This is the moment for the Football Association to be proactive. John McDermott, the technical director, cannot stray into complacency and ignore the evidence from England’s shambolic defeat by Greece. This was more than a one-off night. Some performances are too disastrous to file away as one of those things and, after seeing Lee Carsley’s attempt to mark himself out as a tactical innovator backfire so spectacularly, the FA must be prepared to acknowledge some cold, hard truths in its quest to find England’s next permanent head coach.
Forget about a smooth transition of power. Those lofty aims of promoting from within, of drilling into the St George’s Park pipeline, are looking impossible to sustain. This was no isolated blip. This was an inexperienced manager tying himself in knots – first when Carsley named a starting XI so bold it almost resembled a parody of the internet team, then when he struggled through a bizarre press conference and said he would “hopefully” be going back to the under-21s when his interim stint ends next month – and it is up to McDermott to respond accordingly.
