A Year’s A Long Time In Football For Sam Allardyce

Last January Sam Allardyce “parted company by mutual consent” with Newcastle United after an apparently disastrous six months in charge. Mike Ashley made it clear in no uncertain terms that he did not see ‘Big Sam’ as the man to take the club forward. A year on and this weekend saw Sam’s new club Blackburn triumph 3-0 over his old employers and not many people would have begrudged the man a wry smile at the result.

Allardyce drew an awful lot of criticism for his tenure at Newcastle but was it really all that bad? A club that had finished thirteenth in the season before his arrival was positioned in eleventh at the time of his departure. 

Allardyce himself pointed out recently on Sky Sports’ Goals on Sunday programme that he left the club in eleventh, an improvement on the previous season albeit a small one, and the club has never been as high in the table again in the twelve months since he left.

Clearly he felt hard done by at not being given a fair crack of the whip in the North-East and he had to bide his time waiting for an opportunity for his comeback. Somewhat ironically it came at the expense of another manager perhaps not given enough time at a Premiership club in the shape of Paul Ince. 

However, the comparison ends there as Ince had inherited a team which achieved a seventh place finish the previous season and under his control had only accumulated 13 points in 17 games in charge.

‘Big Sam’ took over and has already taken eight points from four games including three clean sheets from a team which up until his arrival had conceded more goals than anyone else in the entire Premier League. So far the opposition he has faced as been less than stellar but no-one can deny or question the positive impact that he has made.

Yet still the stigma remains with Allardyce concerning the style of football that his teams play, but not everyone can play free-flowing, attacking football – besides, outside of Arsenal and Manchester United and possibly Aston Villa who in the Premiership does play this easy-on-the-eye brand of football? 

Even the Champions’ table-topping recent run of form has only seen nine goals in their past nine games while their defence has remained unbreached. Allardyce’s Bolton got slaughtered for playing better football than that.  Why?

Yes his Bolton team were physical and uncompromising but they also achieved results that I feel have been somewhat swept under the carpet. An eighth place finish in 2003/2004—does Megson’s team look capable of this at present? Probably not. And what of the sixth place finish the very next year where they finished below Champions League winners Liverpool only on goal difference? Nowadays, absolutely no chance, yet it did happen only four years ago.

Allardyce left Bolton in April 2007. What was their position at the time? Fifth. 

English managers seem to be completely overlooked when it comes to handing out praise in the Premier League where it is easily lavished upon the likes of Ferguson, Mourinho, O’Neill, etc. Would any of them have got Bolton into the top six? Possibly, maybe probably, of course we’ll never know but it’s still a pretty good achievement no? Could anyone really have done much better with the resources at Bolton?

So why did he have to wait a year until he was offered another job? In my eyes this is madness and wouldn’t happen anywhere else. The press only seem capable of building up foreign managers and knocking down the English ones. Why is this? What is the problem with English managers in England and why can’t they get a break? 

Let me know your thoughts and perhaps we can get to the bottom of this mystery…