THOSE who grimly predicted that the country was getting more of the same when the FA asked Steve McClaren to succeed Sven-Göran Eriksson have been hastily revising expectations. McClaren himself talked of “evolution” yesterday, but there was a revolutionary drop of the guillotine in the ending of a celebrated international career.

Add the recruitment of Terry Venables to the axeing of David Beckham and it becomes even harder to depict McClaren as an English version of the timid Swede. Short of declaring that 4-4-2 is a thing of the past, McClaren could not have done much more to make it clear that this is, as he repeatedly said, “a new era”.

His determination to emphasise the clean start is understandable because, in many eyes, he is implicated in the underachievement of Eriksson’s regime. He was sitting at the Swede’s right hand but is relishing the opportunity to prove that not everything in the past five years was done with the assistant’s blessing.

Other signs of that can be seen in the appointment to the FA staff of Bill Beswick, a sports psychologist, but it is the recruitment of Venables, in particular, that most demonstrates McClaren’s unexpected boldness. The pair are not old friends — indeed, they have never worked together and were once rivals for the Leeds United manager’s job (Venables got it but probably wished he had not) — but the new head coach had no hesitation in bringing on board a man whom he was happy to admit has a “bigger personality”.

Some have even predicted that McClaren could end up as Venables’s assistant, but the new recruit, one of his predecessors, has gone out of his way to deny “snide accusations of a stitch-up”. Venables admitted that there was still some “unfinished business” with England after his messy departure in the wake of a successful Euro 96, but insisted that “Steve will obviously lead the coaching and I will simply help him in any way he wants me to do”.

It is a sign of McClaren’s self-confidence that he should turn to someone with such credentials and he will expect Venables to be frank with his opinions. “I don’t mind that he has a bigger personality than me or whatever,” he said. “I’ve got the job and I want to do it my way, take my decisions and live or die by them.

“Anybody who knows me knows I’m straight down the line, very, very honest and just want things doing right, professionally, with no frills about it. I just want to get down to winning football matches.” He declared that his new team would boast “pace, width and penetration”.

Eriksson used much the same phrases, but one certainty is that, with McClaren and Venables in charge, tactics will be far more flexible than under the Swede.

The past five years should have taught McClaren much about international football and he is hoping that the experiences, particularly the bad ones, have been seared in the memories of his players. “Sir Alex Ferguson always said at Manchester United that you have to go through the fire to be ready to win,” he said. “That’s why I’m excited about this job because I really do believe these players been through the fire.

“JT [John Terry, the new captain] will tell you, once you’ve seen the faces of the players in the dressing-room after they’ve gone out — there’s no greater disappointment than when you go out of a tournament. I experienced that looking at the players. We don’t want that again.

“We have to go and qualify and get back to that arena and make sure that this time we go that step farther.” Thankfully, he resisted the urge to say that 2008 could be “our time”.

The McClaren era may have got off to a more decisive, dramatic start than anyone had predicted, albeit without a ball being kicked, but, so soon after the let-down of the summer, no one was quite ready to hear that Germany was simply a launchpad for greater things.

• THE FA confirmed yesterday that Nationwide will sponsor the England team for the next four years in a deal believed to be worth £40 million. But some of the governing body’s income is required still to pay Sven-Göran Eriksson, who will pick up about £4.5 million if he does not find a new job before next summer.

Explore Football

• Premier League

• Football League

• Scotland

• European Football

• International Football

• TheGame

• Live Match Tracker

• The Fink Tank

• Fantasy Football