of a watching brief for large spells of the year.

But what any incoming England manager, even one used to being able to fashion his own squad in the club transfer market, would find is an intriguing group of players with which to work.

And if we put to one side the Harry Kane Situation for a bit – that comes up in the Other Piece – as well as concerns about what happens next with the defence, then the age profile of England’s best players is pretty encouraging too.

There would be something wrong with any manager who wasn’t at least slightly tempted by the prospect of working with Jude Bellingham, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Kobbie Mainoo, Adam Wharton, Anthony Gordon, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Declan Rice and the rest, wouldn’t there? All of those players should be around for at least the next couple of tournament cycles, and to be frank no new England manager should be looking much further ahead on his first day.

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👉 Who will be the next England manager after Gareth Southgate?

Become a national hero
The margin for error as England manager is wafer-thin, but the potential rewards are tremendously great. Even with the ultimate failure to land silverware, Gareth Southgate has had his life changed by being England manager. Imagine being the bloke who actually manages to win one of these big prizes.

Sure, it’s unlikely. Even if you’re the best team around (and England are not that) the chance to do anything meaningful about it comes along only once every two years in capricious knockout tournaments where the best teams don’t always or even necessarily often win.

But that’s not how great managers think, is it? They’ll be thinking about winning. And the manager that finally does win England another major trophy will be granted instant national treasure status for life. Even if it were Jose Mourinho.

Nations League promotion bid
Very possible you’ve forgotten about this, because we had. But Gareth Southgate actually became the first England manager ever to get the team relegated. Yeah, it’s not going to be the thing he’s most remembered for. But it happened. And this autumn the new manager has the chance to put that right and thus become the first England manager to get the team promoted.

Finland, Greece, and Republic of Ireland stand in England’s way in their first experience of the second tier of the Nations League and there really would be no excuse for messing that up.

It’s easy to say now that such a low-key achievement would be instantly downplayed, and to an extent that’s true. But it’s a tangible achievement that buys early goodwill and time, especially if it’s achieved with suitably purist-pleasing football. If you think we’re being optimistic here, remember that a few early qualifying wins were even enough to get Steve McClaren some ‘SVEN WHO?’ headlines.

Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place with all this talk of Your Klopps or Your Pochettinos or these kind of guys. What we need is a promotion specialist. What we need is Neil Warnock.

As an aside, we are also pre-emptively weary of the banter that awaits in September when everyone remembers/realises England are in the second tier and Scotland are in the first. It is objectively funny, but still.

Just play Good Football
Another potential fairly easy early win for the new manager that follows on from the previous couple of points. England’s first assignments under the new manager in September, October and November are against their fellow second-tier European sides and the positive spin on that is that these provide an instant opportunity to lay down a pretty significant marker about the style of football moving forward. ‘Moving forward’ would itself be a pretty good starting point here.

A bit of free-flowing football against the Finns and the Greeks and it’ll be all SOUTHGATE WHO? and WE WOULD DEFINITELY HAVE BEATEN SPAIN PLAYING LIKE THIS no matter how silly that might actually be.

And it really won’t take much. Any spell longer than 30 minutes of halfway cohesive attacking football that yields a couple of goals will do the trick.

Interim danger
This is an interesting element to all this. It’s not so much a reason why it’s a good job, more that if you’re a big-name manager who thinks it is a good job then get yourself in there now. Don’t wait.

England have said they have an ‘interim plan in place’ after Southgate’s exit. That, one assumes, would be U21 boss Lee Carsley. And that’s a potential problem for any bigger names who fancy the job.

If you’re interested, get your foot in the door now would be the advice. Howe can’t sit around waiting for Newcastle to sack him, that’s for sure. If Carsley follows Southgate’s path – and not insignificantly Luis de la Fuente’s with Spain – from the U21 side to the senior side then there are no guarantees the job is available again a few months down the line.

All that potential Nations League goodwill would now be available for Carsley. He could become the first man to lead England to promotion. And the fact promoting from within has worked (edgelords will have to accept that whatever else it may have been, Southgate’s reign really cannot in any reasonable way be called a failure – and certainly not by the FA) previously may leave Carsley’s permanent promotion something akin to a fait accompli.

LATEST ON NEW ENGLAND MANAGER FROM F365:
👉 Potter, Howe and Klopp’s England starting line-ups: Kane and Pickford dropped with White recalled
👉 Southgate has gone; can Lee Carsley bring on the England ‘chaos’ era?
👉 Who will be the next England manager after Gareth Southgate?