sport news Sam Allardyce meets old club Newcastle on Saturday but his spell with the Toon ... trends now
Sam Allardyce did not expect the sack as Newcastle manager. It was a grey Wednesday in January 2008 when, at the club’s training ground, a message was relayed that he was needed for a meeting with chairman Chris Mort at St James’ Park.
Assuming it was transfer business — he wanted Arsenal’s Lassana Diarra and Manchester United’s Wes Brown — he caught a lift with a member of staff across town. The compact car was missing a wheel trim — a low-budget hearse, on reflection. Allardyce was still wearing his club tracksuit and gold chain around his neck. A golden handshake, however, was waiting for him in the boardroom.
Not that Allardyce felt like shaking anyone’s hand. After just eight months, 24 games and with the team 11th in the Premier League, he was stunned. Mort said they would sort the exact details of severance later but Allardyce, as was his right, refused to move. Finally, after five hours and via phone calls to lawyers in London, terms were agreed.
Newcastle’s players were shocked, too, learning of the news via television and phone calls from journalists. That is not to say some of them were not relieved.
Allardyce had landed on Tyneside in a helicopter in May, with an ego the size of a jumbo jet. His stock was high after his work at Bolton, but not nearly as high as his opinion of himself. With experienced, international stars such as Michael Owen, Shay Given and Nicky Butt, some felt a little more humility was necessary.
Sam Allardyce arrived on Tyneside with the ego the size of a jumbo jet after working wonders with Bolton
Soon however his reign turned sour - with supporters, and some players, never taking to him
Mike Ashley (left) was all too happy to settle the extortionate bar bills of the pre-season trip
One source said: ‘He came with a lot of ideas around sports science, preparation, recovery and data. That was all well and good, but it was as if he was saying everything the players had been doing their entire careers was wrong. It rubbed people up the wrong way almost immediately.’
A pre-season trip to the Austrian town of Stegersbach did not go down well, either. Not as well as the ale down the throats of Allardyce and his staff, that is. It is said the drinking sessions took precedence over training sessions and players were miffed when some club staff stank of alcohol during morning workouts.
‘A stag do’ — they played golf and went canoeing — was how one of those present described it, and a five-figure bar bill — brandy, cigars and all — was happily settled by the club, by now under the ownership of lager-swilling Mike Ashley. Indeed, the man who appointed Allardyce, co-owner Freddy Shepherd, was gone within a month of his arrival.
But the drinking culture was at odds with the manager’s obsession with sports science and medicine. New backroom staff, from analysts to psychologists, as well as laptops and state-of-the-art equipment were arriving at the training ground almost by the hour. Nutrition was reviewed and Allardyce ordered a reduction on pasta and potatoes. There were nine signings, too.
On the practice pitches, the manager was mic’d up to booming speakers on the touchline, using them to deliver his message. He wanted his team to get the ball forward quickly. When goalkeeper Given booted it downfield for target man Mark Viduka, players would laugh at the sound of Allardyce salivating through the speakers… ‘Oooohhhh’.
Some liked his man-management and, to this day, speak well of his ‘old school’ values in that regard. But they joked about the tactics, insisting the team of
