CAPE TOWN: Let’s cut to the chase here. Had Sam Allardyce won as many trophies as he’s given interviews bemoaning the fate of English managers he’d have spent last week leading Manchester United. Instead he was sitting on a couch in Doha retreading a tired old complaint about Premier League owners discriminating against elite domestic coaches like himself.
“I think that you are almost deemed as second-class because it’s your country,” said Allardyce on The Keys & Gray Show. “I think it’s a real shame on the fact that we are highly educated, highly talented coaches now with nowhere to go and nothing to achieve in terms of trying to get to that top level.”
Allardyce is 63. He has been a Premier League manager at six different clubs for most of the period since he took Bolton Wanderers into England’s top tier via a 2001 playoff. Allardyce would still be a Premier League manager had he not elected to resign his position at Crystal Palace in May shortly after earning a multimillion-pound bonus for keeping the London club up.
The only trophy Allardyce has to show for more than 25 years as a “highly educated, highly talented” coach is a League of Ireland title won with Limerick in 1992. Only twice in his long Premier League career has he delivered more than 1.5 points per game across a season, the last occasion being the 1.53 point average that elevated Bolton to a seventh-place finish in 2007.
The reward for his achievement in combining astute (if eventually financially crippling) recruitment of overseas talents with advanced sports science and effective tactical organization was the first of two high-profile appointments of his career. Allardyce was Mike Ashley's manager at Newcastle at a time in which the English owner was investing aggressively in talent.
Allardyce bought poorly, drew the ire of the Newcastle support, and was sacked by January. Eight years later, following spells at Blackburn, West Ham United and Sunderland, “Big Sam” was appointed to the second big position of his career. By his own account England manager was “the role I have always wanted.”
“For me, it is absolutely the best job in English football,” added Allardyce. “I will do everything I can to help England do well and give our nation the success our fans deserve. Above all, we have to make the people and the whole country proud.”
Some 67 days later, Allardyce resigned as England manager having been filmed by a national newspaper allegedly offering advice on how to circumvent rules on third-party ownership of footballers, while discussing a £400,000 ($529,000) deal to represent an Asian investment company.
If Allardyce has had two opportunities “to get to that top level” and blown both, it does not necessarily refute his argument that England’s other “highly educated, highly talented coaches (have) nowhere to go.” Seven have held Premier League positions this season.
Sean Dyche’s Burnley are an impressive seventh in the table, level on points with Liverpool. Anglo-Irish Chris Hughton is 12th at newly-promoted Brighton, Paul Clement 17th at Swansea. Filling out the relegation zone, David Unsworth is Everton’s caretaker with some at the club pushing for a permanent appointment, Eddie Howe has earned many admirers at Bournemouth, and Roy Hodgson is making headway in resurrecting Palace. Leicester City sacked Craig Shakespeare after nine games then rolled over Everton on Sunday with Claude Puel in charge.
Dyche has been pushed as the man most deserving of a step up the ladder for his diligent management of a club whose Premier League wage bill is almost as low as they come. Unlike Allardyce, the 46-year-old doesn’t moan about a glass ceiling. “You say ‘when the big jobs come up it’s never a British name’, but I haven’t actually said that. I said it’s unlikely, but I didn’t say it’s impossible,” Dyche argued.
“‘Is there justice?’ It just seems that, at the minute, it’s unlikely that an English/British manager will get the big jobs. But it doesn’t mean they definitely won’t.”
The argument over “big six” opportunities for “domestic” coaches is a counterfactual one. Over the past decade, Liverpool have appointed one Englishman, one Scot and one Northern Irishman. Manchester United replaced one Scot with another. Tottenham Hotspur employed two self-assured southerners in Harry Redknapp and Tim Sherwood. Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners provided a Welshman, Mark Hughes, with an immense recruitment budget. Only Chelsea and Arsenal have steered clear, and the latter position has been out of circulation to anyone for more than 20 years. Of the decade’s worth of appointees listed above, only Kenny Dalglish at Liverpool lifted a trophy. The last English manager to win significant silverware was Redknapp, whose ruinously financed Portsmouth side pipped Championship opposition to the 2008 FA Cup. No English coach has won the Premier League, a quarter of a century passing since Howard Wilkinson led Leeds United to the old First Division.
It is 20 years since an English manager claimed a European title, Bobby Robson’s 1997 European Cup Winners’ Cup win with Barcelona; a third of century since Joe Fagan coached Liverpool to the European Cup. Those long years send their own message to Allardyce.
There’s a reason the very best usually look elsewhere.
‘English coaches are overlooked for a reason’
‘English coaches are overlooked for a reason’
