Neville and Venables urge FA to move quickly

Former Manchester United defender Gary Neville believes time is running out ahead of Euro 2012 while ex-England boss Terry Venables, who backed Harry Redknapp for the job, criticised the FA for not appointing Fabio Capello’s successor sooner.

The FA have made it clear they want to wait until early May in order to avoid destabilising any club, and also because if the next manager is currently in work, he would not leave his club until the end of the season.

However, Neville, who won 85 caps for England, warned that the new manager and the FA will have issues to deal with ahead of Euro 2012 starting on June 8, including the captaincy and possible effect on the squad of John Terry’s court trial in July where he will deny racially abusing QPR’s Anton Ferdinand.

Speaking at the Soccerex conference in Manchester, Neville said: “The England manager has started being mentioned again this week. We are going into a tournament and who is taking the team, what tactics are we going to play, what principles? They say they are going to wait until the end of the season – that’s May 13.”

He added: “There’s something brewing at the moment. There are situations still not being dealt with.

“There are player situations going into the tournament, there are manager situations going into the tournament. It’s going to come pretty quickly – it’s April next week.

“There’s manager, there’s player, there’s captain, there’s (the) court case – it’s not going to go away.

“And the FA at this moment in time are in a difficult position as always. If they actively go in there now and do something then it will be like a bull in a china shop, if they step away it’s a very difficult position to be in.

“I do fear that there’s no right or wrong at times, just do your best, but I do feel the vultures are circling.”

Venables, who managed the England team that reached the Euro 96 semi-finals, said Redknapp would benefit from being the popular choice but that there was no benefit in the FA stalling on a decision.

He also warned that Redknapp or any other English manager could not to expect to earn anything like the £6m annual salary paid to Capello.

Venables said: “I think Harry is the candidate, he has done such a capable job; it’s whether he wants it. It seems to have gone on too long for me, there’s now a double take and no one seems to really know what’s going on apart from those that are in the seat.

“They have to get someone in there straight away do to something about it. I don’t see any benefit at all in coming in at the last moment with a rah-rah-rah. He’s got to know those players, not just from what he has seen, but how they talk and what they feel is important, really getting into the individuals.”