I don't know whether articles like this are are good thing or bad - if more journos start writing the truth about Sam then he'll be off for the Endland job...

 

It's by John Nicholson (Boro fan)....

 

hers's the link http://www.football365.com/opinion/john_ni...ry_179753.shtml

 

and here's the article....

 

I know this is going to upset a lot of you. And honestly, I'm not just saying it in order to be controversial. I've done some work on this and I've thought about it. Well, a bit. And so I'm taking a deep breath, a slug of tequila and I'm saying, 'Sam Allardyce; he's pretty bloody good actually'.

 

Okay, you can stop laughing now and get up off the floor. I know this is not a popular view and until recently I would have agreed with his critics. But then I looked at the facts and changed my mind.

 

The default opinion about Sam on these pages and elsewhere is that his teams are boring and brutal and he's a crude, old school gobsh*te northerner. His success, such as it is, is based on bullying the opposition and chucking long throw-ins into the box to big-arsed chuffers like Kevin Davies.

 

He is widely held in contempt by many football fans, but recently with the England job available, the knocking has got so bad that I thought I would step back and take a proper look at him and when I did that, I stopped believing the negative hype.

 

The first thing that is wrongly said about Big Fat Sam is that he's actually fat. We're not talking about a Barry Fry-style bloater here. He's actually quite trim for a 52-year-old.

The second thing wrongly said about Sam is he's a stereotypical blunt-speaking northerner. In fact he's from Dudley. Which in my book doesn't make you northern, it makes you from the Midlands.

 

Okay, that's the superficial stuff, what about the football? After seeing Bolton destroy West Ham, who are the top in-form side in the Premiership, I don't think we can say that Bolton play less attractive football than Liverpool or even Chelsea. They crushed the Hammers in the first half.

 

They're not always thrilling, I accept that, but I can say the same thing about every other club in the league at times. Seeing Everton grind out another 1-0 isn't always much fun, but David Moyes for some reason isn't disparaged like Big Sam. Chris Coleman's Fulham are in the bottom five but he's seemingly universally respected as a manager.

 

It's said Bolton are just a long-ball team. But I don't know of a club, except perhaps Arsenal, who don't play the long ball - but perhaps Bolton get more criticism because they're more successful than most. They're also excellent at set plays. This is all part of the game, it's not illegal and a perfectly-executed free-kick is as entertaining as most things in football, except a streaker, fighting or a player vomiting of course.

 

This season only the top three have lost fewer games than Bolton. They haven't been out of the top ten all season and have been in the top six most of the time. If they win their games in hand they'll be fourth. So it's clearly a successful style of football being deployed at the Reebok.

 

They're always accused of being bullies but here's the truth; They're not a dirty side. They've not had anyone sent off in the league this season at all. Which is odd because you can sent off these days for farting noisily near the referee. But their reputation is such that you'd think they kicked every side to pieces.

 

They average less yellow cards than sides like Arsenal and Manchester United. So in fact what Bolton are good at is disrupting the opposition and putting pressure on them right to the fullest extent of the law. Even evil 'he drinks, he drives, he spits in people's eyes' El-Hadji Diouf has only been booked five times.

 

They have the second best defensive home record in the league and only Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea have conceded fewer goals overall this season despite the fact that they conceded five in one match to Chelsea. So he's made Bolton very hard to score against; that's undeniable. They're well-organised, strong and disciplined. Isn't this a good thing?

 

But they're not perfect. It's true they don't score enough goals and if they'd converted three or four of their draws into wins they'd be a shoo-in for a CL place already, that's something that needs working on. However, they've still scored three more than Liverpool.

 

If Bolton have another failing it's that their Academy isn't producing enough quality players. Currently the reserves are bottom of their league and the youth system has, since 1998, really only brought through three players as first-team regulars - Nicky Hunt, Kevin Nolan and Joey O'Brien.

 

However, in Nolan, who is only second to Lampard for scoring goals from midfield this season, they've produced a player that would have been in the England squad ahead of Jermaine Jenas if he played for a high-profile fashionable club.

 

A lot of people will think it's simply not good enough to just bring two Englishmen through to your first eleven and to rely so heavily on overseas players and I think Sam is rightly criticised for that. Oddly though, other managers are called sophisticated and knowledgeable for recruiting talent from all over the world. And to be honest, his success in bringing English players from the youth team to the first team is at least equal to Arsene Wenger.

 

Their game relies on incredible energy and commitment. They look like the fittest side in the league, capable of closing down the opposition in the 90th minute as much as in the first.

 

Sam and his eight-strong Sports Science team must be praised for that. They have a big backroom staff dedicated to keeping players at the peak of performance up to and including a Tai Chi instructor and a pilates expert. This is no old school 'cold sponge and smelling salts' merchant we're talking about, though that's the clich?? some would like to apply to Sam.

 

They also have three full-time performance analysts. There's no place for lazy, uncommitted players to hide at Bolton.

 

Sam has created a culture of analysis and scrutiny that is second to none and that must in part explain how they have achieved so much with players who are not exactly top rank. They can't afford big-name talent, so they have to get the most out of a mixture of journeymen, ageing or ex-internationals and obscure Tunisians.

 

Solid, unremarkable players like Kevin Davies have been made into extremely effective performers. This is all down to Allardyce and his staff optimising players' strengths and minimising the exposure of their weaknesses. It's not just luck.

 

So for a man who is characterised as a bluff grunt, it turns out when you look at the facts that Sam, by any measure, is actually one of the most sophisticated managers in the league who has worked out a way to make his club successful with the limited resources at his disposal. That is a great achievement. He knows he hasn't got players who can play fast free-flowing Arsenal-style football - so does that mean he's supposed to just give up and lose? No, he wins by utilising his players' strengths - that's what any good manager should do and by doing that he's had the upper hand on Wenger recently.

 

And yet all of this is largely ignored in favour of the default view that says Bolton are crap to watch and Sam is a verbal diarrhoea specialist.

 

Now he's never short of a word for the telly and he does bitch and moan as much or more than many managers. His outbursts at congested league fixtures often followed by complaints when they've had a couple of weeks without a game are a bit daft, I know.

 

But no manager speaks sense all the time, all of them are prone to spouting rubbish. Sam is no exception but he surely doesn't deserve the endless disparaging that he gets for a few injudicious comments. Other managers talk rubbish and seem to get away without being called a fat fool. He does get brown-nosed by his mates in the media, especially on Sky, but again, he's not alone in that. Perhaps the criticism he gets is in part a counter-balance to the positive media exposure he gets.

 

His powers of persuasion and motivation just can't be questioned. Look at the list of quality internationals that have passed through the club on his watch. How does he persuade them to go there? I know they're usually at the end of their careers but that's all their finances will allow and I bet they're not getting top dollar at Bolton either.

 

I wonder if this anti-Allardyce world view is nothing more than snobbery or lazy thinking. Perhaps if he was a bit posher and obviously academic he'd get more respect. Maybe it's just an image thing.

 

In an era of promiscuous disloyalty, Sam has stayed at Bolton for over six years and in doing so has showed he's a solid character, something which Curbishley is often praised for. He reportedly turned down the Newcastle job last year. This seems not to count for anything with his critics either though.

 

Other managers with more money at clubs with a bigger status are often said to be better managers. But would Wenger, Benitez, Ferguson, Jol or Mourinho have done any better at Bolton than Sam? There's a good chance Bolton will finish in fourth. Could any of them have achieved that on the same resources at an unfashionable northern club? One thing is almost certain, they couldn't have achieved more.

 

I think it's quite likely that Sam will be the next England manager and I found myself feeling a kind of head-in-hands despair when I first thought about it, but I realise now that I was just being ignorant. I wasn't thinking properly about it.

 

But then I stopped just accepting the received opinion about Sam and looked at the facts and after doing that, to me, his qualifications for the job are better than any other Englishman.

 

Which doesn't necessarily mean he's the best choice or even should be chosen, but if he is, he's not the clown he's often painted as being.

 

Think about it, managing England is primarily about motivation. We know he's an excellent motivator already at Bolton. It's about tactics and I doubt anyone is as informed in that department than Sam is at Bolton.

 

And it's about managing players who are a disparate bunch from all over the country and Europe, which is what Sam has had to do at Bolton with currently about 16 different nationalities on Bolton's books.

 

If he was a more obviously clever-looking and speaking man, that kind of talent to harmonise, motivate and succeed with such a diverse squad would be seen as the ultimate expression of a cultured football man and so maybe it's just snobbery that prevents him getting more plaudits.

 

You might not like him as a bloke, you might not like his style or indeed anything about him personally. But looking at the facts, it's hard to argue that he hasn't been about as successful as it's been possible to be with Bolton and the resources available to him. In fact, he may have over-achieved. Bolton fans love him, maybe it's time more of us felt likewise.

 

He does have a massive head though. And Stuart Pearce has kissed his arse. Lovely.

 

 

That John Nic lad is probably the best journo on the Net!!

There was an article by him not long ago praising Boltons style of play and that we weren't long bal merchants!!

See this is what happens when some one goes and looks at the FACTS and not the same shit that the media and some mangers keep coming out with week in week out , say it often enough and people than take the said shit as gospel

 

Good read

think i prefered the 'fat northern red ginger playin boring long ball' view

 

Makes a refreshing changed to read an unbiased article. Some good points as well

like martin samuel, typical spud!

like martin samuel, typical spud!

 

?????

 

Who's a typical spud?

Martin samuel. NOTW opinionated fat jew (probably)

 

Always pappin shiite. im sure he doesnt even watch football

Nice to see someone giving us credit for once.

Martin samuel. NOTW opinionated fat jew (probably)

 

Always pappin shiite. im sure he doesnt even watch football

 

 

Once sent Samuel an email about 2 years ago, after he critised Big Sam for his use of foreign loan signings in an article in The Times.

He wrote back with a right snoty email saying that he likes Big Sam and has loads of time for him but hated his football ethos at the time of signing big wage johny foreigners on loan.

good read that.. all you seem to hear off peoplke these days is that bolton shouldnt be that high up etc just dirty tactics and luck.. makes a change to see us getting credit..

like martin samuel, typical spud!

 

 

You mean Martin Samuel the West Ham fan ?

 

 

He is totally knob though.

good read that. glad to see someone actually taking stock on what a good job sam has done here!!!!!!!!!!1

Excellent piece!! Couldn't agree more!!!!!! :D/ :D/