Here’s why England must appoint Gareth Southgate as permanent manager

Not many England managers get an extended audition, yet we can probably assume that Gareth Southgate is wishing his had been just one minute shorter. After 94 minutes of their friendly against Spain, England were clinging on, just, to an encouraging and feisty 2-1 win. After 95, they were wondering how they’d contrived to end the game with a draw.

Results in friendlies aren’t everything, particularly results that come about after the inevitable slew of substitutions has sucked the structure from the game. England’s late collapse was either amusing or concerning, depending on your perspective, but England’s all-round performance was energetic, focused, and actually quite enjoyable. Which is something rather precious for an England friendly. And draw or no draw, the upshot of Southgate’s four games in charge is that he absolutely has to get the job permanently.

This is not just because several English newspapers have indicated that it’s a done deal, though it’s always nice to have predictions preemptively buttressed in this manner. Nor is it entirely down to events on the field, since results have been adequate — two wins and a draw in qualifying, a draw in the prestige friendly — but not outstanding, and performances have been decent but mixed. While it would be grossly unfair to demand instant excellence from a man who, a few months ago, had no idea he would be in the job, the fact remains that a few more past Malta and a goal in Slovenia would amount to a much stronger case.

Nor is it down to the positive noises that his players have been making, though they can’t hurt. Jordan Henderson says he’s been “brilliant to work with,” while Wayne Rooney says he’s “in pole position.” Even Southgate, who earlier this year said he wasn’t up to the job, has been impressed by his own time in charge. “Until this run, under this spotlight, and in matches under intense pressure, you’re never sure how it is going to be,” he said after the draw with Spain. “I’ve proved that I can handle big occasions.”

It’s not even down to the fact that there isn’t really anybody else that makes sense. International football is no longer a game for the very best in management, however much money the FA have to slosh around, and in any case the FA’s desire to appoint an Englishman rather limits the field. Eddie Howe is inexperienced, Alan Pardew is far too Alan Pardew, and while Southgate’s coaching record doesn’t exactly scream ‘future World Cup winner’, there’s a lot to be said for a manager that the players like, who knows the youth teams, and who won’t steal a colleague’s dinner if it looks nicer than his.

No, Southgate must get the job because his appointment would follow the fundamental rule that while all England managers must of course be middle-aged, white, non-foreign-unless-absolutely-necessary-and-even-then-under-protest men, they must also be as far from the manager they replaced as possible. As Ian Ridley notes in his book about Kevin Keegan:

It is usually the case that those chief executives and chairmen in charge of hiring coaches and managers seek to appoint someone who is the very opposite of their predecessor; an antidote to the ills that prompted the sacking or abandonment.

Ridley traces this tendency through the managers of the 1990s. England went from Graham Taylor’s long-ball football to Terry Venables’ tactical sophistication, then from Venables’ murky financial dealings to Glenn Hoddle’s rigid moral code. Hoddle, widely regarded as dour within the dressing room, lost the gig after he published a confidence-betraying tell-all book and went on the radio to explain his unpalatable views on karmic predestination. Naturally the FA turned to Keegan, perhaps the most affable human being in the history of the game.

The Guardian then mapped this pattern on into the noughties: from Keegan the tactical naif to continental sophisticate Sven Goran-Eriksson; from Eriksson the libertine to tactical wonk Steve McClaren; from McClaren the woefully under-qualified to Fabio Capello, a heavily decorated titan of international management. Then Capello, distant, strict and suspiciously foreign, gave way to Roy Hodgson, a good solid FA man who’d served his time in the English game and could tell a proper off-color joke with the best of them.

In short, when it comes to their ills, the England team is international football’s most prominent hypochondriac, lurching from one miracle cure to another. That didn’t work — try this! This didn’t work — try that! To bring the pattern up to date, England moved from homeopathy to electroshock therapy: from the timid and stultifying Hodgson to the swaggering Sam Allardyce. Loud of mouth and big of ambition, Allardyce took the job promising to smash England’s psychological block and left it, just a couple of months later, having made a fool of himself in front of a provocative journalist and a hidden camera.

And that is why Southgate must be next. Not because he’s a decent coach (he probably is) or because he’s the man to lead England back to the top of the world (he’s probably not). Not because he knows the kids or he’s the only man available. But because he’s the calm company man to Allardyce’s belligerent outsider, and because it is literally impossible to imagine him drinking a pint of wine. We live in dark and dangerous times, and we must cling to what we can. Southgate’s appointment would prove that at least one of the fundamental rules of the universe still obtains.