October 21 - Shepherd You Old Spoil-Sport

AS regular readers will know, this time seven years ago, much like today, England were in a right old state.

Kevin Keegan had resigned as manager in a toilet in Wembley after his team were beaten by Germany two weeks earlier, and England were a rudderless ship.

There was the same paucity of top English candidates for the job then as there is now the FA were pretty stumped as to what to do.

It was on this day in 2000 that one-time FA chief exec and current postman Adam Crozier decided that a 67-year-old man who could never remember his player’s names was the guy to buck England’s ideas up.

Sir Bobby Robson had just presided over a 1-0 home loss to Everton with his Newcastle team when he was summoned to a meeting with the portly Magpies chairman Freddy Shepherd.

Crozier had made an official approach to Newcastle to employ Robson as England boss for seven matches while a long-term solution was found.

It seemed like the perfect plan. In the absence of any leading and obvious candidates, there was no better choice for a temporary boss than Robson. He was a world-renowned coach who had already managed England to a world cup semi-final. At the time he was impressively reviving Newcastle’s flagging fortunes and he was popular with the players, media and the fans. And as a fierce patriot he would have jumped at the chance to help out his country.

Sadly, Crozier would pre-empt his future Royal Mail employees by failing to deliver. It was all going so well until Shepherd threw his not inconsiderable weight firmly against the plan.

Sir Bobby recounts the conversation with his chairman after being told the FA wanted him: “I said ‘oh, I’d quite like that’ and he said ‘yes, but we’re not letting you go. We don’t want you to do two jobs.’ I was disappointed, and I said I thought I could handle it, but I didn’t argue with him.”

In the end England put Peter Taylor in charge for a match with Italy, before appointing Sven soon after.

Free from his shackles after Shepherd sacked him, here is a team Robson was able to manage that could probably beat the current England no-hopers.

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