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In assessing the future of all UK teams we shall start with England.
The Premiership is the most watched league in the world, attracts the most investment and English clubs spend the most money on players. However, England have struggled (and at the time of writing have not yet) to qualify from their Euro 2008 qualifying group involving clubs such as Croatia (ranked 10th)and Russia (ranked 16th). Despite these quite good rankings, with the league they are playing in, England should be brushing these teams aside. But for some reason they are failing to crush teams and this is mainly because of a catalogue of failures on the part of the F.A.

The main error was appointing Steve McClaren. Despite myself being a supporter of his cause in the first place I have been proved wrong. He was far too inexperienced for the job of managing some of the most high profile players in the world and, despite taking Middlesbrough to the Carling Cup and UEFA Cup finals, he did not have the knowledge to deal with the huge profile and responsibility of being England manager. I have no doubt that he is a good coach but as an international manager is is a little bit too green. It is a shame as I believe that he has talent, but this job came a bit too soon for him. His inexperience came to light when playing Croatia away and he decided to play an untried 3-5-2 formation against a team ranked in a similar position. The decision was brave but a little foolish bearing in mind the quality of the opposition and the fact that we were playing away from home. The F.A.'s failure to appoint an established manager, along the lines of Guus Hiddink or Luis Felipe Scolari, was a terrible oversight and could end up costing them millions.
In the long term, the F.A. have to invest more in grass roots football and getting young English boys playing football and able to compete with other nations, such as Brazil whose children practically live for football.
They shall also have to do something about the influx of foreign players in the Premiership. There are far too many foreign players playing in the Premiership and whilst it is true that it is good for young players to learn skills from talented continental players this cannot be done at the expense of developing players for England. In order for England's football team to be able to advance past the quarter-finals of a major tournament and win the trophy they have craved for so long they need to get a manager in with proper international experience, invest

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