‘This is a great appointment in my opinion’
Sam Allardyce fixes broken football teams and, make no mistake, England is a broken football team. The play might not be the prettiest but everyone will know their role, something that was absent from the last two tournaments. Do you think the Portuguese are currently complaining about the uninspiring brand of defensive football they played on the way to becoming European Champions? All that matters at international level is results.
We’re now in the era of defensive, compact and organised teams counter attacking and causing upsets. Both Leicester and Portugal have proved that in the past year. Sam is the man of the moment. It’s time he was given a chance to prove that he can live up to his own hubris
‘Allardyce is the best of a bad set of options’
I think this appointment confirms what we all already knew - we’re not really interested in the root and branch overhaul to the game that would be required to consistently produce an effective national side. Were we ever likely to give Eddie Howe 10 years in the job and authority to change the footballing landscape?
If it’s really not an option to look at a generation-lasting recalibration of the way we produce young footballing talent in this country, then maybe the best bet is to go with a manager with a proven record of extricating the last ounce of performance from mediocre groups of players.
I personally can’t stand his persona or the brand of football he’s mostly played, but the hope would be that he’s at least bold enough to be his own man, fit round pegs in round holes, and dismiss reputation and media adulation when deciding a player’s worth to the kind of team he’s looking to play
‘Less pretty, more effective’
Allardyce isn’t going to a popular appointment with the rank and file, but for me I’m not sure there were any better candidates. He’s certainly a better shout than Steve Bruce and I’m not convinced Jurgen Klinsmann would have been a huge success either.
Hopeful what Allardyce will do is identify a system and a way of playing and then pick players who best suit that system. For me where Roy Hodgson went wrong is he picked his squad first and then tried to shoehorn them into a system. It just didn’t work. Sven, Capello and McLaren were all guilty to various degrees of doing the same.
I doubt England under Allardyce will be pretty but they may end up being a bit more effective than what some other recent versions of the England team have been
‘Who was next on the list? Barry Fry?’
Wow. Just, wow. What exactly are the FA hoping to avoid relegation from?
It’s really quite depressing that when England have the best group of young players since the mid 90s, and the most technically competent youth teams we’ve probably ever had, the FA decide to take England even further back into the dark ages with this appointment. Just when you thought we couldn’t have more of a dinosaur of an England manager than Roy Hodgson. Who was next on the list? Barry Fry? Best prepare for a World Cup qualifying campaign of hoofing it to Andy Carroll.
That the self-confessed ‘I know nothing about football’ Martin Glenn is going to entrust the development and philosophies of all England age groups to a man whose tactical acumen is still rooted in the past when England assumed they were better than everyone because ‘we invented the game’ is staggering, even for the FA’s huge levels of incompetence
‘He’s capable of producing sides greater than the sum of their parts’
As long as expectations are kept within the bounds of realism I think this will turn out to be a decent appointment.
Given how he has a finite number of players to chose from, it’s important that any England manager is capable of getting the best from the players at his disposal. Allardyce has shown at Bolton, Blackburn and Sunderland that he’s capable of producing sides greater than the sum of their parts.
As an added bonus he seems to be content to ignore the media games. This will probably lead to his eventual downfall, but it’ll be nice for him to give a bit back to the mouth-breathers who make up a significant proportion of this country’s journalists
‘Let’s stay positive’
There was one realistic English candidate for the job. Which for a nation of our size, with the pyramid of leagues and the amount of managers, coaches, players reaching the end of their playing lives is shocking. ONE realistic English candidate.
Still, let’s stay positive. I think Allardyce will wield the team together, make them mentally tougher, better prepared for matches and will probably eliminate the sort of tactical thinking that led to “Kane? Yes, he takes the corners.”
I would say that it won’t be fun to watch, but I can’t think of too many times in the last 20 years when England have been fun to watch. Long live Big Sam! Let’s go for it!!
‘Allardyce has regularly performed well with mediocre players’
England’s problem is a lack of technique and tactical nous at player level. These are not things that are going to be fixed by an international manager, but rather at youth level. In the meanwhile Allardyce has regularly performed well with mediocre players, getting the best out of what he has in front of him.
To those thinking it is a bad appointment, again I would say what England needs is a change at academy level, as the Germans had in the early 2000s, prior to even caring about a world class manager
‘Allardyce might pick a player or two who can actually cross a ball’
Apart from the Germany game earlier this year I can’t remember the last time England put good quality crosses into the box. It’s what we’ve historically been good at, and that’s the part of the game we’ve ditched
‘Smarter than people give him credit for’
Allardyce is a first class choice. Smarter than people give him credit for, probably due to snobbery about his provincial accent and style. He has a pioneering interest in sports science dating back to his Bolton days, and is far more tactically astute than critics will conceed. Sam has regularly outsmarted managers considered to be “world class,” and his incredible record against Arsene Wenger has driven him to distraction. He has a great record in getting the best out of both older players and youth, and players both current and ex have spoken of their love and admiration for him as a manager and a father figure
‘He is thick skinned and believes his own judgement’
As a West ham fan I think Sam is the right choice. While at West Ham, the football was uninspiring but effective . He did the job he was asked to do and I will always be grateful for his time there. He got us promoted and kept us in the Premiership . In his last season we even started to play a more adventurous style, though this petered out from Christmas onwards.
I know he’ll get England organised, he will work to a system and will fit the right players into the places where they feel comfortable . This will bring confidence. He has done this time and again at league clubs and I hope he will be successful at international level. He is thick skinned and beleieves his own judgement. This will serve him well when the entire nation and press will be on his back
‘The national team has gone too far down the wrong road to ever turn back’
A lot of people are missing the point about the English national team. Most players in and around the national squad are spoilt by the obscene amount of cash thrown their way by braodcasting deals. The only motivation they display is for more money and better contracts. Playing football at the highest level means nothing to them, hence the abject displays in recent tournaments. Some other international teams have players with similar motivations, but they still manage to retain some pride and passion for representing their country. Unfortunately for fans of the national team, this downward spiral is irreversible, we’ve gone too far down the wrong road to ever turn back. At least Sam Allardyce is the type of manager to take some of the players down a peg or two, but that’s about all
‘It looks like a good fit’
Allardyce has got a strong track record of getting the best out of an average squad so it looks like a good fit. The football isn’t going to be easy on the eye but to be honest I can only think of a dozen or so England performances in the last 30 years that were. Good luck Big Sam
‘Get used to 4-5-1 dressed up as something else that your pretty little head just wouldn’t understand’
As a West Ham fan who gave up a season ticket due to the boredom of watching his teams, I’d warn England fans that they have some tedium ahead. Allardyce usually arrives with a club at a low ebb and sorts them out. In a curious way, the dross that went before allows him some time as the fans will convince themselves that watching his boring, pragmatic football is better than whatever it was that preceded him. So for England fans in 2016, he’ll seem OK initially as it won’t be Hodgson’s stilted, stunted attempts to get the team playing progressively.
However, whilst I don’t doubt Allardyce has the nous to play better football with better players, with this England team he won’t get that. We might like to think English players are the equal of other top countries but they really aren’t, and that will lead Allardyce to revert to his most comfortable role - that of the arch-pragmatist. England under Allardyce will be the most boring thing you have ever seen in your life, because what are England if not an international version of Sunderland? Get used to respecting the point away from home, creating two chances all game, 4-5-1 dressed up as something else that your pretty little head just wouldn’t understand, and long tedious passages of play with no obvious plan beyond not conceding. Sadly, as I mentioned above, this still sounds vaguely palatable because it’s not really that different than what England fans have been served up for the past thirty years
‘What Allardyce has or hasn’t won before is not relevant’
International football and league football are totally different because of the motivation for playing. Club football is all about money, internationals are not.
What Allardyce has or hasn’t won before is not really relevant. Is he even the best English manager? You could ask if all the managers from Euro 2016 were the best from their country and arguably only Spain’s Vincent Del Bosque was, and maybe Italy’s Antonio Conte. And not many won lots of domestic trophies either. Joachim Low wasn’t the best German manager when he got the job. Is Chris Coleman a better manager than Tony Pulis or Mark Hughes? Was Fernando Santos the best Portuguese manager? Not really.
And the players have potential but that’s about it. More importantly they are not a great team, with little or no tournament experience playing together. Even Wales have over 500 combined caps between them, England haven’t even got half of those. They don’t need to pay the best big name foreign manager lots of money, they are not a club. It’s about getting the right manager
