Sack Gareth Southgate mid-tournament? – how very un-English

Whilst ostensibly a rock and roll anecdote, it is in the current situation quite pertinent – so please bear with me.

Back in the day, when the ‘Madchester’ phenomenon was at its zenith, cultural guru Tony Wilson sat opposite New Order lead singer, Bernard Sumner.

Factory Records were haemorrhaging money, the Hacienda had become the ‘den’ to surpass all previous dens of iniquity, and members of the band were actually having to work behind the bar at the club to cover all their outgoings.

Wilson, the classic ‘glass half-full’ merchant, looked deep into Sumner’s eyes. With everything seemingly unravelling, he asked his talented colleague: “if you could have a button, that if you pressed it, there would be no, Joy Division, no New Order, or Blue Monday (the greatest selling 12-inch record of all time, which actually sold each copy at a loss), no Hacienda, no Madchester, would you push it?” And Sumner replied, “Show me that f****** button now!”

Moving to the present day, if there was such a button for Gareth Southgate, with an alternate timeline where Sam Allardyce doesn’t get stitched up by the gutter press – so no England job for Southgate, no Moscow semi-final, no Wembley Euro final, no Qatar and perhaps most significantly no Euros in Germany, would Southgate reply in similar fashion to Sumner?

For younger readers this really is nothing new. England fans of a certain age will testify that ever since 30 July 1966 the three Lions have in the main frustrated and disappointed an entire footballing nation.

Yet after another truly uninspiring 90 minutes against Slovenia, England have topped the group – and in keeping with all the rhetoric currently doing the rounds in the election campaign – it’s what FA spin doctors would call a positive.

England are now moving into the knockout stages, and the apparently shrinking throng of Southgate apologists trot out the stats that we didn’t start well in 66, 86, 90 or even 96 but still ended up with a fairly credible showing.

Unfortunately, that argument is somewhat tarnished. If anyone thinks Southgate is of the same managerial and tactical calibre as Sir Alf Ramsey, Sir Bobby Robson or Terry Venables then they are clearly deluded.

On the flip side, despite topping the group a growing number of fans are advocating the FA taking a leaf out of the Ivory Coast playbook and sack Southgate mid tournament. That is unfortunately almost as ludicrous as the Kalvin Phillips line last Thursday!

We are where we are. So its stiff upper lip time and we do what this country has done for centuries in challenging times – we roll up our sleeves and get on with it.

Whether we go out on Sunday, or the weekend after, or even the semis a few days after that – I can’t see us getting to the final, but stranger things have happened – this truly is the end game for Southgate, whatever the eventual outcome.

There is a changing of the guard this summer at the FA, with the higher echelons of the esteemed organisation containing people possibly without the football pedigree we’ve come to expect in previous years.

But if they can’t see England need to change their manager before the World Cup qualifiers start in the Autumn, then we truly are up that familiar creek without a paddle.