Sam Allardyce is never backwards in coming forwards.
When Trevor ‘Everybody Loves Me” Brooking was appointed FA technical director last month, Big Sam wanted to know where his coaching qualifications were.
And when his side were knocked out of the FA Cup by Tranmere, Allardyce, who fielded a weakened team owing to his side’s Carling Cup semifinal commitments, expressed only relief at their exit from the world’s oldest and best-loved competition.
Neither move was designed to court popularity with the most powerful football officials in the land, but Allardyce says it like it is.
He takes it on the chin so often you wonder if it has had a lasting affect.
There are those who feel he looks like one of the Hungry Hippos in the infant board game, others who feel the need to nominate him for www.uglyfootballers.com (yes, it’s really out there, along with all the other roadkill on the information superhighway).
But for a man who once owned the largest sporting moustache in the world outside of Merv Hughes’s upper lip, he’s done quite well in life.
Born in Dudley in the West Midlands where a flat, curiously emotionless accent is de rigeur, Allardyce is now just short of 50.
He started his footballing career where he’s finished up with so much aplomb; at Bolton Wanderers, in between going to Sunderland, Milwall, Coventry, Huddersfield, Preston North End (twice), West Bromwich Albion and Tampa Bay.
Try as I might, I can’t find anyone who slags him off as a player, though he was always a bulky sort. Most seem to feel he was a good centre-half, no-nonsense, no prisoners, macho moustache. Much as you might expect.
Allardyce got his first coaching job with Sunderland, then Preston North End and, when things weren’t going too well, he went to Limerick, home of the infamous five-liners but not a great football team.
Allardyce returned to manage Blackpool and they zoomed from the relegation zone to the play-offs. Then came a double promotion push with Notts County, who zoomed from Division Three to Division One.
And finally, he replaced Colin Todd at Bolton, where he lost an initial play-off to Ipswich in 1999 before gaining promotion in 2002. Sadly though, under honours, Big Sam’s entry hasn’t needed updating for some time.
There was a third division title with County as a manager in 1997 and a second division winners’ medal with Bolton in 1978.
All that could change in March when Bolton, eased through a tough semifinal against Aston Villa by Nigeria’s Jay Jay Okocha, come up against Middlesbrough in the Carling Cup final on February 29. Yup, leap year and for both sides this is a major leap; the winners go to Europe and neither Bolton nor Boro have ever needed to cross the channel before.
Bolton’s Wanderers haven’t been medallion men for nine long years.
But Allardyce, with his curious collection of cheap foreigners and cheaper locals, has created a fairly successful blend.
Yes, of course they compete for Premiership B: The name we give those who hover, hopefully, chasing fourth spot in the top flight behind Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea.
But given their relative size and budget, the very fact that they share a division with neighbours United is something of a feat for a side which actually contained the full 11 foreign journeymen at one stage this season.
How does he do it? What does it take to make these guys play together?
Allardyce knows hard work and dedication is a reasonable starting point. Being careful with your pennies is another vital factor.
When he was sacked after two months as West Bromwich Albion’s reserve team boss in 1991, he left for Limerick where he had to take a bucket around the pubs to help pay the wages. Bolton remain heavily in debt after the building of the Reebok Stadium, which replaced the grand old Burnden Park.
Last year, before the narrow escape from relegation, Allardyce said: ‘To think about what we have achieved in such a small space of time, it would be unbearable to have to dismantle it — it just doesn’t bear thinking about.”
But no, West Ham went down instead, the Upton Park crew were ultimately dismantled — and Bolton have gone from strength to mid-table strength.
Not a lot of people know that Allardyce studied sports science while playing for Tampa. Or that he is often approached for advice by a certain Sir Alex Ferguson.
But hey, this is the man who blends together the skill of Youri Djorkaef, the trickery of Okocha, the blunt effectiveness of Kevin Nolan and the perm of Ivan Campo.
His worst moment?
The year 1996, when, according to Allardyce: ‘I took Blackpool to the brink of promotion and their best position for 16 years and the chairman has been put in prison and the directors tell you that you have to go. That takes some getting over.”
Best moment? That would probably be getting a wild-card entry for the United Kingdom Open darts title in a pub in south Manchester last year.
Sadly he went out in round one.
But the best is yet to come. After their recent win over over-performing Charlton, their third on the trot, and a 2-2 draw with Liverpool last weekend, Bolton are now ninth, four points off that fourth Champions League qualifying spot.
And they’ve got that Carling Cup final coming up.
Allardyce sums it up nicely: ‘I’m still floating along on the clouds. I feel like God!”
With Scot Ferguson, Frenchman Arsène Wenger and Italian Claudio Ranieri ruling the roost, not many English football managers feel like that these days.