Redknapp's success not enough to win over the FA

London: Poor old Harry Redknapp: in the end, he just wasn't ordinary enough for the Football Association and England.

With Sunday's 2-0 defeat of Blackburn Rovers, Redknapp's Tottenham Hotspur team moved to within four points of third place with a game in hand on Arsenal. They were fourth, tied with Newcastle, a single point separating them from Chelsea in sixth place. Champions League qualification, guaranteed or via the preliminary rounds from fourth, is likely to go to the final game of the season.

In those circumstances, an approach from the FA now would be as welcome as an outbreak of food poisoning was before the final game of the 2005-2006 season.

Having set out, ludicrously in the circumstances, to avoid disrupting Tottenham's season, how could the FA make an approach until the Premier League campaign was over?

So, step forward Roy Hodgson. Tenth place, going nowhere, neither up nor down with West Bromwich Albion. Played 52, won 20, lost 20, drawn 12. You can't sit more squarely on a fence than that. Hodgson is the man the FA can go to in their speciously self-imposed time frame without startling the horses. He is a good coach, a fair candidate, but that is no way to get the job.

That is why the FA were busy on Sunday night justifying this decision. There is an English manager who has produced by popular consent the most attractive team in the Premier League, an FA Cup winner in 2008, League Cup finalist in 2009, Champions League qualifier in 2010, Champions League quarter-finalist in 2011, top four again in 2012, and he has been overlooked. So here is the explanation: Hodgson will be more useful around the new complex at Burton-on-Trent, overseeing development.

Saving face

Forget that there is a European Championship to win in June; pay no mind to the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. Hodgson has his coaching pedigree. They love him at Uefa. He files a nice report, writes a lovely technical account. He is the English Andy Roxburgh. And, ensconced neatly in the mediocrity of mid-table, he is approachable in a way that ticks the boxes of men with little imagination. It was all there in the statement of FA chairman David Bernstein.

"Roy is the only manager we have approached, and we remain on course to make an appointment within the timescale we set out," he said.

In other words, having imposed a foolish and unnecessary schedule — let Stuart Pearce run England and parachute the manager in at the last minute — the FA's priority was to make that work and save face. Hang getting the best English manager, because one look at the league table says it's Redknapp.

Throughout this crisis — and never forget this all begins with the clumsiness of losing Fabio Capello — the four-man FA committee have behaved like Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog weather prognosticator, seeing shadows as they emerge from their hidey-holes, letting week after week pass without an England manager.

The reality is, the FA were too weak from the start. The approach to Tottenham for Redknapp should have been made the same month that Capello quit as England manager: February.

Just right

The FA missed the break. The uncertainty around Redknapp as good as scuttled Tottenham's form, so any hope that their Premier League business would be concluded with games to spare evaporated. If the FA had been bolder, any manager could have been on their radar. Instead, they needed one whose season was as good as dead. Hodgson, not too hot, not too cold, was just right.

By the admission of Alex Horne, the FA general secretary, as his rivals prepare and pore over detail, England's new manager will now be presented with a schedule and as good as told to like it or lump it. "We know exactly what we're doing between now and our first game against France and we just need to slot a manager in, giving that individual enough time to get used to the set-up," he said earlier this month. Yet whose set-up is that? Not Hodgson's.

Everything, from opposition scouting reports to the pre-tournament trip to Auschwitz, is out of his hands. Players are getting injured, others are reaching finals that could impact on training schedules, and none of it is his call.

The FA would never have treated a foreign manager this way but, because the new appointment is an Englishman, they feel empowered to order him around like a dogsbody. Here's the plan, take it or leave it. Now pick your squad, pick your team, and leave the thinking to us, the brains of the operation. Except few events around England in the days before Capello's departure, or subsequently, smack of great insight. If Hodgson was the man for the job now, he was the man in February.

Not a popular choice

The fact is: he wasn't. Redknapp was the best appointment back then, but the FA's mishandling of the appointment has ensured he cannot be now.

Hodgson is not the people's choice, nor the player's choice and, to some extent, may be walking into a similar situation to the one he found at Liverpool — particularly if Redknapp's Tottenham now enjoy a late resurgence in the league.

Still, there should at least be a saving for the committee men: for if the reason Hodgson has got the job is his development skills, where does that leave all those other managers of elite development at the FA. What will they do now? Maybe they could give Roy a broom and he could sweep as he goes.