FA's Martin Glenn to seek advice before appointing next England manager

Football Association chief executive Martin Glenn has vowed to seek advice throughout the game as he searches for a new manager to arrest England's perennial tournament traumas.

Glenn, who readily accepted he was "not a football expert", will front a three-man panel charged with finding Roy Hodgson's successor, alongside FA technical director Dan Ashworth and vice-chairman David Gill.

The runners and riders have already started to emerge, with Under-21 boss Gareth Southgate an early favourite and one-time heir apparent Gary Neville seemingly off the radar after resigning alongside Hodgson.

But Glenn says the decision will not be arrived at hastily and plans to take exhaustive soundings from stakeholders and experts.

"The process for finding a new manager is under way," the former United Biscuits boss declared at England's soon-to-be-mothballed media centre in Chantilly.

"We're going to harness opinion and wisdom from the wider part of the game. We need to have a wider consultation of the game. It's really important we get this right.

"We are going to be canvassing opinion from former managers, current managers, clubs and players to make sure we get a lot of wisdom.

"We want to move to a new approach, get a new management team, and it's our commitment to say in future tournaments in every game, every match, every half we will punch our weight, go to tournaments as contenders and get over this brittleness," he said.

Glenn spared himself some of the more tedious rhetoric beloved of the boardroom classes - there was no promise of a 'root and branch review' and a blessed lack of old favourites like 'no stone left unturned' - but still found solace in familiar metaphors as he pondered England's failings.

"We need a new manager, we don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water," he offered at one stage.

Glenn has only been an employee of the FA since last May but is well aware the bath water has been unfit for purpose since 1966.

"Having been a fan before doing this job, having mingled with fans on Monday night once I took off my FA jacket and tie, I get it," he said.

"There are a lot of good things that have been done in the England set-up that we can build on but we're not denying the fact that the perennial problem that when it gets to the business end of a tournament - and we are in the tournament business - England seem brittle.

"We need to understand why that is. It's not a particular issue Roy Hodgson's had to face, people before him have handled it too.

"When it comes to the games that really matter, the business end of tournaments, we've come up short.

"It's something we've dealt with for many years. I think the problem is there's not one single thing to point to and say 'if you fix that it's going to work'.

"We have to accept it's a national imperative that we become more resilient in tournaments, that we punch our weight in a way we haven't been able to, not for 50 years."

Glenn, like several of his predecessors, must wrestle with whether or not to consider overseas candidates for the job.

Sven-Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello are the country's only foreign bosses to date, with both succeeded by a homegrown candidate: Steve McClaren, then Hodgson.

Names like Arsene Wenger, Rafael Benitez or Brendan Rodgers have been touted as possible compromises - born outside of England but with significant experience of the footballing culture.

For Glenn, though, it is a simple equation: find the best available manager.

"We'll be looking for the best person for the job. I'm not ruling out a non-English coach," he said.

"I'm not going to talk about names, it's not even 24 hours since we've gone out of the tournament, but I've been consistent in saying we will get the best people to take this exiting group of players further forward.

"We will are looking for the best person, not necessarily the best Englishman."

Glenn also made a laudable move to burnish Hodgson's bruised ego.

Turning to the outgoing boss at one point, he said: "Roy, Iceland is not your epitaph or legacy. (You are) a man of great honour."

Although it is within Glenn's gift to choose England's next manager, he may find it harder to define Hodgson's tenure.

For many, Iceland is indeed his epitaph, and it is the FA's job to ensure his successor pens a better one.