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I would expect Benitez to return Newcastle at the first attempt, yes. But I think people forget just how much of a low ebb Newcastle were at when Hughton took over, good players or not. It was far from a formality that he'd get them back up at the first go, but he did it and in some style. And...

With the exception of Milner, Rooney and Heaton, everybody in the England squad at Euro 2016 was under the age of 30. I think they had the 2nd lowest average squad age of any of the 24 teams at the tournament. OK, the outcome wasn't successful, but that doesn't make the principle wrong of...

A pretty futile exercise really given that if you chose a notional squad for Euro 2016 only 6 months ago, nobody would have picked Marcus Rashford because at that point he hadn't even made his Manchester United debut. You could quite easily get 3-4 players who emerge in the next 2 years who...

Interesting you mention Allardyce being great at helping basket case clubs perform better and then making the comparison with Chris Hughton. There aren't too many bigger basket case clubs than Newcastle, but I imagine if you were to ask Newcastle fans which of those 2 did a better job for that...

The amazing job he did at West Ham where they finished 13th in his last season in charge when they dropped like a stone after Christmas and where Slaven Bilic significantly improved them in his first season in charge. I mean, he did a decent enough job at West Ham in terms of getting them back...

Not really sure you can compare the win ratio percentages meaningfully there in as much as with the exception of the matches played at Euro '96, all of the matches Terry Venables took charge of were friendlies and so the win percentage would have been less (I seem to recall a lot of draws) when...

If the FA suits etc actually allowed the England team to go and stay somewhere where they can actually go out and stretch their legs and actually mix with other people like Germany invariably seem to do when they are at a tournament rather than have everyone confined to their rooms in some...

I felt that when England were managed by Capello at the 2010 World Cup, he seemed to favour an Anglo-Saxon style "blood and thunder" approach that you are alluding to. And adopting that approach didn't stop England getting pulled all over the place by Germany in the last 16 match that year. I...

I actually think England have, on the whole, made quite good progress in recent years in terms of keeping possession. The problem it seemed at the Euros was that they didn't seem to quite know when to play the killer pass that would create a clear-cut chance and so this meant the tempo was too...

The England job makes a basket case of everyone eventually.

Yes, I would've preferred Hoddle myself for the following reasons: a) He set England up well tactically in his first spell and generally gets his teams to play decent passing football, b) I think he feels he has some unfinished business from his 1st spell in charge and he is now far older and...

The main problem was Hodgson was too easily swayed by who the press seemed to suggest should be playing. Invariably if Alan Shearer said a change should be made for the next game, Hodgson seemed to make that change. You can't manage the England team like that. Not least because the press are...

Oh come on, that is such a red herring. In this day and age, coaching staff can get access to all manner of TV and video reruns of matches that would have pointed out Iceland's strengths on set plays. England's failure to deal with those in the Iceland match had precisely nothing to do with...

I'm not sure that comparison works. He is used to getting the best out of limited groups of players, getting them to play above the sum of their parts. He isn't needing to fire fight with England at all as he has the opposite problem. Talented players who underachieve when the pressure is on as...

That will be the same Jurgen Klinsmann that is universally disliked by supporters of the USA's team. Not that I am particularly enamoured about Allardyce getting the job, but the love-in for Klinsmann is odd given that he has achieved very little of note in his managerial career. He seems to...

I must have missed the time Allardyce managed to get Bolton to 2 European club finals then.