Sam Allardyce was warming to his theme. After skewering both David Cameron and Tony Blair as he reflected on the lack of importance attached to sport in schools these days, Sunderland’s manager proceeded to highlight an apparent hypocrisy surrounding Britain’s 2012 Olympic legacy.
With Alan Shearer, his interviewer for BBC Radio 5 Live, seemingly a little taken aback, Allardyce then embarked on an ode to the TV chef Jamie Oliver’s work with young people. If there is nothing new in that, it was highly unusual to hear a resident of planet football venturing into political waters.
In the increasingly sanitised, public relations-dominated, Premier League, most modern managers balk at offering the blandest opinion on current affairs. Players, meanwhile, tend to have the remotest hint of original left-field thinking media trained out of them.
This possibly represents one explanation for the lack of leadership and character managers so frequently claim 21st century footballers lack but the head coaches, too, can find themselves prisoners of the day’s tactical orthodoxy.
“Younger managers have become very protective of their image,” said Allardyce. “It’s very important for them to be seen to be doing things ‘the right way’. They seem to see 4-2-3-1 as the way forward at the moment. I’m a bit more flexible than that.”
This refusal to be a slave to fashion explains Sunderland’s shift to a 3-5-2 system that seems to be offering previous defensive liabilities, including Patrick van Aanholt, Sebastián Coates and Younès Kaboul, new leases of life while creating room for two strikers.
When the formation’s launch coincided with a 6-2 defeat at Everton its future seemed uncertain. No matter, Allardyce had seen sufficient promise to persist with it and has been rewarded with last Monday’s win at Crystal Palace and this patient undoing of an expertly organised Stoke City.
Even before the moment, two minutes into the second half, when Ryan Shawcross was shown a second yellow card for felling Duncan Watmore, Stoke very rarely looked like scoring. Mark Hughes felt his centre-half’s sending off was harsh but, by lunging into a series of rash tackles, Shawcross had been flirting with dismissal from the first-half moment Watmore replaced the injured Jermain Defoe.
If this enforced substitution proved an initially disguised blessing – the England Under-21 forward effectively switched the lights on for Sunderland, running Stoke ragged with his blend of acceleration, trickery-studded directness and sheer determination – Allardyce deserves credit for asking Watmore to replace Defoe.
With £30m worth of attacking talent in Fabio Borini, Jeremain Lens and Adam Johnson also warming the bench at the time, it was a big call to introduce a 21-year-old who has started only one Premier League game.
Allardyce can be tactically cautious but such conservatism is offset by a perhaps surprisingly bold streak. Whereas his predecessors, Dick Advocaat and Gus Poyet, remained resolutely unwilling to offer Watmore a chance, Sunderland’s current manager has acted on a “hunch” that the economics graduate could help reinvigorate his struggling side.
Advocaat had dropped Van Aanholt after a series of horror shows at left-back but a player whose positioning seems to have improved under new management looks reborn as a wing-back and scored the opener. It arrived after Johnson, by now off the bench, rolled a short free-kick to the Dutchman, whose vicious left-foot shot defied even Jack Butland.
Allardyce, who, controversially, withdrew his captain, John O’Shea, as he switched to a back four in the wake of Shawcross’s departure, said: “I’m very pleased to say Adam and Patrick used their initiative on the first goal. It wasn’t one we practised on the training ground and I give them every credit for using their intelligence in that situation.”
There was still time for Watmore to underline his potential by outpacing Philipp Wollscheid to burst into the box and cap an excellent day by directing a low shot across Butland and into the bottom corner. Their manager may refuse to follow fashion but Sunderland – who have won three of Allardyce’s six games in charge – are out of the bottom three and clearly benefiting from some lateral thinking.
Man of the match Duncan Watmore (Sunderland)
