A Saturday evening in 1991 and Sam Allardyce is tramping the streets of Limerick with a priest. They are searching for local businessmen willing to help pay the wages of Limerick City footballers. It is difficult finding the £100 a week that keeps Allardyce’s better players happy and it is a routine that manager Allardyce and the club chairperson, Father Joe Young, will repeat through the season.
Intent on ensuring his team will be as prepared as possible for the next day’s League of Ireland game, Allardyce then heads for one of the most popular nightclubs in ”stab city” in search of any player enjoying a dance too many.
Since being sacked when assistant to Brian Talbot at West Brom two years earlier, Allardyce had been waiting for an opportunity to restart his coaching career.
”The guy said he was the chairman of Limerick. I thought somebody was taking the mickey,” Allardyce would recall years later. ”There he was, a priest with a dog collar and chairman of a football club. I spent one season there as player-manager and we won the championship. It’s not something I ever want to experience again. But these are the kind of things you never forget. So to be held in such high esteem now is hugely flattering.”
Fifteen years on from his time on the west coast of Ireland and the stock of ”Big Sam”, a Wolves fan from Dudley, has indeed risen. His success in taking Bolton into the Premiership and giving the Lancashire club their European debut this season has made him a serious contender to manage England when Sven-Goran Eriksson leaves after the World Cup. He is also being widely touted for the vacant manager’s job at Newcastle United.
Not everyone, though, is sure about Allardyce’s credentials.
”The [next England] manager has to have a certain amount of experience. That’s part and parcel of being a top-flight manager. To be able to handle big games like in the Champions League and the World Cups.” So said England captain David Beckham this month in a slight directed at Allardyce and two of the other England candidates, Alan Curbishley and Stuart Pearce. When Allardyce characteristically reacted angrily through the press, Beckham apologised.
Fans, though, seem to like Allardyce. He might be behind Martin O’Neill and Curbishley in the betting for the England job, but for many he is the popular choice. Big Sam struck a chord with supporters when, a little more than two years ago, he remarked during a spat with Arsène Wenger that if his name was ”Allardici” his status would be the equal of that enjoyed by foreign coaches.
It is five seasons since he dragged Bolton into the Premiership, and during that time the perception of Allardyce as the stereotypical English manager has shifted. ”People respect Wenger and Jose Mourinho as foreign innovators who have brought new ideas,” says a senior source at the FA. ”Sam Allardyce has quietly been doing the same things for a long time. He’s not quite the classic throwing-cups-of-tea, old-school English manager you might think.”
Allardyce was one of the first managers to use ProZone, the computer system that tracks every physical detail of a player during a match. He is wired up to an earpiece during games and has consulted the expertise of Humphrey Walters, the business guru Sir Clive Woodward credits as being a big influence in England’s 2003 rugby union World Cup victory. The Bolton squad are offered massages, t’ai chi, yoga and Pilates.
Some, though, wonder whether his approach is gimmicky and question why he has such a large backroom staff (17 at the last count).
Born in October 1954, Allardyce grew up watching his hero Ron Flowers on the North Bank at Molineux. A 20-year playing career as an uncompromising defender began in 1969, when Nat Lofthouse signed 15-year-old Allardyce for Bolton.
His travels took in Millwall, Coventry, Sunderland, Huddersfield, Preston (twice), West Brom and Tampa Bay Rowdies. Helping Bolton win promotion to the old first division in 1978 during a second spell at Burnden Park was the highlight of his playing career. The club lasted a season, a stay not bettered until Allardyce became manager.
After losing his job at West Brom, Allardyce had a stint as a youth development officer at Sunderland before he moved to Limerick. ”It opened his eyes. He became more innovative when he joined,” says Billy Kinnane, who lived with Allardyce and was his assistant. Limerick were bottom and skint when he arrived in 1991, but despite the job’s particular demands, Allardyce won the league by several points.
”Even in those days, he was into sports psychology,” adds Kinnane. ”He would fly in on the Thursday for the weekend, but the finances were so poor that I put him up, and I got to know him very well. And yes, he would go to the Brazen Head nightclub in Limerick to drag the players out. The money he earned was only a pittance. It went on the few pints he had after a game. But he was here to gain experience. It was a tremendous learning curve.”
A frequently heard criticism of Allardyce’s teams is that they can be negative. Allardyce would point to Jay-Jay Okocha, Hidetoshi Nakata and El Hadji Diouf as flair players who contradict the critics’ view of a Bolton stereotype. He has been equal to the task of managing players from 17 nations — not including Britain.
”Every one of them has his own personality. The thing is whether you can marry them all into a team,” says Stelios Giannakopoulos, signed on a free transfer in May 2003. ”Before the game, the manager says a few things and everybody knows what he wants. One thing I admire is that he knows how to draw 100% from a player. This is not easy.”
Big Sam is well known for his chewing-gum habit. When he gets into gear, he will masticate 100 times a minute, so if a game goes to extra time, as it did at Upton Park recently, he might pass the 10 000 mark. A lot of jaw.
Allardyce is used to a scrap. Terry Bowles ghosted a local newspaper column for him during his time as Notts County manager, which began nine years ago. ”Owen Oyston [the former Blackpool owner who was imprisoned] sacked him from a prison cell when he just missed out on the play-offs. He clearly wanted to prove a point here,” Bowles says.
As at Limerick, Allardyce managed that. County were second-bottom when he arrived, although they had 21 games left. ”He didn’t manage to keep them up and went a very long time waiting for his first win,” Bowles recalls. Allardyce turned things round spectacularly during his first full season in charge, becoming the only manager in Football League history to tie up a championship in March.
”He is an old-fashioned manager at the same time as being a guy very open to new ideas,” says Walters. ”Very unusual. Bolton had ProZone before the England rugby team did — that’s how Clive Woodward latched on to it.”
Does he believe Allardyce’s flexibility is natural? ”No. Woodward has always been a bit wacky. Sam has trained himself. I think if you asked him he would say he’s just good at adapting.”
So, what kind of international manager would Allardyce make? ”I see him like Bruno Metsu [the Senegal manager at the 2002 World Cup],” says Diouf. ”You joke but you work hard. If you give him the maximum, he gives it back. He wants to know your family is okay. He’s a very good man.” — Â