England Women forwards coach and former England second row Louis Deacon believes it would be difficult to bring in an alternative to Eddie Jones so soon before the Rugby World Cup.
But if Jones was to be replaced, Deacon favoured his former international teammate Steve Borthwick to take the reins, who has done a formidable job at Deacon's ex-club Leicester Tigers.
Equally though, Deacon felt it was going to be hard for England to solve their problems regardless of whether they made a change or not given their weakness at the set piece.
Speaking on The Rugby Paper Podcast, Deacon said: “The question would be who would come in? If they were to make a change, with 11 months to go, it needs to be someone who has a big impact straight away.
“I don't think they will make a change at this point,” Deacon said. “They probably still feel that there's time to turn it around like South Africa did before the last World Cup.
“They were in a bit of turmoil around this time ahead of the last World Cup but they turned it around.
“But they had an area of their game that they could go to at the set piece, and up to the Six Nations last year England had that, but it seems to have gone away from them.
“They need to get that back pretty quickly, and the Six Nations is a good place to do it.”
When asked who he would like to see come in if the RFU did opt for a change though, the Leicester legend backed some candidates linked to his former club as alternatives.
He added: “At the moment, the job that Steve's done with Leicester means you can't look too far away from him.
“But there's obviously other candidates in there like [Scott] Robertson or maybe Cockers [Richard Cockerill] who's in there at the moment.
“Why was Cockers brought [into the coaching set-up] in the first place? Was that for him to eventually take over?
“But my money would be on Steve taking the job and moving it forward.”
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