Dubai: Former England midfielder Peter Reid has backed Three Lions interim coach Gareth Southgate to take the job permanently.
Southgate was put in temporary charge last month after Sam Allardyce was sacked after just one game [a 1-0 win away to Slovakia] for telling undercover reporters posing as Asian businessmen how to circumvent strict rules on third party player ownership.
Allardyce had taken over from Roy Hodgson just 67 days earlier after England were knocked-out of the Euros with an embarrassing 2-1 Last 16 defeat to minnows Iceland.
Southgate, 46, a former defender with Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Middlesbrough and England, who has previously managed Middlesbrough and the England Under-21 side, won his first game in charge 2-0 at home to Malta on Saturday in World Cup qualifiers and now faces Slovenia on Tuesday.
“If Gareth handles it and the lads do well then why not give it to him?” said Reid at ‘An Audience with Peter Reid and Jan Molby’ at McGettigan’s in Jumeirah Lake Towers on Saturday.
“Ultimately, if you win football matches you get the job,” added the 60-year-old, who played 13 games for England between 1985 and 1988 while at Everton, where he won two league titles, the FA Cup and a European Cup Winners’ Cup.
“The biggest test for him will be against Scotland [at Wembley on November 11] however. That will be a massive game for them.
“Otherwise they might go for [Arsenal manager] Arsene Wenger in the summer and if not Wenger I’d go for Eddie Howe [of Bournemouth]. He might be young but give it to him, we’ve had experienced coaches who haven’t got it right so why not?”
Of the Allardyce situation, Reid, who started his career as an apprentice alongside Big Sam at Bolton in the early seventies, added: “I’ve spoken to Sam and he’s devastated. I think he was really looking forward to it [managing England].
“I think it’s very harsh what happened to him, he made a mistake and what he said was out of order, but I don’t think it was sackable.”
Asked what England lacked, Reid said: “The basics. You know you’re not going to play well every game so dig it out, grind it out. We are soft mentally. I could have played against Iceland, it’s embarrassing.
“We got one ball over the top and won a penalty, whereas France were 2-0 up against them inside 15 minutes [eventually beating them 5-2 in the quarter-final].”
Former Liverpool midfielder Jan Molby, who played 33 games for Denmark between 1982 and 1990 had his own interesting theory.
“The best example of what went wrong is those five Spurs [Tottenham Hotspur] players; Danny Rose, Kyle Walker, Eric Dier, Delle Ali and Harry Kane.
“All of sudden they had a great season and Spurs was the go-to club for England. But at Spurs they have good partnerships, Dier alongside Moussa Dembele, Dembele is intelligent and makes Dier a better player.
“Also Kane and Alli are real British players who have power and energy. But if they run into each other they can’t play. That’s where you have Erik Lamela and Christian Eriksen at Spurs, who are clever. If Kane runs into their space Eriksen drops away and Lamella drops left. So it works.
“Put those five greats into the England set-up and you have Raheem Sterling who runs into Alli. That’s what they miss.”
