Sam Allardyce - ‘It was like trying to build Empire State in a month’

[Thespence]

Physically, he is as imposing as ever, but a little of the spirit appears to have drained from Sam Allardyce as he sits down in a hotel near Bolton. Hardly surprising when you consider that it was not so long ago that he was dismissed by Newcastle United. The sack would dent anyone’s ego, and even a man as robust as “Big Sam” went through an emotional buffeting.

 

“I was shocked, to be honest, then you go through a period of taking all the phone calls, everyone saying ‘why?’ and ‘I can’t believe it,’ ” he says. “Then that dies down, then you reflect, then you get a bit angry, a bit upset. And then you move on. And that is where I am now.”

 

He claims to have stopped kicking the cat, but losing his job must be all the harder to accept when he sees the chaos that has unfolded at St James’ Park. We will never know if Allardyce could have turned Newcastle into a consistent force, but we can surely agree that he would not have led them into their present pickle perilously close to the relegation zone.

 

He was sacked after 21 league matches with the team in eleventh place. “No one suggested we were going down,” Allardyce says. The least he deserved was the chance to see out a campaign, a proper opportunity to show whether the methods that carried Bolton Wanderers to league finishes of eighth, sixth, eighth and seventh could be transferred to a so-called big club. Instead, questions about his calibre have been left hanging, unsatisfactorily. He talks about coming back better than ever, about a career on the rise at the age of 53, but privately he must ask himself whether a job such as the one at Newcastle will come up again.

 

While he waits for offers, he is sitting in the pundit’s chair for a variety of television networks. Given the chance to commentate on Newcastle’s forthcoming relegation battle, he insists that he will not be rancorous towards the men who sacked him, the supporters who showed such indifference or the players who questioned his methods. “I’ve no real bitterness any more because there’s only me who’ll be losing sleep over it,” he says.

 

The terms of his lucrative payoff prevent him from saying all that he might about his former employers, but he is entitled to vent his frustrations. “If it was 18 months down the line, I would accept my responsibility,” he says. “But when I left, they’d had fewer points in five of the previous ten years. Bobby Robson finished eleventh and eleventh in his first two years before he got them in the Champions League. So I don’t know how much results were a factor.”

 

Was it, then, the failure to produce the beautiful game? Allardyce was accused of betraying a heritage of cavalier football. He snorts, as well he might, given that we are talking about a club without a trophy since 1969 – when they won the old Fairs Cup – not Barcelona or Real Madrid. “I call that a load of waffle,” he says. “Too many people speak about how the Newcastle fans are, but they are not how they are portrayed. They want to win something, they want to win something so badly they will accept you winning something for the sake of it.”

 

He points to the gradual improvement being engineered by Juande Ramos at Tottenham Hotspur, based, in the first instance, on diet and organisation. “Tottenham is a case in point,” Allardyce says. “It is not purists’ football that is being talked about there but getting results and winning. Playing style was never an issue. At Newcastle it was never going to be how it was suggested I played at Bolton.”

 

His plan was 4-3-3, although it was not clear where Alan Smith was going to slot in, whether Mark Viduka would ever be fit enough to lead the line or if Michael Owen could be persuaded to adapt. Progress was fitful. “Newcastle were not good enough, in recent history, to go out and play 4-4-2 every week,” Allardyce says. “And in any case, it is an antiquated system; 4-4-2 has got cobwebs on. We were finding a way of playing, having changed everything behind the scenes. The players were still learning to blend. It was a question of patience. It is like building the Empire State Building in a month. It can’t be done.”

 

Impatience is a criticism that can be aimed at him, too. Allardyce accepts that if he made a mistake on Tyneside, it was in not persuading the players to buy into his approach. Whether they liked him or not is immaterial, he says, which is just as well because a cabal of senior players were set against him from early on. A far more serious charge is that they rejected his methods.

 

Allardyce believes that it was a clash between his rigorously scientific approach, which includes reams of analysis, and the laissez faire attitude that was entrenched at Newcastle. “Perhaps I couldn’t sell that to the players because they’d never been shown it before,” he says. “All that was said [before] was, ‘Go out and play.’ But today’s game is not like that. The level of preparation is so detailed that you can’t just say, ‘Off you go, off the cuff.’ I was challenging them to adapt and maybe that was a problem. I think I gave the players too much too soon.

 

“Too direct? If those players had the ability to look at their ProZone stats instead of me shouting at them, they would have learnt more about their game than they’ve ever done. They would have learnt something about themselves.

 

I don’t know whether any of that played a part in losing my job. If other people listen to the Chinese whispers or the tittle-tattle, no manager would ever get the chance to build or be successful. Maybe I should have gone, ‘Sod year two, sod year three, I’ll just worry about tomorrow.’ But I’m not like that. I try to build something that has sustainability, not a flash in the pan. I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses, but how can you judge [from seven months]? It is destined to be a great club somewhere down the line, but who can make it that I don’t know. The longer it goes on without that success they think they deserve, the harder it is to achieve it, and they can’t do it by changing managers all the time.”

 

With Kevin Keegan hopelessly out of his depth, Newcastle will probably be on to another manager by the time Allardyce returns to work, which he hopes to do in the summer. He may be forced to drop into the Coca-Cola Championship, while part of him is intrigued by working in Spain. “I’d be fascinated to see if they would appoint an English manager out there,” he says.

 

Moving abroad would help him to dodge the BBC, with which he has refused to engage since the Panorama documentary that alleged that his son, Craig, benefited from nepotism during Allardyce’s days at Bolton. Harry Redknapp recently dropped his boycott of the BBC, but Allardyce is not keen to discuss either the corporation or the Portsmouth manager who might have succeeded him on Tyneside.

 

“Only he [Redknapp] and Newcastle know what the contact was before they decided to get rid of me,” Allardyce says. “It appears that there was, but I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.” Oh, to be a fly on the wall the next time Harry and Sam talk in private.

 

At one stage, Allardyce might have regarded a successful spell at Newcastle as a stepping stone to the England job. He is convinced that the national team should be led by an Englishman and even argues that Steve McClaren was underpaid by the FA. “Why pay an Englishman only a quarter of what they are paying Fabio Capello?” he says. “It is like saying an Englishman will take less because he’ll be grateful. I don’t want to get destructive about Capello, he has got the track record. I’m just patriotic.”

 

The invasion of foreign players is another topic that he can talk about endlessly and passionately. “The most scary comment I have heard is that Barnsley have 12 foreigners in their squad [it is actually eight],” he says. “Barnsley! If we don’t put it right very shortly, the backlash is going to be catastrophic. We care about sport, we love it, but we don’t spend time developing it. We will fail in the Olympics [authorities are trying to enter a Great Britain team for 2012] miserably.”

 

Allardyce’s recent fate might be said to be a measure of our inadequacies. Like McClaren, he is one of the most successful English managers of recent years. That pair are about as good as we have got. Yet both are out of work and wondering how low they might have to drop to get back into the game.

 

Moving on up

 

Spent first seven years of playing career as centre back at Bolton Wanderers before shorter spells with six other clubs. Began managerial career as player-manager at Limerick for a year, guiding them to promotion. Impressive stints with Blackpool and Notts County earned him Bolton job in 1999. Took Bolton into second tier play-offs in first season and to top flight a year later. Became Newcastle United manager last summer but left in January with team in mid-table.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/newcastle/article3556074.ece

 

 

[gray]

Everyone will always mention the fact Allardyce had us higher up the league than when Keegan took over, despite the fact we had the easiest start to a season of anyone else in the league, and basically did nowt with it. We should have been top 6 with that run of fixtures.

[Unbelievable]

The journalist's (and not Allardyce's) comment "We will never know if Allardyce could have turned Newcastle into a consistent force, but we can surely agree that he would not have led them into their present pickle perilously close to the relegation zone." is a bit infuriating, but I can't find much fault with what Allardyce says himself. He was sacked too early, and deserved at least a full season to see what he could do.

[Tooj]

I hope to God he comes back into management next season and we get to verse one of his teams.

 

Oh I see he's hiding behind Pro Zone again as well.

[9]

He's obsessed with stats but only when they go in his favor, he misses the stats that Smith aint scored/created anything in years yet spent 6m on him, Barton spends more time in the police station yet spend 6m on him, let players that could win us games leave(iam sure theres a good stat on how many points solano has won us somewere) that derby took more points off us than any other club, that if it wasnt for last min winners in 3 games we would have been a couple of points max above derby...we could go on and make a huge list..

[Guest Goalfather]

We were in a free fall under Allardyce.. However they could have done a whole lot better than Keegan. IThey should have gone for Mark Hughes IMO, his teams play with a decent mixture of aggression and skill. He would have understood the need to strengthen the midfield. I have nothing against Keegan , he did not hire himself. but it is a big gamble to hire a man who has not managed in so many years, and who even in his pomp was not considered a tactical manager.

[Thespence]

let players that could win us games leave(iam sure theres a good stat on how many points solano has won us somewere)

 

Nobby wanted to leave.

[9]

let players that could win us games leave(iam sure theres a good stat on how many points solano has won us somewere)

 

Nobby wanted to leave.

 

So does N'Zogbia, Diffrence is we now have a manager that will try and do something about it and try and keep them, ud think sam would look at the stats and see that solano was a big player for us and TRY and keep him till january at least, but he chose to roll over and let him go.

[S.S.R.]

Isn't he doing himself out of a job promoting this Prozone shite? If it's as good as he says it is, shouldn't anybody - regardless of credentials - be able to pick a side?

[LoveItIfWeBeatU]

What Allardyce should be saying is "£6 million for 6 months work. Not bad at all!"

 

I hate these useless journalists. They conveniently forget that before Allardyce was booted out we were also on a terrible run. We were scraping last minute undeserved wins against the likes of Fulham and losing to the likes of Wigan and Derby. Confidence was very low long before Keegan got here. As others have said, what about his buys? He spent £6 million on Alan Smith and £5.8 million on Joey Barton. It's a sad fact that Antoine Siberski was a lot better for us than Alan Smith has been. The football was also God awful under Allardyce. One shot a game if we were lucky! Begone Evil one!

[Tooj]

How about you just weren't up for the job eh?

[TRon]

Some people might have short memories but I won't forget how he went to places like Derby and Reading with ultra-defensive line ups. We were thrashed by Arsenal juniors in the Carling cup as well.

[Guest Jungle Barry]

Some people might have short memories but I won't forget how he went to places like Derby and Reading with ultra-defensive line ups. We were thrashed by Arsenal juniors in the Carling cup as well.

 

Exactly, actions speak louder than words as they say and for all his bluster about pro-zone and "antiquated" tactics we were an absolute shambles

[WhatTheFunk]

 

still think allardyce would have got us somewhere eventually. and certainly would not have had us in this situation we find ourselves in now. im not saying its all down to Keegan that we're in the shit....i just think its several factors, and the players are the number 1 culprits.

[Doug]

What Allardyce should be saying is "£6 million for 6 months work. Not bad at all!"

 

I hate these useless journalists.They conveniently forget that before Allardyce was booted out we were also on a terrible run. We were scraping last minute undeserved wins against the likes of Fulham and losing to the likes of Wigan and Derby. Confidence was very low long before Keegan got here. As others have said, what about his buys? He spent £6 million on Alan Smith and £5.8 million on Joey Barton. It's a sad fact that Antoine Siberski was a lot better for us than Alan Smith has been. The football was also God awful under Allardyce. One shot a game if we were lucky! Begone Evil one!

 

Amen

 

Doug

[9]

certainly would not have had us in this situation we find ourselves in.

 

i didnt see anything at all in SA time to show that we would have went to places like Arsenal,Villa,Liverpool and picked up points, he maybe would have got a point maybe 2 more max imo.

[Chrissy Bee]

How can he compare himself to Ramos? A manager who won a cup in 4 months and will take his club from the relegation zone to the top half in the time Sam had with us.

[eaststar]

I still reckon he should have been given more time and I agree with much that he says.  Even though his ideas may not have worked, i liked them - much better than Roeder or Souness.  Had those ideas been implemented, I think our club would have taken the next step.

 

However, at the end of the day, I will trust Ashley and co. KK being back is great, sentimentally and all, but how it pans out we will see at the end of the season.

 

 

[Guest BooBoo]

I agree with the bit about KK being hopelessly out of his depth.

 

BSA should have been given a season. Sacking him and replacing him with KK has made us a laughing stock.

[Thespence]

Sacking him and replacing him with KK has made us a laughing stock

 

It is you & your mates laughing though

[lovejoy]

more self promotion

[Thespence]

more self promotion

 

Coming from you after the week you have had

[lovejoy]

more self promotion

 

Coming from you after the week you have had

 

touche :lol: :lol:

[TRon]

He points to the gradual improvement being engineered by Juande Ramos at Tottenham Hotspur, based, in the first instance, on diet and organisation. “Tottenham is a case in point,” Allardyce says. “It is not purists’ football that is being talked about there but getting results and winning. Playing style was never an issue. At Newcastle it was never going to be how it was suggested I played at Bolton.”

 

The comparison to Ramos is comical. Ramos has set his team up to play quick, counter-attacking football on the deck. I said even when Allardyce was here, I don't have a problem with setting up defensively if you can hit decisively on the break. But Allardyce went on record as saying he didn't like playing out from the back, which leaves you with no other option but to lump it high and long, which is what his team did. It's what Bolton did and it's never been what Ramos does. No amount of re-writing history is going to change that.

 

[Guest Knightrider]

As ever he's pretty much spot on with his comments. It's a shame the players didn't take to Big Sam's methods because it is they who are ultimately responsible for the mess we find ourselves in. I find his comments on that very telling.