WELL, Sven is finally going and to be honest I am not exactly devastated to see the back of him. True, his competitive record is good but that is only part of the story of being the England manager. Fans want to see passion, commitment, determination and

WELL, Sven is finally going and to be honest I am not exactly devastated to see the back of him.

True, his competitive record is good but that is only part of the story of being the England manager.

Fans want to see passion, commitment, determination and tactical brains from the boss of the national team and we saw none of that from Eriksson.

And to top it all, we had Eriksson caught by a tabloid sucker punch which, may not have been an example of the best-timed and most original or incisive piece of journalism, but it certainly exposed Eriksson's flaws.

If the man is going to sit down in a hotel room in Dubai and talk to a complete stranger about money, contracts and players' attitudes, then he doesn't deserve the job and he certainly doesn't deserve multi-million pound pay-offs.

Which brings us to the question of his replacement. Many people say that we should now have an English manager.

I would agree with that ..... if there were any English managers capable of taking on the job.

Allardyce? Curbishley? Pearce? McClaren? They are all unsuitable if you ask me. Too inexperienced and a solitary League Cup win between them.

If the FA want to get the 'best man of the job' and I am sure they do, there is only one man that fits the bill; Jose Mourinho.

I accept that he may not want the job. I also accept that 'The Special One' is extremely arrogant, hard-nosed and often annoying. However, like it or not, that is exactly what a successful manager should be and that is why Eriksson never won anything.

Mourinho is a superb manager and is in charge of the best side in England. He doesn't shy away from making decisions when he needs to - can you imagine him sat on his backside doing nothing if his side are trailing a 10-man Brazil side in the World Cup quarter-final?

My advice to the FA is hire him, on a part-time basis if you have to, but hire him.

IT'S not often that I agree with Gary Neville but this week, I completely share his bemusement following the fuss made by his goal celebration against Liverpool at the weekend.

In his column in The Times, Neville defended his exuberant celebration saying "What are you meant to do? Smile sweetly and jog back to the halfway line?"

He added: "Increasingly, people seem to want their footballers to be whiter than white and there are calls for sanctions over every little incident.

"Do they want a game of robots?"

No Gary, we don't. And I don't want to see the game of football ruined by politically-correct, cotton wool suit-wearing, easily-offended busy bodies either.

Neville's celebrations weren't offensive and they didn't incite crowd trouble. If you can't jump up and down, pull stupid faces and fumble about with your shirt when your team have just scored a last-minute winner at the Stretford End against Liverpool, then I see no point in carrying on with the sport.