Eriksson was crap all along: Official

For most of his tenure as England coach, Sven-Goran Eriksson has seemed a man at the top of his form.

He grasped the poison chalice with both hands at a time when World Cup qualification seemed highly doubtful, and then succeeded in taking a young England team to the quarter-finals where they were eliminated only by the eventual winners.

But we can now exclusively reveal that far from being highly competent, Eriksson is in fact a fraud and complete phoney. Tired of feeling positive toward the same manager for more than six months, English fans have concluded that abuse and mockery are what the coach of the national side needs if he is to fail to met unrealistic expectations.

The press, reflecting as accurately as ever the groundswell of public opinion, will not longer view the Swede as "cool, calm, collected with a refusal to panic under pressure". Instead, he will be "a cold fish unable to show or communicate any enthusiasm whatsoever to the players".

Six months ago, the Swede had "done a fantastic job in beating the mighty Germany 5-1 in Munich", but now we realise that "his team were unable to muster an ounce of passion against a lacklustre ten-man Brazil". Previously, he was "a wise man whose musings on football management could become one of the greatest books of all time" yet now he is "a money-grubbing foreigner whose writing alternates between waffle and drivel".

Groovy academics have also been queing up to explain our newly found prejudices. Professor Joe King of Milton Keynes pre-University has conclusively proved that Eriksson is actually the most inadequate England manager of all time. "Using my analytical system, I have shown that Eriksson has achieved the worse results of any coach since records began. Graham Taylor was vastly superior. The methodology is simple: ignore all of Erkisson's victories and attribute at least one one World Cup trophy to all the rest. And there you have it."

The Swede's sudden reversal in fortune is not thought to have anything to do with his recent stance against leading Premiership clubs whose star players have a shocking tendency to get injured just before English friendlies and then recover in time for the next league match.

One newspaper editor dismissed suggestions that recent coverage had to do with pressure from Premiership clubs. "Why would their pressure have any effect on my paper? It's not as if Premiership football club news and fixtures are an important part of selling copies."