SVEN-Goran Eriksson should be allowed to continue the job of guiding England to his third successive major tournament.

It can be argued -- and has been argued -- that he should not have been given the job in the first place because he is not English.

But that is a different issue. If he is to be judged on results, then the Swede must stay.

Eriksson has never lost a qualification game as England manager, winning 12 and drawing four.

He has got England to the last two major tournaments and reached the quarter-finals both times -- which might not give the nation reason to party, but is about right for a team consistently ranked between sixth and eighth in the world for the last two years.

There was some wild over-reaction to the draw in Austria this week by a media apparently intent on getting Eriksson sacked.

After Vienna, Eriksson was unfairly pilloried and put under intense pressure to win in Poland.

He delivered, as he always does in qualification, and England's lofty position after two testing opening away games makes a mockery of the anti-Eriksson campaign.

In this country, we treat our England managers like we treat our mobile phones. We love them at first, but want to change them after a couple of years whether they still work or not.

An away draw in a qualification campaign is not a bad result and even if England had also drawn in Poland they would still have been in a decent position with the home games to come.