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Talking Point

Don't Talk Yourself Out of a Job, Sam

Guest post by Neil Clack

Twenty-five years to the day since the St.Valentines Day Massacre (Oldham 6 West Ham 0, League Cup semi-final). Was it an omen? It certainly was!

To be honest, I thought things had looked a bit ominous the day before, when I read Sam’s column in the Standard on the Friday – he was moaning already about the kick off time, that it was too many games in too few days etc, seemingly oblivious to the fact that West Brom had also played the same number of games in the same number of days. That negativity no doubt filters through to the players. We were already defeated before the match began, in my opinion.

Sam’s post-match excuses on Match of the Day on the Saturday night were virtually word for word what he had written in the Standard the day before, and, going by those words, and the way that you could clearly see the West Ham players were not giving their all against West Brom, it really did look like that, as at Forest last year, the FA Cup is just seen as a big inconvenience for Big Sam.

Sam’s a whinger, and that’s one of the main reasons he made himself unpopular at other clubs he managed, and within football, in general.

And if he’s not careful he could whinge himself out of his job at West Ham.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am not one of the so-called ‘Allardyce-haters’, nor indeed do I subscribe to the view that he should go at the end of the season – I think Sam’s done well at West Ham overall, and for the sake of stability and continuity, something the club has sadly lacked over the last decade or so, I think Sam should stay. If it was down to me, I’d give him a new 2-year contract right now.

But he loses me at times, harping on about fatigue, and constantly, nauseatingly, moaning about referees after every single match, often when the referee’s got the decisions right (Nolan was offside against Man U earlier in the season – the whole world and his wife could see that on the replays. Song’s goal v Arsenal was correctly disallowed because Carroll was standing in an offside position in front of the goalkeeper’s sightline, as MOTD corectly explained at the time.

Against Tottenham on Sunday, it was a clear penalty as Song pushed Kane over in the area, and Noble was rightly booked for shirt-tugging (since when has shirt-tugging been deemed a minor incident that doesn’t merit a booking, Sam? – shirt-pulling is a dirty, cowardly, sneaky act that needs to be eradicated from the game). Sam’s post-match whingeing about the referee made no sense at all. As one of the Tottenham players said the day after, Sam really should just shut up sometimes. He’s beginning to sound like a broken record after every game, and it has no effect now – apart from making him look like an even bigger whinger than his reputation already says he is.

Considering WBA had also played 3 games in 6 days, and had also had injuries leading upto the match against us, and that Tottenham have played more games than any other club this season, including a tough game against Fiorentina on the Thursday before they met us, Sam’s words are beginning to fall upon deaf ears for many of the West Ham faithful now.

Besides, I thought it was pretty much accepted in football now, that Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid had proved the ‘rest’ theories wrong? Last season, his high-pressing, high-tempo team played two games nearly every week throughout their triumphant campaign, winning the Spanish league, and coming within a minute of winning the Champions League final, as well as reaching the semi-final of Spanish Cup, but Simeone never rested any of his players once, claiming that much of the science about player tiredness is mumbo-jumbo nonsence.

Simeone, like Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino, is a protege of current Marseille manager Marcelo Bielsa, whom they both played under when Bielsa was manager of Argentina. It was Bielsa who introduced Pep Guardiola to the concept of all-out attack and high-pressing when Guardiola spent 6 weeks with Bielsa, studying his methods, before taking over as manager of Barcelona.

Central to Bielsa’s high-tempo, high-pressing strategy is that every training session is intense; players have to go flat-out and give 100% in every training session, to reach a higher level of fitness. For Bielsa, the concept of tiredness and players needing resting simply does not exist – that’s something that sports scientists have invented and hoodwinked a lot of managers into believing, blinding them with stats and over-analysis.

There’s a great clip of Bielsa putting his Olympic Marseille players though their paces last summer here – just look at their faces at the end. Click HERE

Bielsa’s Marseille are currently top of the French league, but from a West Ham point of view, it’s interesting that one of the players who didn’t make it through the rigourous pre-season when he first tookover last summer was Morgan Amalfitano. Bielsa felt that Amalfitano lacked the fitness and attitude to play in one of his teams, and the rather unedifying episode that lasted most of last summer, ended with Bielsa banning the player from the training ground. We perhaps saw a flash of that indiscipline during the West Brom match, perhaps proving Bielsa may have had a point about Amalfitano?

All the current speculation over Sam Allardyce’s future at West Ham is completely of the board’s making. They have brought it on the club themselves by not giving Sam a new contract. It’s an extremely unusual situation in football (and naturally the the media are loving it!).

If Sam had had his contract extended by now, we wouldn’t be having a discussion over whether he should go or not, or whom his replacement should be if he does go. Instead, everybody would be looking to the future – the future under Sam – but under the current circumstances, it’s only natural that fans, and the media, are having arguments, and speculating over who the new manager will be.

But poor old Sam really does himself no favours sometimes, even taking on his owners in tit for tat arguments through the pages of the tabloids. He calls his paymaster David Sullivan ‘a gambler’, and how can he seriously defend the signing of Andy Carroll over the owner’s choice of Wilfred Bony? Sam’s digging a grave for himself on that one, surely? He claimed he looked at Carroll’s record before signing him and saw he had a proven record in the Premier League – proven injury record more like!

But the irony of all this is that I once saw Sam Allardyce in the flesh. At a Supporter’s Advisory Board Meeting in 2012, and do you know something, he was completely different from the way he comes across on the TV and newspaper columns. He was funny, charming, up-beat – dare, I say it, likeable even. How is it that we never get that side of him in the media, where he just moans and grumbles about offsides, tiredness, and imagined prejudices against him and his team.

The problem for Sam is that Eastenders and Essex Man and Woman don’t like whingers. They didn’t get through the blitz by moaning about it! They like humour, having a bit of a laugh, and can be a bit flash at times.

It reminds me a little of Harry Redknapp’s last season at West Ham. He too hadn’t signed a new contract (although everyone, including Harry and the Board thought it would be a formality he’d sign at the end of the season), but after the gutting FA Cup quarter final defeat to Tottenham (2-3), the season just petered out into nothing, and Redknapp’s demeanour seemed to change. Gone was the chirpy funny man, replaced by a hangdog expression who moaned a lot about bare bones, not having enough money etc.

I recently read Trevor Brooking’s latest autobiography that mentioned once again that Redknapp’s talk with the Over Land and Sea fanzine contributed to him losing his job (and Brooking should know, considering how close to Terry Brown he was, becoming technical director after Redknapp left). In a nutshell, Redknapp literally talked himself out of the job!

Please Sam, please don’t do the same

And one more thing, my mum says please stop chewing gum with your mouth open. It’s disgusting.

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