WITH no league games around yet again, the attention was bound to be on the national team – still under manager Gareth Southgate.

In their last game against Hungary, whilst I don’t often watch 90 minutes on the TV, I did on this occasion and couldn’t believe to see England in a home game, not as usual at Wembley but Wolves, losing not 1-0 but 4-0.

Naturally the crowd were not happy, but I always hate it when a manager in particular gets booed off. Looking in to Gareth’s situation, he has got to be getting ready for the next World Cup, and he only has two games left before that.

He has to be experimenting with which players will be in the squad for the biggest tournament of all. Normally they would be friendlies, but not on this occasion – the two games left are in the Nations League.

At club level, managers have got their players day after day, have pre-season preparations and lots of occasions to be able to experiment with systems etcetera. The national team does not have that.

The difference people have to remember is that the England manager only sees his players a few days before the game. At club level, you have week after week where you can experiment with set-pieces and systems.

The crowd, of course, expect to win every game – but they should understand that Southgate has a good record previously at international level. It would appear he is lacking in goalscorers, and I think of the last few games – most of the goals have actually been from set-pieces.

It's a good job he has James Ward-Prowse in his squad.

I would hope that in the next game, which is not until the end of September, it gives him the opportunity to get things going in the right direction as his first game in our group will be against Iran.

They will no doubt be expected to win that one, but I’m not sure how anybody would know, in our area, how good a team Iran will have or even what their domestic fixtures are like.

Let’s hope there is an England crowd on his side, which is so important at that level.

  • There was what I would call an amazing article I read recently, coming from an ex-manager called Dave Bassett. I remember Dave very well from when he was working at places like Wimbledon, Nottingham Forest and Sheffield United in particular – back in the 80s and 90s.

He also briefly managed Saints on a caretaker basis in 2005.

The headline of the article made me blink. It was ‘I’ve got cancer – but I’m going to be fine, I’m not going anywhere’.

He had found out apparently last year when he had an annual medical, which incidentally all managers can have if they contact the League Managers Association.

He purposely kept it quiet but then it affected him personally, so the LMA specialist contacted him to say ‘don’t bottle it up, let people know’. This has helped him enormously, apparently.

His record at Sheffield United is still there, after 32 years. He is the last manager to lead a side to back-to-back promotions to the top-flight.

Ironically, my eldest son – Chris – in those days was working as coach with his pal, Paul Hart. They were managing Chesterfield and in that record year for Dave, they actually won against him 3-1 in Sheffield and 2-1 at home!

Full marks to Dave for coming forward, now listening to the specialist and he is living in a better way. Hoping of course that the illness will have been halted and, at 77, he will have many more years and can continue, as he has done for many years, going to various matches, scouting for younger managers.

Those were the days I well remember myself. If your team wasn’t playing, you would visit other games – and the best part of it is in the room before going out, with your cup of tea or coffee, meeting up with people like Dave. Happy days, let’s hope it can carry on.