Bournemouth boss Eddie Howe and several foreign contenders were considered for the England manager's job prior to Gareth Southgate being chosen, according to Howard Wilkinson.
The League Managers Association chairman was on a five-man panel that interviewed Southgate at Wembley on Monday.
After impressing in four games in interim charge following Sam Allardyce's departure, the appointment of former England Under-21 boss Southgate appeared inevitable.
But Wilkinson insisted it was not simply a coronation and that other managers, including 39-year-old Howe, were debated.
He told BBC Radio 5 Live's Sportsweek programme: "Eddie was considered. He fulfilled many of the criteria but at the end of the day Gareth was in place, he had many of the qualities and experience that was thought important.
"I'm sure Eddie's time will come. Foreign managers were considered but what was taken into account was what is the way forward."
Southgate has been in the Football Association set-up since 2011, when he was appointed head of elite development, moving on to the under-21 team three years ago.
The 46-year-old, who has also managed Middlesbrough, was given a four-year contract with no break clause should his first major tournament in 2018 not go well.
Wilkinson insisted patience is what is needed to turn England's fortunes around, with the lack of home players in the Premier League the key issue to be confronted.
Wilkinson, twice an interim England boss and a former FA technical director, said: " England's problems or challenges going forward are not going to be dealt with in the conventional, old-fashioned way, which was the England manager spending a lot of time looking at a lot of games and then sitting down and saying, 'Which of these 200 players do I think's good enough to get in my team?'.
"It's a totally different problem now and it needs a totally different approach.
"What it needs is a much more strategic approach, a much longer-term approach, not a game-to-game approach. It's about looking at players who maybe are 19, 20 now with one eye and looking forward and saying where they're going to be in four, five, six, seven years' time, because that's the reality.
"Currently you're looking at about 50 players in the Premier League. I hope that's going to improve but how many of those are playing Champions League football? One has to prepare for the fact it may not improve.
"Gareth's been in the structure for over three years, he knows the players, he knows what we're capable of doing and he has the back-up to make it work. Then we just have to be patient.
"We had a plan to deal with our current problems in 1998; it's taken us 18 years to get to a point where we're actually now starting to realise that we should have been doing that earlier."
Source: PA
