TACTICS ARE BACK, BABY
An impossible job? Graham Taylor crystallised the England management experience when he raged and flailed in a Rotterdam dugout for our amusement – but in truth, ever since Walter Winterbottom changed desks at FA HQ in 1946, The England Job has been a fraught, contradictory puzzle. We’ve seen the best managerial minds of many generations destroyed by its complexities, the hefty historical burdens on and off the pitch burrowing their way into the psyches of even the most forensic football men. Fabio Capello, a legendary coach whose total lack of PR smarts lit a fire that burned his England reign to the ground, once pointed to the side of his head to outline the impassible obstacle to success – he was talking about his players (of course he was), but it felt like a Freudian slip.
