Graham Kelly: Eriksson seeks sun in football's changing climate

Sven Goran Eriksson and Terry Venables may be entitled to reflect today on the quintessential capriciousness of English football. They have received handsome remuneration – though in Venables' case not until long after he left the England job – and been expected to perform miracles with one hand tied behind their backs.

Originally pencilled in for today was the managers' round table meeting which the Football Association, hastily announced in the wake of the farcical 3-1 defeat last month by Australia, in which the "first" team only played for 45 minutes and not very well at that. However, the get-together has had to be postponed indefinitely because of tomorrow's FA Cup sixth-round replay between Chelsea and Arsenal at Stamford Bridge, a commitment which also delays the arrival of players at the England camp and further hampers Eriksson's preparations for the European Championship qualifiers against Liechtenstein and Turkey.

It is amazing how quickly the climate can change in the volatile world of football. The previous international date in November had been forsaken by the FA in favour of a different type of get-together. This was the occasion of the sojourn at the health farm and the Downing Street reception, or fashion parade. Now every penny is being watched at Soho Square and if partners want to accompany the England team in La Manga at the end of the season they'll jolly well have to pay for themselves. (Not that all players find their presence entirely helpful).

The FA council member Ken Bates, the Chelsea chairman and a frequent and tenacious critic of the FA's costs, attacked its international relations programme last week for spending money on five-star hotel "jollies" that could, in his opinion, have been better directed towards the grass-roots of the game, but the joint-acting chief executive, David Davies, pointed out that the Association could not afford to become "Little Englanders".

Narrowness of vision is precisely the attitude that is exhibited by the lack of support given to Eriksson and his unwillingness to complain. What will he be doing on 30 April when Scotland, Germany, France and Spain are playing football? England have given up another international date then.

Probably the crux of the last Ferguson/Eriksson controversy was not any cunning destabilising ploy on the part of Sir Alex (his barbs are far more likely to be directed at a rival club), but, rather, his casually expressed opinion that the England head coach does not make enough waves. That hardly came into the category of requiring an FA-induced apology. I do not recall Venables, the England coach, having many problems with club managers, who, after all, had been largely responsible for landing him the position, as he prepared solidly but unspectacularly with a series of friendly matches before the 1996 European Championship finals.

Eriksson will have reached a moment of some significance after these two matches. He has immense pride in being coach of England and we are assured that he is a man of great resilience. He took the team from the nadir of Kevin Keegan's Wembley walkout via a refulgent Munich night to a profitable if ultimately uninspired World Cup, and withstood the discomfort of Ms Jonsson's disclosures along the way. But now we are searching for his game plan, for a pattern that will carry England through to another place in the sun, in Portugal next year.

The Premier League chairmen, when they made their play for power which resulted in the resignation of Eriksson's ally, the former chief executive Adam Crozier, last year, claimed they were basing their system on that in operation in Germany: a professional game board. This link to Germany gave the propaganda a cloak of respectability.

I would remind them that Rick Parry and I visited the Bundesliga headquarters when planning the FA Premier League over a decade ago and returned with the blue-print for an 18-team top division, strict financial criteria for membership and a winter break. It went straight in the shredder, for these were ideals which did not match the bloated ambitions of the time.

But if the money men have any new ideas to further the cause of the England team, it would be great to see whether they make it on to the agenda for the crisis meeting – if and when a date can be found for it.

Moreover, Germany is not the only European nation to properly harness the talents of ex-players such as Franz Beckenbauer and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in high administrative roles while, in England, former playing heroes such as Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton were forced to pursue their living outside the game when it could have utilised their experience.

grahamkelly@btinternet.com