It is irritating that every time a Premiership club is in the process of  looking for a new manager  - like West Ham and Charlton recently - the same phenomenon occurs. Both of these reasonably big clubs were linked with Sven Goran Eriksson, the former England boss. The reaction of the fans? 'Oh no, please no, nooooo!!!'.

This is due to the fact that the media have deconstructed Erikkson relentlessly, and a once very successful club coach has now become one of the most feared appointments in England. This is extremely unjustified.
Eriksson lost one major championship qualifier, and England lost at the quarter-final stage in three consecutive tournaments - two of which ended in penalty shoot-out defeats. On paper, this is not a terrible record, unless you believe the ridiculous hype surrounding each one of the England players.

Generic headlines such as 'This is the best squad England have ever had' look past the fact that this England team has never performed at the level the fans believe it should. We all remember the terrific 5-1 mauling of Germany in what was a brilliant match for England, but Germany were terrible and one performance does not make a team. This game turned out to be the highlight of Eriksson's tenure, and in many ways he became a victim of his own success. But international football does not provide many performances like this one.

Three consecutive quarter-final appearances is not a bad record when you consider the nature of international football - as Arsene Wenger recently said, it is actually the lowest level of competition around.

The English media and the pundits reporting on England's games were very quick to criticise, and indeed every match that England played at the World Cup was crucified. After beating Paraguay in the group opener, rather than suggest anything positive about the performance, the BBC's Garth Crooks (clearly relishing the opportunity) immediately asked Sven: 'What went wrong?'.

If people expect all the English problems to disappear now that the team has in Steve McClaren an English manager with no proven track record in club football, then they are in for a shock. The English press are very quick to criticise all England managers, but the fact of the matter is that people will be looking back on the Sven era in a totally different way after we lose in the second round of Euro 2008. Let's not forget that England were only a few penalties away from the Euro 2004 semis and the World Cup 2006 semis.