Venables has been elevated to this ridiculous platform where he's almost untouchable in the eyes of the (non-Saints) public, because we did okay in Euro 96. He kept picking Darren Anderton over Tiss though, which was utterly, utterly absurd, and he certainly had his favourites that were untouchable. If he'd had the balls, not even to base the team around Tiss, but at the very least to have him on the bench to replace his other favourite, Sheringham, then history could have been very different.
Back then when I was a young(er) idiot (as opposed to being an old idiot now) I phoned one of the chat radio stations, when Venables was a guest. I asked him, straight out, "why do you hate Le Tissier". He gave me some waffle about how he didn't hate him, he really liked him, thought he was very talented, but couldn't see a role for him in his England set-up.
If a manager can't see a role for that level of talent in his set-up, frankly he shouldn't be a manager.