Questions about Allardyce's spell in charge

[Bruce Rioja]

as a kid my uncle used to take me to Old Trafford

Bit harsh. We just used to get sent to our rooms.

[Sponge]

as a kid my uncle used to take me to Old Trafford

Bit harsh. We just used to get sent to our rooms.

[jonnybwfc]

From memory, Big Sam said his best signing for us, was N'Gotty ... might be wrong though. BRUUUUUNOOOOOO

[Bruce Rioja]

From memory, Big Sam said his best signing for us, was N'Gotty ... might be wrong though. BRUUUUUNOOOOOO

Ahhh, the days when we were rock solid at the back. Seems such a distant memory now.

[Lord Kangana]

I find it typically pejorative that one of the opening questions includes the word "veterans".

Unless I'm mistaken, most weren't (the only three that spring to mind are Djorkaeff, Speed and Hierro) - and ultimately Newcastle dropped a massive bollock selling us Speed, a man who had the fitness of a twentysomething, and they knew it afterwards.

[bw@bw]

Allardyce was a managerial genius - not just a manager / coach.

My first match was in 1962 - we were relegated from First Division 2 years later, and whilst we occasionally got back from the depths, we were never better than a yo-yo team.

Then we had a period under Allardyce unlike any in my lifetime. We were respected by all and feared by most. (Hence the Wenger, Souness type comments).

As others have said - Allardyce changed the business model for promoted teams. No more mediocre players on huge transfer fees and generous contracts who then bankrupted you when you went down. save the money on transfer fee, put it in the salary and buy the best players you can find.
Usually those players were flawed or out of favour at Top Clubs (Real Madrid, Inter Milan and AC, PSG, Liverpool, ManUre, Galatasaray) not from the teams who had just got relegated.

It is a testament to his recruitment abilities that we have to debate on here who was his best signing - from a list that includes Okocha (free) Djorkaeff (free) Campo (free) Hierro (free) Anelka (£8m) Diouf (£4m) Speed (free?) SKD (free). That collection of players had cost their previous clubs over £100m - and we paid less than £15m for them - which we got back when Anelka was sold.

For me, what I really remember most was our long passing game. Not the lump it up to SKD version but the spells when Djorkaeff and Okocha would put together 3 or 4 60 yard crossfield passes that were a sight to behold. And even they would have to bow down to Hierro, who could land a 70 yard pass on a sixpence and take half the opposition out of the game with one touch.
In the end though - Youri Djorkaeff is simply the best player I have ever seen, or am ever likely to see in a Wanderers shirt.
(And Youri said in one interview that Sam was the manager that he most enjoyed playing for - some compliment)

He led the way in Sports Science in this country.
Which also changed the business model, because he could operate with a smaller squad. Spend £1m on an army of sports scientist to get the top players on the pitch rather than spend it on another overpaid mediocre squad player.
And the sports scientists included top notch sports psychologists, so that our team went out KNOWING they could beat anybody.

The MD of ProZone told me that his firm owed its present success to the breakthrough given to them by two Premier League managers of the time - Sam Allardyce and one other (even more surprising). Sam was doing Moneyball years before the film.

He introduced 4-5-1 to this country as the formation that allowed a team to beat more talented opposition - followed not long after by Mourinho, and then copied by all and sundry - that formation allowed us to win more than our share of away games and get up and stay up with a squad that was barely championship standard at first.

He was smart enough to modify the tactics for Arsenal - who had their own way of playing out of defence then through the midfield- his backroom squad analysed Arsenal's patterns and blocked their supply at source. Whinger hated it. Others copied Sam and Arsenal have won nothing much since.

His reputation for pragmatism really comes from two things. Firstly - he was told by Sir Alex rednose at the start of his career that if you don't get results, you will not get a chance to put your philosophy into effect - so get the results first. Secondly, even allowing for the talent he recruited, he has spent almost all of his career running clubs with limited budgets who had to outsmart wealthier opposition with better players.

I think he has been a manager for about 20 years, and has taken his team to higher position than the year before on all except 2 occasions - one of those was when we slipped from 6th to 8th (shame).


And yet.....
It did go backwards in the last couple of years - as others used Prozone to out-Sam him.
We became a caricature of ourselves at times, playing for position, not possession
The Panorama allegations never totally went away.

We bottled out of strengthening the squad when we had a chance of the CL and he lost interest.

The world has moved on and caught up with him, maybe overtaken him.

The football world has changed - these days the stars he brought to us would most likely head off to China or North America or the Middle east (Drogba Lampard etc etc).

He was leading edge at the time.

In similar circumstances he seems to have got a very ordinary and low budget West Ham team punching above their weight amongst the moneybags teams.

He has been overtaken by fashion and economics, but not by results.

[Worthy4England]

Great post, fella.

[Guest]

For me the best of these players was Okocha, have you ever seen anyone before or since do what he could do? if messi or Rooney or someone did those things people would talk about it all the time, they weren't frivolous skills either they worked and came off consistently. I doubt I'll ever see any player in any team play like that, and to see him do it at the bok was a real pleasure. "you've only come to see Okocha"

Cheers for your reply. Researching Allardyce's Bolton led me to re-watching Okocha's making a fool of Ray Parlour in 2003, chipping him on two separate occasions in stoppage time, in different ways! A real class act, one of my favourite players to watch and one of the defining players of a Premier League era.

[Guest]

- Was Allardyce's style of football as bad as the media/other fans tended to portray it?

Less so in the early days, more so later on. But anyway, Allardyce then used it to galvanise his team with an us vs them mentality, rather than pandering to these West Ham fans with the whole 'playing football the right way' bollocks. As I'm sure Sam has said on many times, the right way to play football is to win.

...can't he be both under-rated and over-achieving?

Thanks for the reply - and I like the first part of what you said, quoted above. It annoys me when I hear fans drone on about playing the 'right way'. Think it's got a lot to do with Guardiola's Barcelona, some people have an issue with anything other than short-passing triangles.

Also on your latter point, you are correct! Apologies, that was my tired wording.

[Guest]

You asked for significant memories ... there any many, many but my fave was ; for Hierro's final ever match after a glittering career he booked out a huge area of the West Stand and had his family and friends, many ex-players and legends he's played with and against. We beat Everton on that last day and it had obviously been arranged with Sam that he'd be substituted 5 minutes before the end so he could grandstand his exit. His number was raised and the ground stood in ovation (except the Everton fans, always lacking in grace some who'd stood throughout actually sat down for that minutes ... tosser). He shook hands and did hugs with team mates, the referee came over and shook his hand, a few Everton players did .... except Duncan Ferguson who tried to speed matters up and came over to shove him off the pitch. To no effect thankfully and he left the arena to an ovation I'll never forget.

That's a nice anecdote, thank you for telling. It's a shame I couldn't find any footage of the moment online, would have been nice to watch.

[Guest]

Ibrahim Ba - the french megastar signed for us, and was deemed not good enough and booted out in less than 12 months
Mario Jardell - golden boot winner - also given the boot for not being good enough to play for the wanderers

I hope the article you write takes note of all the positives you get on here, and that you're not going to try to do another hatchet job on him

I've taken note of what you point out here - that a good portion of his signings were not hits. I think it's balanced out by how much he saved in transfer fees. All in all I'd say his was a very astute transfer policy.

And on your second point - I have to be objective, but I like Big Sam. I think he's criminally under-rated and the main point of my writing this piece is to bring to light in full detail the visionary aspects of his time at Bolton. Not just the transfer policy, but the use of data/performance analysis.

I'll post the article in this thread (if I'm allowed to post links) when it goes online. I'd love to know what you all think, and I hope my writing does the period justice.

[Guest]

I find it typically pejorative that one of the opening questions includes the word "veterans".

Unless I'm mistaken, most weren't (the only three that spring to mind are Djorkaeff, Speed and Hierro) - and ultimately Newcastle dropped a massive bollock selling us Speed, a man who had the fitness of a twentysomething, and they knew it afterwards.

A good point raised, though my use of the word was not pejorative in intent. Rather, I'd say that Allardyce's willingness to sign veterans such as Speed, Hierro, Djorkaeff was a positive statement of how well thought out Allardyce was in the transfer market.

And you're absolutely right, my use of the word 'veterans' isn't entirely accurate. Players such as Campo and co were perhaps considered past their best at the time they joined Bolton, but that just meant they were undervalued. In other cases Allardyce signed outcasts (Davies - considered not good enough by Southampton & Blackburn) and Diouf (had a terrible reputation in England at the time) and gave them a home in his team.

Either way, I'm fully on board with the policy. Clearly Allardyce was able to see something most others couldn't.

[Guest]

As others have said - Allardyce changed the business model for promoted teams. No more mediocre players on huge transfer fees and generous contracts who then bankrupted you when you went down. save the money on transfer fee, put it in the salary and buy the best players you can find.

The MD of ProZone told me that his firm owed its present success to the breakthrough given to them by two Premier League managers of the time - Sam Allardyce and one other (even more surprising). Sam was doing Moneyball years before the film.

The football world has changed - these days the stars he brought to us would most likely head off to China or North America or the Middle east (Drogba Lampard etc etc).

A fantastic post, thanks. I'm glad you mentioned Moneyball, in retrospect I see a good bit of that in what Allardyce was doing at Bolton. I recently read a book - Soccernomics - which showed that salary is far more relevant than transfer fee in terms of its correlation with league position. The book was published in 2009, but Allardyce seemed to understand all that well before then.

Also a good point on players heading off to China, North America or Middle East. Times have changed.

[Bruce Rioja]

Hi Guest. Something I'd really like you to mention is that we never lost a player, good, bad or indifferent due to homesickness. Not even the likes of Dwight Pezzarossi that pitched up from Guatemala and never kicked a ball for the 1sts. Allardyce absolutely went out of his way to make players feel at home, such as getting in touch with Bolton's Jamaican community leaders when we signed the 19 year old Ricardo Gardner.

[KeyserSoze]

Hi Guest. Something I'd really like you to mention is that we never lost a player, good, bad or indifferent due to homesickness. Not even the likes of Dwight Pezzarossi that pitched up from Guatemala and never kicked a ball for the 1sts. Allardyce absolutely went out of his way to make players feel at home, such as getting in touch with Bolton's Jamaican community leaders when we signed the 19 year old Ricardo Gardner.

Was allardyce at the club when we signed Ricky? Thought that was todd. Or was it shortly after todd got the boot.

[twilight]

Think it was Todd who signed Gardner. Was it 1997 or '98 we signed him?

[Bruce Rioja]

Hi Guest. Something I'd really like you to mention is that we never lost a player, good, bad or indifferent due to homesickness. Not even the likes of Dwight Pezzarossi that pitched up from Guatemala and never kicked a ball for the 1sts. Allardyce absolutely went out of his way to make players feel at home, such as getting in touch with Bolton's Jamaican community leaders when we signed the 19 year old Ricardo Gardner.

Was allardyce at the club when we signed Ricky? Thought that was todd. Or was it shortly after todd got the boot.

Oooooh, you're right. However, he spent all but one seasons under Allardyce. I remember reading summat in the Evening News about it. Anyway, my overall point that no-one ever went home because they were homesick still stands.

[thebish]

is ricardo still around? i reckon he could still do a job at left back... get him signed...

[Guest]

Hi Guest. Something I'd really like you to mention is that we never lost a player, good, bad or indifferent due to homesickness. Not even the likes of Dwight Pezzarossi that pitched up from Guatemala and never kicked a ball for the 1sts. Allardyce absolutely went out of his way to make players feel at home, such as getting in touch with Bolton's Jamaican community leaders when we signed the 19 year old Ricardo Gardner.

Hi Bruce, sorry to say the article is already written and sent off. This is another really interesting point, but I'll have to leave it for someone else to write about! I did mention how invested in Bolton the players he signed were. One nice video I came across was this interview with Stelios. At around 4:26 he is asked to give a message to the Bolton fans, and he just says "I have no words." Quite poignant I thought.

Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrJkZWjBXmM&safe=active" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Bruce Rioja]

is ricardo still around? i reckon he could still do a job at left back... get him signed...

'Only' 36. I'd have him there before Moxey in a breath.