Is there a football manager with a more inflated reputation than Terry Venables. For over 20 years he has beed feted by the London based media as if he was the best football coach on the planet, with just the right combination of the cheeky cockney chappie with the coaching skills of Marcello Lippi. I just cannot believe the hype he has received this week. Eriksson is castigated and dismissed as a failure because he 'only' got us to the quarter final of two World Cups and a European Championship... El Tel is the Messiah who got us to the semi-final of the European Championship with every game played at Wembley! His achievements in the last 20 years appear to have been to help to avoid relegation with Middlesboro with a Chairman with more money than sense (sufficient qualification incidentally to enable his new boss to get the main job), winning an FA Cup Final with Tottenham (on that basis John Sillett or Bobby Gould could claim the job) and contributing towards getting Leeds United relegated... oh, and that Euro 96 semi-final. Not to mention, of course, conducting a business career which would make Del Boy Trotter look like a pillar of the community.
Anyway... this is no major prediction... but I suspect the FA will be writing out the P45's for El Tel and his boss sometime in the next 18 months... and McClaren will carry the can whilst Tel Boy will go with his media image untarnished.
