It may be unfair but Gareth Southgate will forever remain a figure of failure among England supporters In France, Laurent Blanc, a World Cup winner, has brought purpose back to the undignified shambles of a team he inherited, his authority writ large in the record books. With the English team it is somewhat different. Our problem is that our shared memories are almost entirely negative. The two contenders for the vacant role as the FA's technical director - a position that has not been filled since Howard Wilkinson resigned in 2002 - are Southgate and Steve McClaren. One associated with defeat in a European Championship semi-final, the other with a failure to qualify for the tournament. Laurent Blanc they are not. As it happens, Southgate is a man of energy and intelligence, who, in person, enthuses all those with whom he comes into contact. He is rightly favourite for the job. But, to the wider public, he remains a figure of failure. And that image -superficial it may be - is almost impossible to shake off. Since success breeds success, the most intractable problem in sport is how to find it in the first place. The only opportunity the FA had to develop a continuity of success came in an era when players were regarded by many in the corridors of power as a rather unfortunate adjunct of the game. Of those who won the World Cup in 1966, none was embraced by the establishment; indeed one - Jack Charlton - went on, as manager of the Republic of Ireland, to channel his dismissive attitude to English football authority by plotting the national team's downfall at every turn. Since then attempts to kick-start a revolution by expensively buying in winning heritage - latterly in the shape of Fabio Capello - have sunk. And it might be argued that, in the employment of Southgate and Stuart Pearce, two members of the last England team to go close to glory, the FA is these days embracing the idea of continuity as well as it possibly can. What more - beyond offering Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta British citizenship - can they do? Apart from pointing out that, as Jose Mourinho has long since proven, there is a lot more to being successful as a coach than merely chucking your playing medals on the table. Yet the feeling still remains that, willing though they are, Southgate, Pearce and the equally undecorated Trevor Brooking, the FA's most highly placed former players, lack the crucial component that enables them to drive the changes that will make the difference. When Sammer took over Germany's technical policy after the relative disappointments of the noughties, he did so from the unimpeachable position of a man who won the European title in the very year Southgate missed that spot-kick. The easy sneer to make of Southgate and his FA colleagues, as was voiced in that junior league committee room, is that they merely perpetuate in power the same ineffectiveness they demonstrated in an England shirt. The unacknowledged truth at the heart of the FA's drive to modernise is that the thing that would make the difference is the hardest thing to come by. So if - by some wholly unexplainable piece of serendipity - England were to win Euro 2012, we can only hope the FA has every single player tied down to a long-term contract to ensure their assistance in the further development of our country's game. Ham-fisted Allardyce may come to rue pasting fans If it all goes wrong for Sam Allardyce, surely a career in customer service for Ryanair awaits. Aware of a gathering discontent in the Boleyn stands at the style of play he has inflicted on regulars this season, the West Ham manager railed this week against the ignorance, stupidity and fickleness of his constituency. Hammers fans, he insisted, want victory then have the audacity to complain at the manner in which victory is delivered. They want a rapid return to the Premier League, then moan about the way he is achieving it. How little they understand of the game's realities. How deluded they must be. As Gerald Ratner once discovered, however, belittling those who pay your wages is not the route to business longevity. Allardyce may be third in the Championship, but after his intemperate observations about those who matter, his chances of staying around much longer are about as high as George Osborne's of becoming a spokesman for the pasty makers of Cornwall. And all this with a certain prodigal Italian pulling up trees along the M4. One thing we can be sure of in all this, those 'Di Canio for the Hammers" banners will be selling like hot pasties this weekend.