The Lesser of Six Evils?

What is the meaning of life? Given a relatively level playing field – i.e., water deep enough so that a shark could manoeuvre proficiently, but shallow enough so that a bear could stand and operate with its characteristic dexterity – who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark? Who should be the next England manager?

Such are the questions facing our puzzled existence in today’s confused world. For question A, see here. For B, see here. For C, allow me to indulge (but not really answer)

Perhaps the most important issue facing the FA (and indeed every English fan) is that we are currently in the process of picking an England manager by default. All of the candidates have obvious flaws- the debate essentially being who has the least?

Big Sam is an excellent wheeler and dealer, an admirable quality in club management, but useless on the international stage. He has also nurtured at Bolton perhaps the ugliest playing style of any Premiership team. Whilst his scouts have a penchant for the exotic, he has a penchant for the long ball.

Alan Curbishley has said he doesn’t want it, and is in charge of a Charlton team that has been stagnant for about 5 years.

Gus Hiddink would have been a good candidate, but is famous for his distaste for media intrusion (ask Sven about that), wanted to manage a club team at the same time as England, and wanted to commute from Amsterdam.

Steve Maclaren really isn’t anything special. Take away Boro’s cup runs and everyone would have been talking about him getting the sack. Despite his experience in the England setup, ex- Man Utd Assistant Managers do not tend to make good managers- see Kidd at Blackburn, Quieroz and Real Madrid, and lets face it, Maclaren at Boro.

Martin O’Neil has spent a year out of the game, and signed off his Celtic career by loosing the SPL on the last day of the season. Yes he transformed Celtic into the best team in Scotland after years of being second best- but this is the point; succeeding as a Rangers or Celtic manager is a case of being better than one other team. I fully expect Le Guen to do the same at Rangers, as he is pretty good. Not brilliant but pretty good. The main reason everyone seems keen on O'neil is beacuse he is not Allardyce or Maclaren.

Big Phil Scolari (right) has the best credentials of the lot having won a World Cup with Brazil, and almost won a European Championship with Portugal. Stylistically he is the ideal Manager to work with the most attacking England line-up we have had for years. Scolari is of the ‘you score two, we’ll score three’ school of thought, the dramatic opposite of Sven’s approach of ‘we’ll score one then sit back and wait for Zidane to score two’. If only the bugger didn’t have a grasp of English that was intermediate at best.