Allardyce has left Crystal Palace to spend more time with his family but he will be in demand among struggling clubs next winter and if more downtime really is key, Scotland and Wales should try to tempt himConsidering Sam Allardyce did not actually win a great deal, he unquestionably overachieved in his managerial career, taking his knowhow into a number of difficult situations and always coming out on the credit side of the ledger.English football will be a quieter and less colourful place without him, though precisely because Allardyce projected his personality on the game so forcefully – he even managed to be too large and unshushable for the England job – few will readily believe the professional game has...
The Palace manager usually promises solidity and some clubs set their sights higher but that snooty attitude can spell troubleQueuing up for some liquid refreshment at one of the country’s overcrowded beauty spots at the weekend, it was impossible not to overhear the excitable football chatter of a couple of Crystal Palace supporters nearing the bar.This was a day before the prodigious result against Arsenal, so the Palace pair were not enthusing about their best performance of the season, they were simply reassuring themselves that other results in the relegation zone were going their way and thanking their lucky stars they had Sam Allardyce piloting them up the table. Related: Arsenal’s latest bruising beating leaves Arsène Wenger at point of...
Sacking managers is the traditional response for teams in trouble but there are no easy ways to beat the drop and time is running out for the top flight’s bottom sixSack the manager? Keep the manager? Sell your best player and import seven new ones, five on loan? Go warm‑weather training in Dubai? Cancel the Gulf trip?Switch to a sweeper system? Revert to a flat back four? Play two up front? Keep the faith with a lone striker? Go cold‑weather training in New York? Go lukewarm‑weather training in Benidorm? Abolish days off? Start regretting Champions League progress? Related: Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend’s action Continue reading...
After 14 months of failure in front of their home fans, Sam Allardyce has to throw his signings in at the deep end to have any chance of staving off relegationThose bleary-eyed Crystal Palace players who had filed into the main meeting room upstairs at the club’s training centre early on Sunday morning did so with a sense of dread. The next few hours were spent revisiting the horrors of that first-half capitulation to Sunderland, wincing at the sight of panic setting in at the first setback against the division’s bottom club, or at the paralysis which undermined any hope of recovery. A ninth home defeat had condemned this side to a place in the bottom two.Sam Allardyce and his...
Sam Allardyce says Bolton was where his dreams became reality but now, in the FA Cup, he wants his first win as Crystal Palace managerAs Sam Allardyce pondered a return to his old stomping ground, he said “it sticks in my teeth” to refer to the home of Bolton Wanderers as the Macron Stadium, then corrected himself when he remembered that the sportswear manufacturer also has its name on the kit of his new club, Crystal Palace. It was an amusing and forgivable slip from a man who had plenty of other things on his mind before an FA Cup tie that gave him cause to reflect on how far he has come in his career while figuring out how...