SO, England football manager Gareth Southgate has resigned and I can’t say that I’m surprised.

Despite being by far the best “tournament football manager” in our history, apart from Alf Ramsey and a rather questionable decision by a Russian linesman, he has been continually and unpleasantly harangued by bar room managers, shoddy, bottom end newspapers and TV pundits, most of whom have either failed in management or kept well away from it.

They all know it all!

Whoever takes his place will be expected to go the next step and win either a World or European Cup.

Have Southgate’s critics ever stopped to think that his star players –Foden, Saka, Bellingham, Rice, in fact all of them – are basically bit-part extras in their club teams.

Who wouldn’t thrive playing alongside Nunes, Haaland, Alvarez or De Bruyne?

Who wouldn’t succeed in the same team as Odegaard, Jorginho or Jesus?

Who is Jude Bellingham surrounded by and benefitting from at Real Madrid?

In my opinion, the Premier League is still stifling the real development of even our best and most talented players, as well as hundreds of other good youngsters who are losing out to older, foreign imports who are attracted by the Premier League’s huge salaries.

Until that stops, even our most talented players will always be denied the opportunity of reaching their full potential and become real leaders.

You can’t soak up the riches of watching the best players from across the world in the Premier League and equally expect our young talent to really, really thrive.

We are selecting our national team from a third or even a quarter of the Premier League.

Southgate may have remained too loyal to Harry Kane for too long but he didn’t make Phil Foden disappear for most of the tournament, the same as he didn’t ask Jude Bellingham to repeatedly carry the ball too far, fall over in a tackle and expect the referee to award a foul.

Neither did he instruct Declan Rice to consistently lose the ball in his own half or send many of his passes in the direction of the opposition.

All three managed to do it themselves.

One of the few players to come away with any praise or credit is Jordan Pickford and in the past he’s suffered the same sort of criticism from the same “jump on the bandwagon” critics.

Playing in goal for Everton over the past few seasons he’s had to learn to stand on his own two feet.

All the best for the future, Gareth, and remember someone somewhere once said: “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”

I don’t believe but I believe entirely in the sentiment.

Rise above them and it and let’s see how the next guy does.

Alan Jackson, Tudhoe Village.