Recent allegations against Sampson have made for plenty of negative headlines but England's 6-0 victory against Russia on Tuesday evening and, more importantly, the reaction of the players to their manager during that game looked to have calmed the storm.
On Wednesday, however, the FA stated that they had acted after being made fully aware of safeguarding allegations made against Sampson in 2014 when he was in charge at Bristol Academy.
Questioned by the BBC, FA chief executive Martin Glenn was asked whether the surprise move was actually a convenient means of sacking Sampson given the recent media interest.
Glenn said: 'I can understand why people would say that but they are two very different things.
The concerns Eni Aluko raised were about perceived bullying and perceived racism, we have investigated those properly, there have been two separate investigations actually which have broadly concluded there's no systematic evidence for that.
This is a different issue, this is about his conduct before his time at the FA which we judge just isn't consistent with the standards that an FA employee needs to show.'
The new FA WSL season starts this weekend and, although many questions seemingly remain for the game's governing body, the early weeks of the campaign will also be seen as an audition for the England job.