Afternoon all, Chelsea fan here
was watching a season review of the 07/08 season the other week, and one of the games on there was your gutless home defeat to Portsmouth that season
got me wondering about Allardyce's time on Tyneside, and why he walked away from that job with so much sympathy. My Geordie mate tells me he could hardly stand Allardyce less if he managed Sunderland!
what really struck me about that 4-1 was Sam's reaction. he laid into the players for their lack of effort, and the fans for not supporting him enough
now clearly i don't follow your club that closely, and i'll also admit i'm clearly biased as i can't stand the man, but from what i saw i don't see how Allardyce's time at St James' could be characterised as anything other than an abject disaster
he showed himself as clueless tactically-the one manager who failed to get a result against the worst ever Premier League outfit, proved awful in the transfer window bringing in utter garbage like Geremi, Smith and Cacapa on massive wages. his style of play was about as negative as you could imagine. who plays 1 striker up front at home to Derby County
i was one of the few voices saying when you sacked him that you made absolutely the right choice, he had you crawling towards the relegation zone barely even trying to fight back!
what were your impressions?
Allardyce
posted on 11/2/13
posted on 11/2/13
Comment Deleted by Site Moderator
posted on 14/2/13
Allardyce was welcomed as much as any other manager. There was no animosity to him before he came or even early on.
There was repeated stories of him refusing to sign fans' tops, etc, which made a few turn against him, and he blamed the fans for defeats multiple times, but he only got widespread stick when his tactics evidently weren't working yet he kept repeating them like an idiot.
As you say, it speaks volumes that Derby picked up 4 out of their 12 points for the entire season against us when SA was manager. I vividly remember standing there being embarrassed to support my team. No established Premiership club should go to the worst team in Premiership history and play for a draw!
Some of those players were absolute abominations of footballers, embarrassingly bad players; Geremi, Cacapa(!), Faye, Smith. He ended up with a net spend of £18m on ageing Championship players.
I think he would have actually gotten more time if it wasn't for the utterly miserable performances. But it was quite clear early on he'd signed duds, and the results were getting increasingly worse. It was 100% the right decision no matter what people claimed at the time