Wanted: A proven international track record

Having watched last night's Wembley debacle amid the inevitable chaos of removal day +1, I can't say I'm too surprised at today's decision regarding Steve McClaren. All I think that can possibly be said in his defence is that he was very unlucky with injuries, losing his entire first-choice back four and regular striking partnership prior to last night's game.

Against that, bringing back Frank Lampard when it has been proved time and time again that he and Steven Gerrard cannot play alongside eachother, and using Gareth Barry in an unfamiliar holding role in preference to Owen Hargreaves, were the kind of suicidal selectorial blunders which suggest the manager had a death wish.

What now? Inevitably given his media profile and success with Chelsea, the talk will turn to Jose "the special one" Mourinho, and I think that if he were to indicate that he wants the job, a deal could probably be tied up very quickly. For my part, though, I think the FA would be better off at this juncture going for someone with a proven track record of success in management at international level, and that means either Phil Scolari or Guus Hiddink.

The latter in particular has demonstrated with South Korea, Australia and Russia what can be achieved with a fairly average bunch of players. In my view, as the laughably-termed "Golden Generation" prepares to head into the sunset, that is precisely what England need now.

Moving on

Yesterday was the end of an era in the Linford household. We finally moved on from the little terraced house in Belper I have owned since 1989 which was my home both before and after my move down to London and the Lobby in the mid-90s.

When I first bought the place as an impoverished local news reporter, it was a disused shop that was one of only two properties in the town inside my price range. But over the course of about ten arduous but enjoyable years I slowly converted it, first into a bachelor pad, later into the comfortable family home it now is.

The needs of our growing family meant it was time to move on, but although it was inevitably hard to say goodbye, I left this place for the last time shortly before 4pm yesterday afternoon with only happy memories.

For those who appreciate this sort of personal stuff - and I know it's a relatively small minority of you - there's a full pictorial memoir of the house on my companion blog, Behind the Lines.

Is this what Blair v Brown would have been like?

As regular readers of this blog will know, I both like and admire Chris Huhne while having always been rather sceptical about his rival Nick Clegg, but I can't help but feel that it is the 53-year-old environment spokesman who will end up being the most damaged by yesterday's unedifying spat on the BBC Politics Show.

The nuclear option of attacking Clegg personally and portraying him as Cameron-lite was always open to Huhne, but I only expected him to deploy that option had it reached the point where he had nothing to lose. What I cannot understand is why he opted to deploy it at this stage, after a strong Question Time performance last week which would have persuaded many undecided party members to vote for him.

For what it's worth, my view is that they will now be less likely to do so. However its MPs might behave, the Liberal Democrat grassroots are emphatically not the nasty party, and its membership will take a dim view of anyone who so openly attacks a colleague.

Whichever of the two candidates ends up as leader, they are both major assets to the party, and for one of them to attack the other in that way diminishes that asset as well as dividing the party. In the words of one opposition commentator today, "anyone who was thinking of voting LibDem will have been profundly put off by the whole episode."

One person who knows this all too well is Gordon Brown. In 1994, he could have deployed the nuclear option against Tony Blair, portraying him as SDP Mark II (if only...!) and highlighting his policy flip-flops in much the same way Huhne did to Clegg.

I still believe Brown could have beaten Blair by employing such a strategy, but he knew that the party would have ended up so divided that victory would not have been worth the candle. I fear that this is now the fate awaiting Huhne should he go on to defy the odds and win.