FINDING a replacement for Gareth Southgate will be difficult but appointing a foreign manager will be “a disaster”, according to Sam Allardyce.

The former England manager praised Southgate and said he has been outstandingly successful in the role.

Reacting to news of Southgate’s resignation, he told GB News: “There’s only Alf Ramsey and Walter Winterbottom who served longer as England manager than Gareth and he’s left with an outstanding success record.

“Nobody can argue with that, apart from the fact that we didn’t quite clinch the ultimate final that we possibly could have done, particularly in the Euros, but getting very, very close twice.

“He’s been outstandingly successful. It’s an intrusion as England manager for your entire life. That’s what it boils down to, it is an intrusion not only to you, but also all the members of the family.

“You’ve got to be able to and your family has to be able to cope with all that pressure, because wherever you are, wherever your family might be, it could be popping up in terms of a photograph here, a photograph there a lot, ‘what’s he doing here, what’s he doing there?’”

He added: “The beauty of the job is it’s the biggest job you could ever wish to get, though you’ve got to have a deep think about whether you would or wouldn’t want it.

“…credit to the staff and, and him, and the players. You could only get so far with the group of players that he had, without that group of players, no manager could get much farther than that.

“We’re only determined on what success we can gain by the quality of players that we have and we’ve had some real quality players over the last eight years.”

Allardyce said it would be a mistake to appoint a foreign manager: “You’ve got to try and pick English if you can…but the pool is so small.

“That is the biggest problem, with the Premier League being so dominant…the Premier League is probably the biggest sporting global brand across the world in football terms.

“That means the pool of English managers that may be on the shortlist for England is very, very small indeed…you’ve got to bear in mind Gareth was appointed from within.

“There’s not a lot of English managers that they could perhaps put on the shortlist and that means will they go foreign and for me that would be an absolute disaster. I hope that’s not the case but we’ll have to wait and see.”