We all know that history repeats itself the second time as farce - but what does it do the fifth time? The new England manager, who is the first foreigner to coach the national team, has arrived at last, and the ingredients of a familiar drama are already falling nicely into place. The last four men in the coconut shy have been smartly toppled by the papers - now we can have another crack. In a twist that says plenty about the way we conduct our footballing affairs, Sven Goran Eriksson has come both six months before he was expected, and three months late. Measured in football years, he is roughly 30 years late. But here he is. And away we go again.

He has been welcomed with all the warmth and humour for which we Britons are justly famed. The Sun presented him with a mock-up front page ("Good luck, Sven Goran"), amusingly reminded him that the Swedish for turnip was kalrot, and gave him a ball to sign for its fabulous "Sven's Ball" competition (Question: "What nationality is Sven Goran Eriksson?"). The Mirror sneered at those who would "deride him as an imposter", above a cartoon portraying him in a shirt that said "I [heart] Sweden". Radio 5 pointed out that his name was, in fact, pronounced Sven Yeuran, a detail the presenters tossed around before deciding that, nah, sod it, they'd rather stick with Goran.

Only one thing was missing. I searched high and low, but for some unaccountable reason could find no reaction at all from Eriksson's predecessor, Kevin Keegan. Of all the advice freely handed to him (in one day, at least 25 players were urgently recommended, leaving plenty of room for waspish told-you-so columns at a later date), this was perhaps the most telling. Keegan was never slow to speak his mind: we often had reason to wish he were slower. Only the other day, I received one of those e-anthologies of Keegan quotations that are doing the rounds. Some were priceless ("Argentina are the second-best team in the world, and there's no higher praise than that! . . . These players will be 35 or 36 when the next World Cup comes around, if they're not careful"). So it must have been that no one bothered to ask him. It must scare Our Sven, given the tide of enthusiasm that swept Our Kev into the hot seat, to see how firmly Keegan is now fixed as a buffoon.

Such is our way with England managers. On the face of it, Eriksson looks good: experienced, calm and successful. The FA, obeying the dogma by which only top club managers need apply, has presented him as a show pony, a feather in their cap, which might be unwise. Club bosses can spend zillions on a Brazilian if their left-back gets injured; national coaches can only cross their fingers and see if Gary Neville has any brothers free. It is, in truth, a job of limited horizons, better suited to someone who can create teams on small budgets (such as Glenn Hoddle, say, to name another man recently hounded out of the England job).

Only time will tell whether Eriksson is the chosen one, and this is no help to those in the snap-judgement business. The FA might have betrayed him already. It speaks boastfully of its new long-term strategy (the fruits of which can, by definition, not be tasted for years). But it gives few details of what we can reasonably expect. In most senior management posts, the job description comes with a clear set of objectives (slash a thousand employees, get the stock price back to 120p). But what, for an England manager, qualifies as success?

Hmmm. We are a weak football nation, ranked 17th in the world. We do not always qualify for the final stages of major tournaments; and when we do, we rarely trouble the scorers. In the past 30 years, we have reached, and lost, one World Cup semi-final (in Italy, in 1990 - and even this came hard on the heels of a famous headline that screamed "Go! In the name of God, go!" at the then manager, Bobby Robson). Our record is shoddy. Yet we still imagine ourselves world-beaters. This is fair enough for fans: it's our job to nurse unrealistic dreams. But we need rather more clear-headedness from those actually presiding over the team's fortunes.

In the absence of any clear guidelines, the papers provide their own. Predictably, these are simply the prejudiced impulses of fans - fantasies, not targets. So, once again, we have appointed not a manager, but a saviour. We are counting on him to get us into, and perhaps win, the next World Cup. Anything less will be regarded as a flop. It is not impossible as a hope; but as a plan, it is laughable. It doesn't pay to be honest about this, though: it is not on to admit - ask Howard Wilkinson - that long-term strategies might mean reverses in the short term. There'll always be a Charlton or two waiting to denounce any attempt at truth-telling as unpatriotic, "a sad day for English football". For Eriksson, the knives, as we say in football, are circling.

Another business school precept urges managers to do most of what they want in the first month - otherwise, they'll never get round to it. Let's hope Eriksson has the nerve to try. Keegan came in spouting excitedly about how some managers might be scared to blood the youngsters, but Kevin Keegan wasn't one of them. Then he flinched and picked the old guard anyway. Eriksson has performed the same routine of mentioning a slew of promising young players. But will he play them, risking a defeat or two in order to set foot on the learning curve? Or will he remain loyal to the rump of a team that has (let's not forget) lost four of its past six matches? One thing he must see, from the reaction to his arrival, is that England managers tend to get slaughtered either way. This alone might encourage him to do his own thing, whatever that is. Might as well be hanged for a Swede as for a Turnip.

Hunter Davies is on holiday

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