Steve Coppell and the England job – when your face doesn’t fit.

By Garry Cook

In the 1990/91 season Crystal Palace finished third in the league, behind champions Arsenal and runners-up Liverpool.

Do you find this inspiring? Palace had only won promotion to England’s top flight two season’s previously.

They had taken the league by storm – and Steve Coppell was the man inspiring them.

He built a super-fast young side, spearheaded by Ian Wright, which caught the rest of the football establishment off-side. I remember thinking at the time, just months after Graham Taylor succeeded Bobby Robson as manager of England, that Steve Coppell should be the next England manager. What a good idea.

Truly inspirational

That was 15 years ago. Football has changed a lot since then. Many of Steve Coppell’s contemporaries of that time have long since retired. But he is still around. And he is still pretty good.

Now with Reading, he has achieved much the same with his current club as he did with Palace a decade-and-a-half ago.

The days of winning promotion and then hitting the top three in the Premiership are long gone in British football, but Coppell’s achievements in keeping John Madejski’s club in decent Premiership fettle, not to mention last season’s record-breaking points haul in the Championship, should not be undervalued. Inspired enough yet?

He clearly knows his football, probably more so now than he did twenty-two years ago when he first began his managerial career.

So the question is: An Englishman, fantastic experience as a boss, motivational ability to get the best out of his squad, uncontroversial and (seemingly) no skeletons in the closet – why was Steve Coppell not considered for the England job?

If you don’t find Steve Coppell inspirational, perhaps that’s the problem.

I agree that he is not the most inspiring choice – but is that the point. The point is: he can do the job and he is infinitely better than those who were considered as Sven Goran Eriksson’s replacement.

Steve McClaren got it. Awful season with Middlesbrough rescued by UEFA Cup run.

Sam Allardyce was in the running. Kept Bolton in the Premiership. One promotion via play-offs (inherited a team that was already Championship-winning standard).

Stuart Pearce was being touted. Manchester City boss had less than 12 months experience. Who in their right mind would tout him? Even Pearce agrees.

In my opinion, it all comes down to your face fitting. Coppell’s face clearly does not fit with the media. The British press have never heralded Coppell and the FA, however much they deny it, will not consider someone who does not have a high enough media profile.

So that means that inexperienced guys like McClaren and Pearce are considered for the role of England manager.

What problems would Coppell bring to England?

He does not come across as a talismanic, charismatic speaker and leader. But so what? He can clearly handle players. He has them playing for him, he inspires them somehow.

His experience would surely mean that he was unlikely to f*** it up, produce weird formations when the pressure is gets too much or pick inexperienced 16-year-olds for World Cup squads.

No, people, Steve Coppell would do a good job, not create inappropriate headlines and get the best out of the players he has at his disposal. And how long is it since we had an England boss who could do that?

I don’t believe it - Coppell’s history.

Coppell managed Palace for nine years (1984-1993, winning the Zenith Data Systems Cup, reaching the FA Cup Final) and returned to the club for eight months (1995-96), then again for a season (1997-98, winning promotion via the play-offs). Then he made a fourth appearance as manager over 18 months from 1999-2000.

His many unhappy returns to Selhurst Park never quite equaled his glory-filled first 442-game stint. In fact, sandwiched in between his four spells at the club was a bizarre six game run at Manchester City which was most memorable for the broken-man look Coppell displayed when he quit.

But the former England striker dusted himself down and gradually rebuilt his reputation as Brentford (54 games) Brighton (49 games) and eventually Reading, where he remains today having guided the club into the Premiership for the first time in their history.