Eriksson makes wrong turn to Notts County

LONDON (AP) - Wrong Magpies, Sven!

It's Newcastle that's looking for a new manager, not League Two strugglers Notts County.
It looks like the lure of a wealthy Middle Eastern business consortium buying England's oldest football club three tiers below the Premier League has clouded his judgment as well as theirs.

While Newcastle is still searching for a high-profile manager to guide the team back to the Premier League, Sven Goran Eriksson has shown up at Notts County - a club which is about as far away from winning English football's top prize as the Faeroe Islands are from lifting the World Cup.

These Magpies haven't won anything of note since the century before last - the 1894 FA Cup - and last season finished so low it went close to dropping out of the Football League.

Somehow Sven-Goran Eriksson, Notts County director of football, doesn't have the same ring as coach of Lazio, Benfica, Sampdoria, Fiorentina, England, Manchester City and Mexico - some of his more high-profile jobs.

So why has he turned up at Notts County, one of English football's saddest clubs?

He says it's not the money and that may well be true after the handsome earnings and payoffs he got in Italy, England and Mexico. Although he has signed a five-year contract, he hasn't revealed how much new club owners Munto Finance are paying him - the papers say 2 million pounds ($3.28 million; €2.30 million) a year - and how much severance pay he might receive if it all goes wrong.

Now, the man who coached the likes of Pavel Nedved, David Beckham and Michael Owen before up to 70,000 fans in Rome and London will now monitor journeymen League Two players before 5,000 spectators at Meadow Lane.

What's the point?

"I'm not here for the money. I'm here for the challenge," he said Wednesday at a news conference. "I'm not here for the weather, or if the city is nice or not. If that was the case, then I could have gone to Italy."

Now Neal Bishop, Matthew Harnshaw, Craig Westcarr and the rest of County's modest squad will enjoy the thrill of having Eriksson watching them. The fans are hoping that Eriksson will transform their team the same way Brian Clough turned neighbor Nottingham Forest from a lowly second-tier club into an English champion and two-time European Cup winner in the late 1970s.

Although Eriksson's arrival now has County fans dreaming of emulating Forest, that's probably all it will be. A dream.

Since guiding Lazio to a long-awaited Serie A title and a victory over Manchester United in the European Super Cup, Eriksson has been a flop.

Hired by England to win the World Cup for the first since 1966, the Swede failed to get the team further than the quarterfinals and he also hit the headlines for having affairs with a TV presenter and a Football Association secretary.

After a promising start, he also failed to deliver success at Manchester City, the team ending one season with an 8-1 loss to Middlesbrough. He moved on to coach Mexico in April but left two years early with the team struggling to qualify for the 2010 World Cup.

Now he's at Notts County and the cynics might say that, after his recent record as a coach, the Swede has now found his true level.

There is a strong danger, however, that his arrival at Meadow Lane could be a major embarrassment for both sides.

For County, the hiring of such a big name looks like a desperate attempt by an anonymous, success-starved club to make a few headlines.

Apart from another payoff.