My advice to Gareth Southgate

This is a difficult issue to raise on the eve of a major football tournament, but as a progressive individual I am deeply disturbed by the England manager Gareth Southgate’s reverence for Sir Winston Churchill. Twice in the past this man who holds English football’s most important position has cited his apparent hero. Once, commenting on his predecessor Sven-Goran Eriksson’s performance at halftime in the 2002 World Cup quarter final against Brazil, he said: ‘We needed Churchill. We got Iain Duncan Smith.’ And then a few years later when asked if the England team should have a foreign manager, he said: ‘With England I want an Englishman who’s going to say: “Remember Churchill.”’

Never mind the rank xenophobia of that notion — do we really want someone in such a prominent position who reveres a racist and a bigot? I mention this now because digging up comments made long ago by current sportsmen in order to destroy their careers seems very much the rage at the moment. Perhaps we can get Gareth cancelled, hopefully before he has time to make his usual dog’s breakfast of managing the opening game against Croatia, by leaving Jack Grealish on the bench and instructing his side to play with all the verve and guile of a block of Davidstow cheddar cheese.

Southgate’s instalment as manager of the national side would be a mystery to anyone who was not familiar with the workings of the Football Association. He had won nothing whatsoever as a club manager — indeed his only experience as a club manager was to skilfully shepherd a perfectly decent Middlesbrough side from the Premier League down into the Championship. He was chosen, one assumes, because he seems a pleasant, polite man and isn’t a crook. Under his tutelage the current England side have regressed markedly in the past two years.