8 Fictional Characters Who Should Definitely Get The England Manager's Job

Trying to understand why a football team fails is a lot like the world of diagnostic medicine: sometimes the simplest answer is correct, and other times it’s a red herring. If you’re letting in lots of goals, is it because the defenders are not good enough or are your strikers not capitalising on the counter attack?

Luckily, one of the sharpest minds in healthcare is here to find the answers. Quite frankly, Gregory House MD has caused a lot of division among football fans; some love his dedication to getting England back to winning ways, while others accuse him of not caring about results and merely trying to get the team to play ‘beautiful football’. Indeed, his track record is inconsistent at best – his victories and triumphs rank up there with the finest in England’s history, but his defeats and failures are almost as significant.

Almost everyone that knows House describes himself as a loner, and reporters have often snapped the manager drinking, inviting unnamed women to his bachelor pad, and even popping painkillers like they’re tic-tacs, much to the chagrin of the FA’s Chief Executive, Lisa Cuddy. She herself has acknowledged that while problematic, he’s the best man for the job and nothing could prompt her to sack him, not even his bizarre appearances at neighbouring country Wales’ games, where he’ll frequently come to manager James Wilson in the dugout for advice before storming off mid-sentence to draw up another team sheet.

The key to understanding the Princeton Plainsboro native’s managerial style is his one philosophy in life: Everybody lies. Supported unceremoniously by a criminally under-appreciated and over-worked team of backroom staff, House approaches every game like it’s a puzzle. No matter what the players tell him, he’ll assume that they’re lying (or worse, frustratingly wrong) and go from there. Despite all this, major trophies still elude the Three Lions – proof, if needed, that you can’t always get what you want…