The fallout from the 56-year-old Swede's affair with Football Association secretary Faria Alam has helped plunge the game in Britain into another depressing, sleazy round of backstabbing and betrayal.

FA chief executive Mark Palios has already quit following the implications of his relationship with the same woman and, on Thursday, the powerful 12-man FA Council will meet here to decide whether or not Eriksson will also be shown the door.

The Swede, who took England to the quarter-finals of the 2002 World Cup and the European championships in Portugal this summer, has always insisted his private life is his own business.

He survived the public outcry over his affair with television personality Ulrika Johnsson, a fellow Swede, as well as the even greater furore when it was suspected he may jump ship and take over as coach of Premiership moneybags Chelsea.

But this is his greatest crisis with his FA paymasters meeting to decide whether or not they were deliberately misled over the Alam affair.

His lucrative contract means he could be entitled to a compensation package deal worth 14 million pounds (25 million dollars) and the removal of him as coach would come just a month before England open their qualifying campaign for the 2006 World Cup with a match against Austria.

Eriksson became the first foreigner to take charge of England when he succeeded Kevin Keegan in January 2001 having won the Italian League and Cup double the previous year with Lazio.

His first game in charge was a 3-0 victory against Spain and four subsequent wins in consecutive games ensured that he achieved the most successful start of any England coach.

He was virtually a national hero when his side beat old enemy Germany 5-1 in a World Cup qualifier in Munich later in 2001 as England took a huge step towards the finals in Japan and South Korea.

That campaign ended with a 2-1 loss to Brazil while hosts Portugal put an end to his Euro 2004 hopes in June this year.

"In three and half years, we have lost three games at major championships and if you see how we lost them, we lost in a strange way," said Eriksson.

"It gives us hope for the future, we are up there. I think we are very close."

Although he may be public enemy number one as far as the average fickle English fan is concerned, Eriksson is admired by his players.

"Even though he's an international manager, there's more of a club type relationship with him," said the midfielder Phil Neville.

"If you're suffering from injury, or for instance, when my wife had a baby, he rings you up to congratulate you, and probably in the past England managers haven't done that. That's why all the players like him.

"In terms of the way he wins over his players, he doesn't do it by shouting or screaming; he does it by treating the players as adults."

However, a very public flirtation with Chelsea earlier this year underlined Eriksson's apparent willingness to contemplate abandoning the natioanal side if the right opportunity to return to club football came along.

"The best in football has always been to win games," he acknowledged in the wake of the Chelsea furore, which ended with him signing an extended and enhanced contract designed to keep him in his current post until at least the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

"If you don't win games, whatever you do, you will be criticised."

Eriksson is getting used to dealing with the critics, but it remains to be seen whether or not he can win over the most influential here on Thursday.