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Are these Sunderland and former Spurs managers leading candidates for England?
Glen Hoddle
The clamour for Hoddle to be given the job is utterly mystifying, but perhaps it shouldn’t be given peoples’ propensity for nostalgia. Hoddle’s last achievement as a head coach was to get Wolverhampton Wanderers to within eight points of the play-offs in England’s second tier. This was a staggering ten years ago.
True enough, Hoddle gave England a clear playing identity at the 1998 World Cup and who knows how far they may have gone had David Beckham not kicked out or David Batty had converted a penalty kick.
The memoirs of England players who played under Hoddle praised his technical knowledge and coaching abilities. He was tactically flexible, and along with Terry Venables, he dragged England away from the tradition of a rigid 4-4-2. However, the key issue with Hoddle was his man management skills.
He would belittle some of England’s best footballers, often taking it upon himself to demonstrate technical drills in training if the players were failing to do them properly. This didn’t go down too well, and this was a dressing room with Paul Ince, Alan Shearer, Tony Adams and numerous other strong characters.
It is no great secret that the modern day player is rather more sensitive and the combination of this with Hoddle’s lack of emotional intelligence would be a recipe for disaster.
Harry Redknapp
The man in the street’s favoured candidate, though Sid Vicious once gave us some sound advice when it comes to the man in the street. The theory states that English football has tangled itself up in a kind of paralysis-via-analysis, and that if we just keep everything simple we might liberate ourselves.
There is too much sports science, too many statistics, too many people in butting their nose in to matters that shouldn’t concern them. We have had enough of experts, to coin a phrase; we want a good honest football man.
That is all rather snarky of course, because Redknapp has actually had a very decent career as a manager. His West Ham side were very entertaining, he achieved promotion with Portsmouth before returning and taking them to FA Cup glory and he steered Tottenham into the last-eight of the Champions League.
His various off-field controversies have counted against him in the past. Redknapp has a very pally relationship with much of Fleet Street and the broadcasters, so he might get an easier ride than others from the press.
He cut a beleaguered figure in his last job at Queens Park Rangers however, taking them down before achieving promotion via the play-offs with the best squad and biggest budget in the Championship by the skin of his teeth.
Upon return to the Premier League, Rangers were one of the most disorganised and insipid units in the division’s 24-year history. Incidentally, he hired fellow England hopeful Hoddle to implement a 3-5-2 system which was abandoned 135 mins into the season. Redknapp resigned from the job citing knee problems.
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