Wigan's Whelan has been calling for changes at the FA since March

Wigan Athletic chairman Dave Whelan has renewed his call for the Premier League to run the England team following the 4-1 World Cup defeat by Germany.

Whelan said the Football Association does not have the expertise needed to run the national side.

He told BBC Radio 5 live: "The FA is an amateur organisation running the world's biggest professional game."

"They haven't a clue how to run the England side so let's get professionals in there," he added.

But sports minister Hugh Robertson thought it should be up to the FA to instigate any changes.

"He [Dave Whelan] does represent the Premier League side of this," Robertson stated.

"There is no doubt about it that, in terms of world football, the FA is the body that is supposed to run the game in this country.

"What we need to do to make some sense of this is, once the dust has settled, to have a long, hard, cold, unemotional look at this and work out why a tournament that was launched with so much hope, as far as England were concerned, has ended in so much disappointment.

"For anybody who has paid a very considerable amount of money to go to South Africa and has seen the team perform in they way they did this is a massive disappointment. You can entirely understand why they are very angry."

And the sports minister added that the FA should have post-World Cup reviews as a matter of course.

606: DEBATE As a constitution the football association is a governing body. Strip their powers (don't know how) but set up a body governed, directed & operated by perhaps ex - players who have no vested interest but to enhance the game of football played in England. Toodaftforwords

"There's nothing particularly extraordinary in having a review in any sport," he continued.

"You should have a review at the end of each World Cup cycle. It's something that happens in every other sport and it's something that I'd encourage football to do today."

His views were echoed by former FA executive director David Davies.

"There is a need for a real inquest into what happened which involves the whole of the game, not just the FA. It involves league managers and the Professional Footballers' Association too. And that actually would be happening for the very first time in my experience," Davies commented.

"I happen to believe that the reality is that successive managers have complained about the same things.

"They've complained about the technical quality of too many English players not being high enough, they've complained about us playing too much football."

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