After guiding England to the Euro 2004 finals with an unbeaten qualifying campaign, the Manchester United defender says that Sven has now earned the right to be allowed to prepare his team for Portugal without unnecessary distractions.

"One of the great problems of the last 20 or 30 years is that no England manager has been allowed to do his job.

"We need to allow this England manager to get on with it because he is a great manager, one of the best we've had."

Sven announced that he'd signed a new two-year deal with The FA on Sunday, ending recent speculation over his future: "England has a magnificent footballing tradition," said Eriksson, "my focus now must be on trying to bring home the Euro 2004 trophy from Lisbon this summer."

And Neville says he doesn't understand why people would want to make Sven's job any harder and hopes that the whole of England will get behind Sven and his team.

"Why should we want to make our England manager's life difficult? I don't understand it."

"They even want him out of a job when things are going well," added Neville.