THE CHAOS surrounding the appointment of the next England manager has finally been resolved. The FA Selection Group has given the job to the man who logically should have been in line for the position in the first place.
Forty-five-year-old Steve McClaren has, after all, earned his managerial spurs the hard way, impressing at Oxford, Derby and Manchester United in secondary roles, before taking charge at Middlesbrough. More significantly he has been Sven-Göran Eriksson’s assistant working with the current England squad for some time now, being groomed to take over. Now he has been apointed, it can only be hoped that the sequence of events leading up to this choice have a happy ending, mirroring a similarly muddled selection procedure back in 1962. Then Jimmy Armfield, much like Scolari last week, turned down the England managership, the second choice was Sir Alf Ramsey, who went on to become the best ever.
