Chief executive Martin Glenn has stressed the English FA is looking for a long-term appointment as England manager and has described Gareth Southgate as a “credible candidate”.
Glenn insisted Southgate’s next two results in temporary charge of the senior team will have little bearing on whether he gets the job full-time.
The 46-year-old stepped up from his role as under-21 boss on an interim basis following Sam Allardyce’s departure at the end of September.
He has already overseen a narrow victory against Malta and a draw with Slovenia in World Cup qualifying, with the four points enough to keep the Three Lions top of Group F.
Southgate will remain at the helm for next month’s clash with Scotland at Wembley, as well a friendly against Spain.
“Even if those matches don’t go so well, he would still be a candidate,” Glenn said.
“You don’t judge a good manager on the basis of one or two games. He will almost certainly be a candidate. It’s up to him to decide whether he wants to do it – we hope he would put himself in the frame.
“Gareth is a really credible candidate. He knows the international set-up, he’s done great work with the under-21s and he wants to translate that across to the senior team.
“But whoever the next manager is, we want somebody in place for the long term. In the past we have gone for foreign managers who might have been attracted by the prospect of helping us win a tournament, but then they haven’t perhaps left the international set-up in a better place when they’ve left.”
Meanwhile, Glenn said he believes England have struggled with psychological problems at major tournaments and thinks instilling a club mentality could hold the key to success.
England’s record in competitions makes grim reading. Since winning the World Cup in 1966 they have reached just two semi-finals – the 1990 World Cup and the European Championships six years later.
Few of the exits have been as humiliating as that to Iceland at Euro 2016 this summer.
It has long been a criticism of the national team that the players fail to perform as they do for their clubs so regularly and Glenn reckons the problem is mental, rather than down to a lack of talent.
Following successful trials with psychological support for England’s other teams, the men’s senior team now receives such coaching and Glenn insisted the issue could be fixed in the future.
He said: “We have got a lot more talented players now, compared to say 20 years ago, but the issue seems to be getting that club spirit translated into the national team.
“If you look at what we have done with the other England teams for a while now, we have had specific psychological support to toughen them up for a tournament situation – and it has worked.
“We haven’t been doing it with the senior men’s team but we are now and perhaps that togetherness and fear factor is the missing link, how you react as a group when things aren’t perhaps going your way.”