Stay cool - for Ice Man Eriksson is no Muppet

14 April 2012

Should England lose to Poland tonight, the anti-Eriksson lobby will certainly increase in volume. All kinds of reasons will be expounded why we should change the England coach, from being too soft on the players to being over-amorous with the staff.

Put them to the man himself and he looks genuinely mystified. Look for an animated response and the best you'll get is "don't panic".

Perhaps we should heed his words, though, because the truth is our goose, far from being cooked, is hardly even plucked yet.

Is it panic or is it our poor concentration levels? Why is the man who was seen as the English football messiah three years ago, now regarded in some quarters as a muppet? Some say he can't even be seen as a muppet, because they were entertaining. This Swede is boring and should go.

Rubbish. The coach they used to call the Ice Man may not be the liveliest act but if you want animation, Eriksson's successor should be Donald Duck.

Cast your mind back a couple of years and remember what was being said about the man then. He is so cool, it was said, he has no favourites within the team, he is a master tactician, a calculating genius. What the hell happened?

Not a lot, is the answer. The truth is that we were never as good as we thought we were. Steven Gerrard was refreshingly honest when he said the other day that the quarter-finals of major competitions are about where we are.

We have good players, some very good players, but we have to improve appreciably to move on. Let us hope Eriksson will oversee that improvement. We have made an inauspicious start, but that's all it is.

Eriksson is confident we will qualify for the finals in Germany in two years and we should believe him.

Someone who is being paid £4million a year must know what he is doing so why don't we let him get on with it and get off his case even if we are beaten in Katowice tonight?

If, when he was first interviewed for the job, he could have guaranteed qualification for the World Cup, trouncing Germany and gaining sweet revenge over Argentina before reaching the quarter-finals; if he could have further assured us we would qualify for Euro 2004 and reach the quarter-finals again, would the FA not have taken that?

Let's all keep cool and let him do the job for which he is paid too much. Then, if it still goes belly-up, I suspect Eriksson will have no quarrel with what comes next.

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