Monday 14 November 2016 12:55, UK
In his latest column, Niall Quinn says the FA has appointed “too many twinkly-eyed, rogueish” managers and believes the time is right for Gareth Southgate to lead England.
When England won the World Cup in 1966, Sir Alf Ramsey was asked how he would celebrate the achievement. "With a proper cup of tea," he said curtly.
If the FA does the sensible thing and appoints Gareth Southgate as the latest manager of the national team, it's not hard to imagine him quietly celebrating with a nice cup of tea, one with leaves and a tea strainer of course.
And perhaps a slice of pizza on a china plate. Gareth has that same quintessential Englishness which Sir Alf had.
If the FA was a person then Gareth would be the son they would hope to have; good in a blazer and hard to imagine twerking in a nightclub let alone puffing a shisha pipe on a lads' holiday.
In my time at Sunderland there were a lot of nights out that I reluctantly took part in for the sake of being sociable, and often on those long evenings we would meet Middlesbrough players from down the road.
They had a lot of larger than life characters, but I can't ever remember running into Gareth.
I played against him often and he was always a clean, determined player and something of a leader but never frightening. He was argumentative and he would point things out to referees with the certainty of a vicar gently chastising one of his parishioners.
He would argue with the opposition, but could dispatch most of us without ever using any of the choice language we needed when making our point.
He is decent and earnest and probably immune from any of the temptations that undercover reporters might offer him at secretly-filmed meetings.
I can't imagine the paparazzi having the stamina to hang around long enough to catch Gareth running a red light if he was in a hurry.
And if Jane Austen had written about football she might have invented a solid, decent man like Gareth Southgate as the quiet suitor. But football isn't like Pride and Prejudice.
The FA sometimes reminds me more of the 1970s sitcom 'Are You Being Served'. The set up was a big, outdated department store run by two fusty old men, the Grace Brothers. In those terms Gareth will be a manager who has worked on all floors at Grace Brothers.
He has a copybook with no blots on its pages. The most memorable elements of his career were that pizza ad and annoying Roy Keane. Who hasn't done one or the other of those things?
I say all this about Gareth not because I know that he is a man who has described himself as 'a bit boring', but because there is more to him than the bland image suggests. And I know that in football it took some strength of character for him to continue to just being himself.
And at this time Southgate and his character might just be exactly what the FA needs. They've run into the arms of too many twinkly-eyed rogueish types over the years, ending up disappointed with the results and embarrassed by some of the tabloid headlines.
Just because Southgate is available, is English and is quiet does not mean the FA should not make the commitment to him that they have made in the past to more flashy types.
However, if they feel they are just settling for decent old Southgate it won't work out.
What he can bring to the England job apart from his solid nature is a knowledge of the English game and what English players are comfortable with doing.
Starting with what we saw at the Euros last summer and going back almost to the days of black and white television, England have had managers who try to prove themselves by getting players to perform in alien systems and alien positions when they put on an international jersey.
A few of the managers who have come in have had massive reputations and picked English teams which might impress their peers but not get results. A few more have tried things that they themselves didn't seem to fully understand and which confused the players.
I think Southgate is comfortable with who he is and might surprise people by cutting his cloth to suit his means.
That starts in his dealings with the FA.
Many years ago when Ramsey took over the England job from Walter Winterbottom, the first thing he demanded was that the system of having a committee to select players be abandoned.
I'm sure that was a shock to the Grace Brothers. Gareth needs to be just as firm from the start.
Just because he has worked in the shop for sometime as a development officer and as U21 coach should not make the FA feel that he is any kind of soft touch.
Ramsey had to defy the FA to continue fielding Nobby Stiles during the 1966 World Cup, and it was only in the middle of that tournament when he finally settled on his 'wingless wonders' system with Stiles as the scary holding midfielder.
He knew his players and what they did on a weekly basis and when it came to big decision like bringing in Stiles or dropping Jimmy Greaves, Ramsey seemed to be immune to what the media said.
Gareth will be working in a world where the media is a hundred times louder and where social media has the potential to bring down any manager.
In the end when the media turned on Ramsey so too did the FA. The trend has continued.
It's been a year of strange outcomes in bigger events and if Gareth reaches the England managers office he will have come through a strange and unlikely route.
The FA has listened to men in Armani suits who wanted to be bigger stars than the players and they've listened to larger than life characters with a whiff of gunsmoke coming from them.
Who knows, a bit of quiet and some security may be just the thing.
England look comfortable at the top of Group F and it will be a big surprise if they don't stay there and go to Russia in 2018 weighed down by the silly mix of fatalism and unrealistic expectation that English teams have to carry.
Getting through those long tournaments is about feeling comfortable with each other and with what you are doing, it's about having a leader who doesn't bend with every puff of wind coming from the media. It's all about spirit. If you have a leader who has the humility to let the players propel themselves then you have won half the battle.
Any time I played against Gareth Southgate he was either captain of the other team or behaving like he was. He did what he needed to do. He's one of those quiet men who without making a fuss about it he's master of his own fate.
If his time has come, I know that's what he will remain.
