The next tryst in tawdry tale

14 April 2012

This is the scenario favoured by those in the media who have never warmed to the idea of the England team being coached by - say it through gritted teeth - a foreigner.

Add to this the prurience governing much of the coverage and you have a powerful argument for removing Eriksson from the tabloid firing line.

As one senior Football Association board member put it: "This couldn't come at a worst time. Parliament is in recess and the tabloids are hungry for gossip. It's embarrassing that it should fall, once again, to the FA to provide it."

Yet, while there is alarm at Soho Square over the latest headlines, there is little appetite for sacking Eriksson over what is seen as essentially a personal matter.

The issue exercising the minds of the FA's 12-man executive board is the denial released last week. But even if it is found that Eriksson lied about the allegations, the mood inside Soho Square is to stand by their man. Executives question what he has actually done wrong.

Above all else the financial implications are immense. Eriksson is under contact until 2008 and is believed to be paid £4million a year.

If dismissed he will certainly demand that his contract be paid in full - by an organisation so cashstrapped that it recently had to get rid of 20 per cent of its workforce. As an accountant, Palios will be able to fill in the noughts himself.

Premier League representatives on the FA board, such as League chairman Dave Richards and Southampton's Rupert Lowe, are thought to have opposed the renewal of Sven's contract when he was caught taking tea with Roman Abramovich. This could be a convenient way to bring the matter to a head.

However, dismissing Eriksson would be hugely disruptive to England's preparations for their World Cup campaign.

Early September brings two qualifiers - in Poland and Austria - that will go a long way towards deciding whether England make it to Germany in 2006. Eriksson is clearly at his best when plotting qualification for major tournaments and dispensing with his expertise now would, in football terms at least, be cavalier.

There is also the question of who to draft in as successor.

Trevor Brooking would probably take charge for the friendly against Ukraine on 18 August. But the only name being touted as a serious successor is Steve McClaren, currently under contract at Middlesbrough, a club who have invested £4.5m in backing his judgment this summer. They would certainly demand sizeable compensation to release him.

So, sacking Eriksson and hiring McClaren could cost the FA as much as £20m - money they simply do not have.

What if the FA sack Palios?

No one has seriously suggested this yet, but in many ways he should be the most vulnerable of the threesome. After all, while a chief executive has a duty of care to look after their staff, this doesn't usually extend to luring them between his (spread) sheets.

When he arrived a year ago, Palios was billed as the nononsense operat or who would end recent excesses.

Instead, he has helped heap more derision on an organisation that, in recent years, has had to cope with the fallout from having a coach, Glenn Hoddle, who thought handicapped people were suffering from bad karma and a chief executive, Adam Crozier, who was effectively elbowed out by the high rollers from the Premier League.

This is not an organisation that can afford much more bad publicity.

What if the FA sack Ms Alam?

Of all the dismissals this seems the most likely - and the one most littered with potential pitfalls. Anonymous briefings from Soho Square suggest she will be sacked when she returns from holiday this week. But by whom exactly? Surely not by Palios - who might normally be expected to take such a sensitive decision - so presumably it will be by David Davies, her immediate boss. Don't forget he's the man who has battened down the hatches after every other FA scandal in recent memory.

But sacking her could prove even more problematic than ditching Eriksson. Ms Alam - or any halfdecent lawyer she employs - can cogently argue that she is being made a scapegoat to save the skins of more culpable people higher up.

It may be true, as the FA now say, that she lied to them when initially asked about her affair with Eriksson. But she could say that she should never have been subjected to such intimidating questioning when, as the FA admit, Eriksson was not.

Even if the FA stumble on grounds to sack her, it should be wary of driving her straight from Sven's arms into those of his tabloid accusers.

Her story - like that of Eriksson's former girlfriend Nancy Dell'Olio - is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and together they represent a potentially explosive double act.

If Ms Alam sells her story - and, frankly, why shouldn't she? - expect to see all sorts of league tables drawn up comparing every aspect of Eriksson and Palios in bed.

Suddenly, sacking her doesn't seem such an easy option, does it?

What if no one gets the sack?

Well, it would make for an interesting office, anyway. Not the least fascinating aspect of Sunday's News of the World was their "exclusive" survey, carried several pages downwind from their FA scoop, which revealed that a whopping 83 per cent of readers admitted sleeping with a workmate. Put like that, the Soho Square shenanigans look less damaging and more reflective of current working practices.

But, such enlightenment seldom expresses itself in banner headlines.

The truth is that while Palios may have learned his lesson from this tawdry affair, Eriksson seems resilient to all forms of tabloid shaming. And with Nancy no longer in tow, he will surely relish the newfound opportunities freedom brings.