Eriksson's future undermined by a question of honour

When Sven Goran Eriksson and David Davies, the Football Association's joint acting chief executive, sit down next month with leading club managers, including Sir Alex Ferguson, to discuss the conflict over releasing players for international duty, the mood will hardly be helped by the latter's revelations that he believes there was a verbal agreement for Eriksson to succeed him at Old Trafford after the World Cup finals last summer.

Nor will Davies find any encouragement ahead of the negotiations in Ferguson's view, also published yesterday, on the vexacious matter of international friendly matches: "David Davies says we have a duty to other countries. Bollocks! It's about making money." He goes on to ask if ICI would be happy about their most important employees going off to work for somebody else "at the busiest time of year".

The FA continue to deny knowing anything about an approach by United to Eriksson, allegedly made early last year when he was barely 12 months into a five-year contract. But why would they know? Any approach would initially have been made through intermediaries, so that the Swede could also deny participating. More significant was the carefully worded statement from United's chief executive, Peter Kenyon, which said: "We never concluded a deal with Sven". That is what the journalists in All The President's Men who eventually brought down Richard Nixon liked to call "a non-denial denial".

Apart from anything else, United would have been negligent not to have sounded out England's head coach, whose stock at the time was rather higher than it is now. A newspaper that has been reporting an agreement between the parties as fact for the past year yesterday went so far as to claim that Eriksson "initialled a pre-contract agreement".

All this should at least remind the FA of two occasions on which Eriksson was less than honourable on the matter of changing jobs. In May 1984, he broke a verbal agreement to stay with Benfica by moving to Roma, who had just lost the European Cup final to Liverpool. Forgiven by Benfica, he eventually returned there, before agreeing to join Blackburn Rovers, then pulling out to go to Lazio. "The one black mark on my CV," he has admitted, adding: "It won't happen again." His current employers can only hope so.

Next month's talks with the clubs will follow a familiar pattern. Eriksson will point to his costly gesture in using players for no more than 45 minutes of the recent friendly against Australia and stress the importance of the two Euro 2004 qualifying matches, away to Liechtenstein on 29 March and at home to Turkey on 2 April.

The clubs are likely to respond that it is a bad period for them, with Manchester United meeting Liverpool on Saturday morning, three days after the Turkey game, followed by Champions' League quarter-finals and Uefa Cup semi-finals in which United, Arsenal and Liverpool all hope to be involved. Then comes FA Cup semi-final weekend and Arsenal's potential title-decider against United at Highbury.

Some leading Premiership figures are already making a fuss about England's game in South Africa on 22 May – although it is almost a fortnight after the League season ends – and David Platt's plans to take an Under-21 squad to Sardinia at the same time. A more legitimate grievance is that the final international of the campaign, at home to Slovakia on 11 June, is less than four weeks before clubs report back.

United's England defender Gary Neville has called the Slovakia date "ridiculously late". It is an immovable feast, but his club manager can be relied upon to emphasise the point at next month's meeting.

Yesterday's controversial magazine interview also contained the revelation that Ferguson would "probably have done exactly the same" as United's Eric Cantona in leaping into the crowd to attack a spectator who was abusing him on that infamous night at Crystal Palace eight years ago. Ferguson could not resist another little dig either at Arsenal's polyglot manager, Arsène Wenger, which ran: "They say he's an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages! I've got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages." Touché.