So after our last game of the season, a 0-0 draw at Leeds, I wanted to stay on at the highest level I could, with a Championship club if possible. But for this to happen now, well, you wouldn't have got a bet on it, would you?"Pollitt is right. Less chance of a bet on what has happened to him than on Wigan getting a result this afternoon.. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are top of the League" screamed Upton Park's loudspeaker operator as the West Ham supporters who had filled the stadium to the brim cavorted in a heady mix of joy and disbelief at the manner in which their heroes marked the return to Premiership play by taking apart a Blackburn team who had looked the better bet in the opening half. "I think we'd see the FA become a much more confident, open body with a much greater sense of being the governing body of football," he said. "Whereas at the moment people are quite confused a lot of the time about what it is the FA does and doesn't do.".

Specifically, Sports Nexus complain the proposed new Board is too large and that the Council's powers are being curtailed just as it is made more democratic.Where the report should be wished well is in calling for greater transparency and the introduction of some genuinely independent members of both bodies, some, though not all, of whom it would like to see drawn from that well of experience and talent of former players, managers and coaches who tend to be lost to the game. "I think we all have a great affection for those who've been great footballers and would like to think they have a continuing role," Burns said after presenting his proposals."We have Trevor Brooking here at the FA, of course, but in football in this country it seems you either become a commentator or a manager and that's that." There is a huge job waiting for someone like Brooking as president of the FA Council and the face of the English game, a role that even Burns refers to by the populist tag "Mr Football"."We travel in hope," was his summing up of the prospect of having the recommendations accepted, some of which will require a 75 per cent majority. Burns optimistically writes that "there should be no obligation on the professional leagues to draw their Board directors from their member clubs. In due course they may consider that candidates recruited from elsewhere are at least as capable of carrying out the role." Some hope.An independent body like the pressure group Sports Nexus is therefore able to criticise the proposals as being too soft, claiming the new system is "totally ineffective and will do little more than continue the status quo". But if Ferguson, understandably, cannot see the pair of them dovetailing with Ruud van Nistelrooy, and Owen decides against joining Newcastle or Liverpool, the Swede will remain his usual philosophical self.

England squad: Paul Robinson (Tottenham) David James (Man City) Robert Green (Norwich City) Gary Neville (Man United) Rio Ferdinand (Man United) John Terry (Chelsea) Jamie Carragher (Liverpool) Matthew Upson (Birmingham) Glen Johnson (Chelsea) Ashley Cole (Arsenal) Phil Neville (Everton) David Beckham (Real Madrid) Steven Gerrard (Liverpool) Frank Lampard (Chelsea) Joe Cole (Chelsea) Wayne Rooney (Man United) Michael Owen (Real Madrid) Jermain Defoe (Tottenham) Shaun Wright-Phillips (Chelsea) Jermaine Jenas (Newcastle) Owen Hargreaves (Bayern) Andy Johnson (Crystal Palace) Michael Carrick (Tottenham). Pleasing all of the people all of the time never was an option in football, with its diversity of interests and potential for conflict between them. So Lord Terry Burns, in presenting his structural review of the Football Association last Friday, was well aware it would not meet with universal approval. How could it when he had perceived the need to cut the influence of the Premiership and the FA chairman, reform an unrepresentative FA Council and beef up the inadequate Compliance Unit? Starting from the standpoint that "football is generally in good health in this country", he has chosen to err on the side of generosity to existing officials and bodies in his reforms. I always believed in him as a talent but suddenly he's started to think about football, not only doing tricks.

I remember sometimes sitting on the bench and it became crazy, he'd lose the ball once, twice, three times. You can't do that." As for Michael Owen, Eriksson has made no secret of how pleased he would be to see him playing and training with Wayne Rooney on a daily basis at Manchester United. Eriksson claims it will not worry him if, as expected, Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips find their opportunities limited at Chelsea. "If Chelsea thought Joe Cole would sit on the bench all the time, I think they'd try to sell him," he said. "They think they need him and I'm sure [they do], as the season is long. If you're one of the biggest clubs in England and you want to to win the league, the FA Cup and Champions' League, you need two teams.

"If when he's on the pitch he plays as he did at the end of last season, that's fine. Why I'm optimistic is that the team is better, more experienced but not too old. And how we lost in Japan and how we lost in Portugal, [was] not like we're losing 5-0 We were almost there then and we know we are better. But you can't sit here 10 months before the World Cup and say we're going to win it." Whatever Sir Alf Ramsey may have promised 40 years ago.