STOKE fans need not lose too much sleep about Tony Pulis packing his bags and heading back home to manage Wales, writes Lou Macari.

John Toshack looks as though he's ready to throw in the towel as Welsh manager and so their FA will be out to find a replacement shortly.

But they can forget about picking up the phone and dialling Tony's number.

Not that he isn't good enough or isn't a Welsh patriot. I'm sure he is, on both counts.

No, in this day and age you'll be hard pressed to see a Premier League manager – or most managers who are in work for that matter – jumping ship to take on a country such as Wales.

It's a measure of the mess international football is in, particularly in this corner of the world, and how far it has fallen behind club football at the highest level.

Imagine if the Welsh did knock on Tony's door. He's part-way through a big project at Stoke, earning more money than the Welsh FA could possibly offer, and would be taking on one hell of a thankless task with Wales.

It's not like they have been under-performing, nor could he go in there and wheel and deal like he could if he was going into club management.

That's why managers are giving such jobs a miss nowadays.

OK, Craig Levein took the Scotland job, but only because he was going nowhere fast at Dundee United.

Toshack and Nigel Worthington were both out of work when they took on Wales and Northern Ireland respectively, Giovanni Trapattoni was in the footballing backwater of Austria with Salzburg before joining the Republic of Ireland, and even Fabio Capello was between jobs before that juicy £6m salary was thrust his way by the FA.

International football is at such a low pitch right now that you not only have managers giving it a wide berth, plenty of players are also calling it a day to concentrate on extending their more lucrative club careers.

I'm afraid Welsh results have been in decline for some time – and they're not the only ones.

Take my Scotland for instance.

All right, so you'd expect Spain to win their Euro 2012 group, but after that you'd think it was going to be a toss up between Scotland and the Czech Republic for the runners-up spot and a place in the play-offs.

But our expectations have sunk so low that many see even that equation as something of a long shot for the Scots.

Indeed, Lithuania were favourites with some bookies to beat Scotland last Friday.

Scotsmen would have been burying their heads in their kilts if that had been the case 10 years ago, but not any more.

Me? I'm going to be optimistic and say we might get two or even three of our countries to the 2012 finals.

Not because I think we're that good, but because others are even worse in international football at the moment.

One thing we can all be sure of is that England will be there in two years – because there's no way even they can mess up a qualifying group featuring Wales, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Switzerland.

I don't think we learned anything from England's 4-0 win over Bulgaria on Friday because they weren't playing much, were they?

The one player to impress me was Joe Hart. He's still got some way to go to convince me he's the real deal, but he certainly seems to be the best goalkeeper England have right now.

That's not saying much, I grant you, but I think we'll also see Ben Foster emerge as a more genuine rival now that he's playing regular first-team football at Birmingham.

England play in Switzerland tonight in what seems certain to be their toughest qualifying game on paper.

The Swiss were good enough to beat Spain in their opening World Cup game, so they are good enough to leave England catching a cold this evening.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the match developing into a bit of a Premier League fixture in terms of the pace of the action.

So it might get a bit fast and furious at times, but England should still have the players to leave with a result of some description.