Sport
WHY ALLARDYCE IS NOT THE RIGHT CANDIDATE FOR SUNDERLAND
Roy Keane was right. Sunderland won’t ever be a force in the English top flight again until Chairman Ellis Short has handed the reins over to someone else.
Short has a horrific track record in hiring and firing managers at the Stadium of Light and has been accused on more than one occasions of a “trigger finger.”
You would think he’d have learnt by now.
Favourite for the post recently vacated by Dick Advocaat is Sam Allardyce, the neanderthal football manager who professes to be a forward thinker because he uses ProZone and the like, but who still plays football out of the dark ages.
“Big Sam” was tolerated at West Ham for a time because the east Londoners were getting much needed results. But when the locals decided it was time for some football to be played in the “West Ham way,” Allardyce’s template fell woefully short.
Hit and hope, route one, call it whatever you like. Just don’t try and dress it up as football.
Sunderland’s long-suffering fan base have had enough of not being entertained. Of paying their hard-earned in return for some of the most turgid performances seen in that part of the north east for many a year.
So local bragging rights aren’t an issue at the moment. So what. Even the wins over neighbours Newcastle can’t disguise what a perilous position the Black Cats are in.
Allardyce will work with what he has until January but we can then expect a demand for big money and for his usual cronies to surface. Don’t be at all surprised if Kevin Nolan risks the wrath of the Magpies to join their fiercest rivals for one last big pay day.
It’s all in the usual Allardyce script.
In the short term, Allardyce’s methods usually have some degree of success. But he isn’t as progressive as he would have you believe and it won’t be too long before Short realises that he’s made yet another mistake.
Six managers in four years speaks volumes. For a club as big in the locale and as well supported as Sunderland are, it’s a travesty that they continue to be run in the most amateurish manner.
A club of that size and importance should be looking to the future to their managers, not the past.
Liverpool’s capture of Jurgen Klopp has garnered some of the biggest press attention since Jose Mourinho first announced himself as the “Special One” and West Ham secured Slaven Bilic, one of European football’s hottest managerial properties.
Sunderland should be operating in that kind of marketplace.
If you want to bring the glory days of Phillips and Quinn back, then you need to look a bit further ahead than your bank balance because you get what you pay for.
Allardyce is big on personality but short on delivery. And Short’s delivery of this particular manager will only end in more tears.
