There is no desire on his part to take a job for the sake of it, with Southgate telling The Football Boardroom Podcast: “I’ve got no passion to just go and manage in the Premier League. I did that at 35, I finished 11th, 12th. Who is in those positions now, probably Bournemouth, Brighton?
“So I don’t feel the need to just go and do it to say I’ve managed in the Premier League. I’ve had one of the biggest jobs in world football so I’ve been spoiled. Huge nights, working with outstanding players. No owner interfering.
“The bit that, externally, people are saying is, ‘well, he didn’t win’. So how do you prove that you can win? You’ve got to one of those big clubs.”
Southgate is confident that he could deliver under pressure at one of those so-called “big clubs”, with it his belief that he would have fared better in some of those prominent posts than coaching contemporaries have managed.
He added: “Now we know those big clubs… do I think I could have done the job that some people who have been in those clubs recently have done? Could I do better? I think I could.
“But we’ve talked about the baggage that comes with me as an appointment if you’re an owner. And there’s a reality around (that), I can understand what that noise is. There’s that bit which makes me potentially a complicated appointment for a club.”