Club mottos can be a curious thing. Blackburn Rovers are more Labore than Arte, Sunderland’s Consectatio Excellentiae, pursuit of excellence, no longer seems to apply, and Everton’s commitment to Nil Satis Nisi Optimum, only the best is good enough, has not been as strong in modern times as it was in the past.
The Football Association does not have an aspirational slogan, it has strategic plans, mission statements and it has visions for the future, but English football’s governing body has rarely challenged itself to be the best that it could possibly be, to pursue excellence or to prevail by skill and labour.
In a number of ways, that is not particularly significant and in others it is quite sensible. For a start, there is no point in well meaning, positive soundbites if you don’t expect to be able to live up to them. Then there is the question of why an organisation that is open to public scrutiny would make itself a hostage to fortune by promising something that it probably wouldn’t be able to deliver on. That’s without even taking into account the universal truism that actions almost always speak louder than words.
None of this is a problem. The issue with the FA is that it does not aspire to be the best. It has created a comfort zone for itself, one in which it has become okay for them to appoint mediocre managers because people have stopped expecting any more of them. Since 2001, neither Roy Hodgson nor Sam Allardyce had won a single major honour, both had a career average not much above one win in every three games and both had significant failures at big clubs on their curriculum vitae.
Yet both were given the job of managing the England national team and in each case their arrival was greeted with a shrug of the shoulders by most of the population who have now become so conditioned to mediocrity that they are willing to accept that this is the best that the FA can do. “The best worst option,” is a phrase that was attached to Allardyce and Hodgson and it is hard to imagine a more damning indictment of just how much expectations have been lowered.
Again, that suits the FA. The less we expect, the less they have to deliver. There is no sense that as an organisation or as a footballing nation the highest possible standards are being aspired to and then we wonder how it could possibly be that England is capable of losing to Iceland. But now, in the most ignominious circumstances an opportunity has been created for that to change. Allardyce’s removal will rightly disturb the FA and should prompt them to instigate an urgent review of its own vetting procedures but it also provides a chance to plot an ambitious new course that takes best worst options out of the equation.
With Hodgson and Allardyce we knew what we were getting. At best, it would be well organised if fairly dull teams that could, given a fair wind, reach the quarter finals or maybe even the semi-finals of a major tournament. At worst, it would be tactically poor, hard to watch and although the inequalities of the qualifying process meant that tournaments would be reached, once there the experience would be excruciating and short lived. This was not a case of aiming for the moon and landing in the stars.
In fairness to the FA, finances and the demands of other elements of the national game that they have to look after beyond the national team dictate that it would be difficult, if not nigh on impossible, for them to attract an elite manager in an age where Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho and Jurgen Klopp are paid between £7-13 million at three of England’s biggest clubs. Attracting a manger from the top tier is out of the question, particularly at a time when the grassroots game is in desperate need of investment.
It is that combination of the limitations of their own finances and their need to address other priorities which sees the FA lower its sights to the least worst option but it shouldn’t. Allardyce and Hodgson are both proven, but they are proven in the sense that they are not quite good enough. For all Allardyce bleats about not having been given the opportunity to prove himself at top clubs, there is a sound reason for that and it is that he has done nothing to suggest he belongs at that level. David Moyes made Everton a top six team and got a crack at Manchester United. Brendan Rodgers helped turn Swansea City into one of the most progressive teams in the country and was given a chance by Liverpool. In style and substance, they earned their opportunities.
Regardless of the final 18 months of his spell at Liverpool, Rodgers belongs in a category of managers and former players that the FA should now be looking to as they seek to replace Allardyce. So too does Eddie Howe and Gareth Southgate. We know what each of them is yet to achieve – and like Hodgson and Allardyce, silverware would not be their selling point – but we do not know what they could go on to achieve. There would at least be a sense of potential and possibility, rather than an acceptance that managers in the latter stages of lengthy and unsuccessful careers will maintain the status quo but offer little else.
Sometimes what is unknown is better than what is known because it allows horizons to be raised just on the basis of anything becomes possible. In recent World Cup and European Championships groups, England’s qualification has been almost guaranteed from the moment the draw has been made. What better way for a young, up and coming manager who needs to improve to learn his trade than in games in which the inferiority of the opposition allows them to work on systems and methods? Why, for example, wasn’t Gary Neville afforded a more influential role in terms of both team selection and tactics in England’s final qualifying games after a place at Euro 2016 had been secured?
This is not an argument of young against old. If Arsene Wenger is interested in succeeding Allardyce then his name should be at the very top of the FA’s shortlist because not only does his CV feature significant and extensive achievement, it also highlights a demonstrable record of coaching excellence, improving players and playing the kind of attractive football that serves as an inspiration. But if the Arsenal manager is not keen, the FA should be brave and rule out the mediocre and supposedly safe options like Steve Bruce and Alan Pardew and look to potential. This might not be a time when it is realistic to demand that only the best is good enough for English football but it is one when it should slam the door on the least worst alternatives who continue to take us nowhere.
