ENGLAND goalkeeping legend Peter Shilton believes the Football Association missed a trick by failing to appoint Martin O’Neill as manager before the Republic of Ireland did.
Roy Hodgson was appointed as England manager in May 2012, when Martin O’Neill was in charge of Sunderland, but was sacked and replaced with Sam Allardyce earlier this year.
Shilton, who was capped 125 times by England, feels the FA should have moved for O’Neill while he was at Sunderland, where he failed to hit the heights compared to the rest of his managerial career.
He told Omnisport: “When Martin O’Neill, the Ireland manager, was available, I thought: ‘Alright he’s not English but he’s as English as you are going to get outside of being English’.
“I played with him at Nottingham Forest. His career in management has been excellent. He’s won trophies and he’s got the best out of the Irish team. You can see they want to play for him.”
Even though Republic boss O’Neill has just put pen to paper on a new two-year extension with his contract with the Football Association of Ireland, Shilton still has slight hope he can be prised away.
“I said before the Roy Hodgson appointment that they should have gone for Martin O’Neill and now obviously it is too late,” he said.
“Who knows, maybe it’s not too late, but I would like someone like that who could actually get the best out of players to really fight and work for them because we haven’t had that for the last few tournaments.”
The England job is vacant following the departure of Sam Aallardyce after just 67 days and one match in the role, having come clean following allegations of corruption.
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