Allardyce Gets Delusional

He was never going to out of the headlines for long. Former Newcastle manager and accomplished media-hog, Sam Allardyce has been advancing his theory about why the Tyneside club gave him the boot. Apparently they weren`t big enough for him.

‘I think you can accept it a lot more if you can come to terms with the fact that a good percentage of it was your fault – but that doesn’t apply to me at Newcastle,` he told the People newspaper at the weekend.

‘Newcastle probably wasn’t big enough for me – it didn’t live up to my ambitions in the short time that I was there. And because it didn’t do that the club missed a chance to realise its own ambitions.

‘The more I analyse it, the more I come to the conclusion that it was never about me or results.`

One might argue that Allardyce was sacked too soon. At the time Newcastle were in a higher position than the one in which they finished last season, and the appointment of Kevin Keegan hasn`t exactly galvanised things, but to deny any responsibility for his own demise is deluded.

He often complained about lack of funds at Bolton, but none of his signings at Newcastle were a success. Alan Smith has always been distinctly average and Joey Barton`s recruitment was more to do with Big Sam`s ego than any qualities that the player possessed. Allardyce believed that he, and only he, could turn Barton round. Then there are the zany comedy centre-backs.

The reasons for Allardyce`s failure lie further back. In the last 15 games of his tenure at Bolton, his side got fewer points than the one headed by the man he replaced, Glenn Roeder. He left a small, dispirited squad at the Reebok and signed the dreadful Gerald Cid. Despite his boasts to the contrary he left the Wanderers in a mess.

Allardyce did a good job at Bolton for most of the time he was there, but at the end he`d lost the plot. He was tactically inflexible, continued to pick non-performing players and blamed everyone but himself for his team`s failures. Football managers, just like others, have a sell by date. Big Sam has reached his and had done some time before he joined Newcastle United.