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Big Sam Allardyce, England Manager

Discussion in 'Bristol City' started by wizered, Jul 21, 2016.

  1. wizered

    wizered Ol' Mucker
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    The Exiled Robin

    'Big’ Sam Allardyce. England manager.


    Yes really.
    On the face of it, no-one should be too surprised. He’s an Englishman who has managed in the Premier League for most of the last 15 years, and – on paper – has done a pretty good job at most of the clubs he’s managed at.

    Most recently he got West Ham back up at the first attempt and then consolidated their position in the Premier League, giving Slaven Bilic their platform for his success last season. He then somehow saved Sunderland from inevitable relegation last season, with an inspired signing of Jermaine Defoe providing the firepower once he’d re-organised and patched up the division’s worst-looking defence and turned them into clean sheet regulars.

    His hugely successful stint at Bolton is perhaps drifting into the memory banks but what he achieved there – especially when you look at where they are now – was nothing short of miraculous, albeit one that set in motion the start of the build-up of debt that has so crippled the club now. In fact he almost certainly should have got the job in 2006 when Steve McClaren was handed the reins and he has no budget to push for with England.

    His time at Newcastle and Blackburn is viewed as being less successful, with Newcastle fans in particular seemingly still reeling from that period, but being sacked at both clubs only tells part of the story. On each occasion new owners – Mike Ashley at St.James’ Park and the infamous Venky’s at Blackburn – had recently come to the club and, as so often happens, wanted to stamp their own mark with their own hand-picked manager.

    Both clubs sacked him whilst they were just the wrong side of the table’s mid-point, feeling they were going nowhere. They were though. Both were relegated within 18 months of Allardyce leaving. Was he over-achieving with both?

    So what’s wrong with this appointment? Why have so many reacted with such ferocity, suggesting the FA have lost their minds?
    Well, it’s ‘Big Sam’.

    Some are inevitably likening him to Mike Bassett, with a partly-understandable, partly-unfair stereotyping him of an 80’s style English manager. You know; big man up-front, big defenders, tough midfielders and generally only score goals from set-pieces. That kinda thing.
    And he certainly has a track record of a backs-to-the-wall, attritional style of football. The consolidation pointed to above, with Blackburn, Newcastle and West Ham, is often deemed insufficient by fans and owners alike who get comfortable, want to press on and only realise what they’ve got when it’s gone. And consolidation, of course, hasn’t led to a major trophy win as a manager, something everyone seems very keen to point out about Sam.

    But that belies his time at Bolton where he successfully built teams around the likes of Jay-Jay Okocha and Youri Djorkaeff, allowing them the platform to dazzle, create and entertain and reached not only the UEFA Cup, as it was, by finishing sixth, but a League Cup final which they lost by the odd goal.
    He’s certainly a Marmite selection and the view of those in support of him barely stretches beyond ‘he can’t do any worse’, but he is the new gaffer and deserves at least the two year window, if not the four years that the international game revolves around.

    My own personal view is that England should have cast the net wider. It seems as if it was an Englishman plus one or two options, but when managers of the calibre and with the cvs of Hiddink, Wenger, Pellegrini, Ranieri and Benitez have such strong links to the English game, you have to assume one or two of them would have been tempted with the right offer.

    But if you get too snooty about Allardyce being the chosen on, then recall we’ve just been knocked out of one of the most average European Championships there has ever been by Iceland. Remember we haven’t reached a major final for 50 years and that even ‘doing a Wales’ and getting to the last four of a major tournament was last achieved two decades ago, before Marcus Rashford was even born.

    Doubts will remain about his style of play and whether England will be entertaining enough. My answer to that is pretty simple. Would you rather keep clean sheets, nick games by the odd goal and win the European Championships like Portugal have just done, or try to keep endless possession, then badly fluff your lines when going forward before showing up immense weaknesses in your organisation in defence, like England managed so adeptly this summer?

    Hodson’s idea of attacking, entertaining football was to play any number of strikers regardless of whether they fitted into the team structure or not, but all that did was leave us short on those able to defend and create in the middle of the park.

    Whatever the natural ridicule following the Iceland defeat, you can’t say that Walker, Rose, Smalling and Cahill are worse players than those who turned out for Iceland, Northern Ireland or Wales (with the possible exception of Ashley Williams). Otherwise all their players would be playing Champions League football and be plying their trade at clubs finishing in the top five of the Premier League. They’re not, because individually they’re not as good, yet were made to look light years in front of us at times.

    You struggle to imagine an Allardyce side would have conceded a goal from a long throw-in. There’s no way he’d have had Harry Kane taking corners and I suspect the honest, hard-working Danny Drinkwater would have been rewarded with a place in the squad over two midfielders with barely a couple of games between them since the early Spring.

    Would Andy Carroll have been a more viable option to throw on when things did get desperate, someone to knock down and hold up those 60-yard passes from Rooney out of defence?
    So what are we getting with the new England manager? Organisation, set-piece expertise, both defensively and in attack (43% of Sunderland’s goals last season were scored from set-pieces).

    We’re certainly getting someone with a lot more character than Roy Hodgson, and maybe that rubs off naturally. One accusation Hodgson could never seemingly shake was that his dour demeanour filtered through to the players who were left uninspired and short of ideas.
    You won’t get that with Big Sam. There will be passion, hard work and absolutely, definitely no giving up.
    By far the worst worst element of England pathetic exit in France was that with 20 minutes to go we just seemed to give up the ghost without even a snivelling whimper of the quietest order.

    Oh, and for those who say Allardyce will take us back to ‘the bad old days’ of long ball English hoofball. Have you really seen a worse performance than the one against Iceland? How can it get worse than that?
    One might argue we tried this with Keegan, getting someone in with passion to inspire the players, but Allardyce is substantially more capable than Keegan ever was tactically, hence his prolonged stay at the top of the game.

    You can manage on passion for a short while, but then you get found out. The evidence from last season’s successful escape indicates Allardyce has yet to be found out. But now he faces his biggest test in one of the most high-profile jobs in football.
    Will we win the World Cup under Sam? Probably not, but then we haven’t won any of the last 12 either.
    Have we got a better chance of going further by being better organised, playing with good spirit and being a real team? Of course we have.
    What you can be sure of is that Big Sam Allardyce won’t shirk this challenge, in fact he’ll positively relish every second of it.


    He won’t give up and for that, at least, he deserves the support of every English football fan.

    The Exiled Robin
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    http://exiledrobin.blogspot.com


    http://exiledrobin.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/big-sam-allardyce-england-manager.html
     
    #1
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  2. NickH

    NickH Well-Known Member

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    I'm hardly one of the old-school, tub-thumping, faux-patriotic Ing-er-land fans, with a 'they don't like it up 'em' attitude, but I agree that Allardyce has unfairly been tagged as such himself. He's proven time and time again that he's capable of getting results, and not just from a one-dimensional, tough-tackling, long-ball approach. Sure he's not an advocate of 'tiki-taka', but there's more to him than that. At Bolton, he was actually one of the most modern managers out there with his attention to sports science and data analysis, which is now common place.

    I have no idea how he'll do, but with England's track record, you'd assume that they'll qualify for competitions comfortably enough, but then freeze on the big stage of the finals themselves. In many ways, it's one of the most interesting appointments in recent times, as there would always have been a number of people previously wondering: 'What if we had had a manager like Allardyce or Redknapp in charge?' Now, we'll get to find out. I think under Hodgson we were capable of playing some quite attractive football, but there was a distinct lack of cutting edge and definitely defensive stability (a bit like Sean O' Driscoll was with us), so Allardyce might be the perfect tonic for that.

    If he makes a success of it (making the quarter-finals at least at the next World Cup I'd suggest), then he would prove a number of critics wrong and might be given a chance at a bigger club that he previously wouldn't have. He's been somewhat typecast as the safe pair of hands that keeps you safe from relegation, but not much more than that. This is his opportunity to remove those shackles. Good luck to him.
     
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  3. Red Robin

    Red Robin Well-Known Member

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    He is going to need it i do believe.

    England cannot get any lower than where they stand today,big big job,can he do it time will tell.
     
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  4. Bigjohnatyeo

    Bigjohnatyeo Well-Known Member

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    YES!
     
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  5. Angelicnumber16

    Angelicnumber16 Well-Known Member

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    Ain't bothered......
     
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  6. banksyisourhero

    banksyisourhero Well-Known Member

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    He wouldn't have been my choice but he will get my support for the immediate future.
     
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  7. invermeremike

    invermeremike Well-Known Member

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    I gave up on England many years ago but in my eyes the problem does not lie with the manager but rather with the type of players we have to endure these days. One of the comments in the article states that the England players freeze on the big stage, and yet I reckon that they just don't show up, and frankly don't give at rat's arse about how they are viewed in the eyes of the people who support their rags to riches lifestyle.

    Sam, no matter how much you love him or hate him, will never get the players of today to commit to his cause when they spend most of their lives enhancing theirs. Sad but true story in the continuing sage of the demise of England from all angles.
     
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  8. BrightredRickster

    BrightredRickster Well-Known Member

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    support him yes of course
    believe in him, not a bloody chance

    That he will have to earn.
    What disturbs me was the 12 man committee that chose him. There is not a footballer in sight, and the head honchos are from the world of business.
    Where was the Charltons, where was Hurst, Brooking, Robson, Shearer, people who are qualified to make those football decisions.
    The FA are not serious about what they do when they pick a decision making team like that.
    Its not a game !
     
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  9. Mind the gap!

    Mind the gap! Well-Known Member

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    International football is about making what you've got work.

    Alladyce can get players playing and may be able to find a formula that works.

    Can't really think of a better (viable and available) appointment
     
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  10. bcfcredandwhite

    bcfcredandwhite Well-Known Member

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    Not my first choice (Arry was mine) but he can't do any worse than the other recent incumbents.
     
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  11. gdknac

    gdknac Well-Known Member

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    Think he will do well- Talking of a winter break as they already do in Germany and Belgium among others. If we are seriously going to compete on a world stage we need to look at these things.
    After that defeat to Iceland and the manner in which we lost, England team needs to take a good hard look at itself. We have been saying that for years though.
     
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  12. Cliftonville

    Cliftonville Well-Known Member

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    The leagues in Belgium and Germany have less teams. All that would happen is that clubs would play friendlies abroad for £$... And then have to cram in fixtures over less months. It is silly.
     
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  13. invermeremike

    invermeremike Well-Known Member

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    Until the players realise that they are expected to play their part any manager will fail. Money is the root cause and social media also plays it's part in the commitment department. All have to be committed to the cause and quite honestly I think the sport has sunk to all time lows in the England shirt.
     
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  14. gdknac

    gdknac Well-Known Member

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    Good point- Our Premier League needs to be reduced but it wont be as that would mean less income- Yes, that idea of friendlies played abroad already irritates me Money being the main motivator again. Guess while this mentality exists, we will never get anywhere.
     
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  15. Cliftonville

    Cliftonville Well-Known Member

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    Mr Scudamore has been very bullish of late. Saw nothing at the Euros that requires we have to change the journey.

    England will continue to go nowhere fast. As a footballing nation. England fails to prepare and thus prepares to fail.
     
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  16. banksyisourhero

    banksyisourhero Well-Known Member

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    All the signs were there!

    Worst performance at a world cup ever previously, I don't know why anybody expected anything different???
     
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  17. RedorDead

    RedorDead Well-Known Member

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    Yeah I could see you was **** for years now <laugh>
     
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