Will Southgate stay or go? If we lose I guess he’ll go, he’s already said that’s the likely outcome. If we win there’s a strong case for him staying on for WC2026. So he either goes out on a high or risks another WC. What do you think?
I think he'll go regardless of the result on Sunday, he sounds ground down by the negativity and I suspect he fancies another crack at club football.
If it was up to the squad, they would want him to stay. With hindsight (yea, but I knew this all along!!), he has played horses for courses. A team wants to park the bus? Fine, we remain patient. A team wants to play football, yea, we can do a bit of that ourselves. Come the world cup, and even qualifying, it will only be the latter stages that anything like a game of football, as opposed to attack versus defence, takes place. Everyone in the squad knows for every game what their role is. And anybody who can hoik Kane and Foden to be replaced by the match winners is either very lucky, nah, or very astute, more like it. As said above - who replaces him?
I think he'll leave whatever the result on Sunday... Possibilities of a career change to modelling clobber for the Marshall Ward catalogue.
Would he not fancy some sort of upstairs technical role at the FA? That seems a lot more in his wheelhouse than six months of grief at the likes of Bournemouth or Sunderland.
If we play well and win that would wipe out a lot of the negativity, bad press, etc he's had. The FA'll be telling him it's only 2 years, the squad is yours, it's confident and young. Could be our best chance for a while to do well or even win it. Oh, and there's a good few million quid in it for you... It could be hard to resist. Fwiw I think he'll go.
I can't see how he'd stay either way, and at this stage I'd agree with his decision. There's a very obvious pattern now; even if we win it he'll be treated as the enemy again at some point before or during the next tournament. He can't avoid that and I think it'd be very difficult to improve upon what he's done so far. The stick he gets goes beyond criticism and into abuse, people talk like they hate him on a personal level. To me the obvious replacement to carry on Southgate's good work and hopefully have a chance at improving further upon it is Graham Potter. But I think he'd have the same image Southgate does and would before long be in the same position. I think there's a wider issue about English fans' relationship with the modern game and managers in particular.
It's worth remembering that Bobby Robson was pilloried and panned throughout the late 1980s. And now he's a national treasure and one of England's greatest managers. It's always been the way.
Booby Robson was the title the newspapers gave him when he was England manager. The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
I'd much rather see what someone more willing to take a risk could do with the squad for better or worse.
