Sam Allardyce

[Craig_H]

I was listening to the radio after the games today and a West Ham fan who'd rung up, was criticising Blackburn for their style of play, all brutishly aggressive and long balls all day long. The 'Bolton of old' he described them as.

This got me wondering about someone like Sam Allardyce, and the manner in which he gets his teams to play. Obviously at Bolton, they were well known for that kind of 'football'.

Allardyce, like most people who work in football, must surely be a fan of the sport. He must love football.

So what is it, that gets him setting up teams to play in such a manner which is abhorrent to footballing purists?

I appreciate that without skillful and technically sound players, things are more difficult and perhaps you do have to play to your strengths, but there are enough 'inferior' sides who still try to play proper football rather than kick and rush.

All of Allardyce's sides play this way. The Newcastle fans disliked him because of how he got them played, taking them away from the 'entertaining football' they once had. Why does he set up teams like this?

Is it just because of the lack of ability? Or does he genuinely like this style? Does he genuinely believe it's the best way to get results?

And more to the point, the real question i'm curious about, is if (and dont shudder, this is just hypothetical) he was in charge of us, with obviously better footballers (despite this season's evidence to the contrary), would he STILL play his type of anti-football?

Interested in people's thoughts on this.

[Exiled_red]

I think at unfashionable clubs with limited transfer budgets it's probably the best way to get points, if you consider us last season when such clubs came Anfield and tried to play football we'd tear them apart, if the come and play negative, park the bus and get amongst us with their physical nature and use long balls to attack, they're much more likely to get points.

I guess most managers would love to see their teams play total football but it's a results based game, and flair players are expensive.

[Craig_H]

Do you think he'd do it differently at a big club with money though?

Newcastle played dire stuff under him and they had better players.

[Tatterdemalion]

I think he's one of those people who equates his own mediocre success in the past with a successful formula for the future. I honestly believe that he thinks setting teams out to 'fight' is the right way to approach the game. I don't believe he stops for a minute to wonder whether it makes for attractive football. He's just trying to get on and make a living (or killing) from it, because he can't do anything else.

He doesn't love them game, he beats and rapes it.

[Exiled_red]

Do you think he'd do it differently at a big club with money though?

Newcastle played dire stuff under him and they had better players.

I think if he'd been given more time they would have improved and played a better game, before he came in they were leaking goals, I think he needed to build them up from the back first. They would have had a decent amount of money to spend and once they got the defence sorted I think they would have played better stuff than they did in the few months he was there and the way his Bolton side had played previously. This is just my opinion and I guess we'll never know for sure what he'd do (unless he gets another job at a big club)