On the last day of the 2020/21 Premier League season, West Brom went to Elland Road, relegated and beaten. They went six games without a win and lost three on the turn. In front of home supporters, Leeds scored three late consolation goals in violation of the Trade Descriptions Act for the first time in 17 years in the top flight.
Leeds finished ninth. West Brom, then led by Sam Allardyce, did not return.
Did anyone really think that Leeds United and Allardyce would meet so soon and with such bizarre friendliness? That this club, which has finally found an identity under the leadership of Marcelo Bielsa, will come to a button labeled “BigSamismo” in less than two years?
While Leeds are inherently tied to their own disaster, they could very well set a new record. Allardyce is Seth Johnson’s contract offer for Gen Z. It’s not 4D chess; this is a 2D buckaroo.
Do you think even he foresaw this? When asked on the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast in February (I promise it’s all true), Allardyce Leeds said they knew where he was, urged them to call him, and repeated that he wasn’t refusing, but it was nothing more than a slight mockery of himself and the eternally distant dream of a man who would rather succeed in football than talk about it into a microphone.
We came with Bielsa and we could go down with Allardyce.
If there’s anything else that best portrays the Premier League laughing at your good intentions before tearing them apart, breaking your spirit and ridiculing princes, it’s Leeds United’s slow retreat from their own tactical ideals.
march together? Barely walking, mass of splinter groups and cliques.
If the answer is Allardyce in 2023, then what is the question? Who would have been a good option five years ago? Who is the perfect guest on the Keys and Gray podcast? Something like a pint of wine? But what it really boils down to is this: Name a manager whose name isn’t Javi Gracia. Leeds have already broken the glass “on an emergency basis” and now they only have cuts on their hands.
That’s the strength of Allardyce’s personality, it feels like he’s constantly stuck in the shadows, out of reach, either fresh off work or about to get one.
He can always explain how he could have played better, how foreign coaches have made English football boring despite scoring goals (yes, actually, check it out), like all Club X needs, Allardyce’s dance is a hand around your shoulder while the leg is kicking your ass straight.
But that hasn’t been the case for a long time. Allardyce may seem like a regular in a corner of the Premier League, but he has played 28 games in the past five years.
It was all at West Brom where he brought the team two points from safety, won four games and dropped them by 13 points. While you can make valid comments about the condition in which Slaven Bilic left West Brom, this was not a rescue mission.
This reflects the declining influence and use of Allardyce. He was once a signal player in the relegation zone, the king of the England managers’ dining club.
Now Allardyce is like pouring white wine on a red wine stain on a carpet: you’re not sure if it will solve the mess, and you suspect the solution might be something of a myth, but the carpet is ruined anyway. so you can’t make it worse.
There is no reason to do this work. Leeds games are terrible, their form is terrible, Allardyce has very little time to work and is in a ‘non-committal’ relationship and will only be hired for the next four games.
Long-term thinking should pay double dividends, not desperate doodles in the League Managers Association Handbook 2015. This should be the epitaph for Leeds staying on top, not their salvation.
And more, and more, and more bloody. You can see the sparkle in their eyes and the smile. You hear “The boys are back in town” from the speaker in the lobby. You can imagine Richard Keys’ face as he yells “Welcome back, big man” on his smartphone. You wonder if making your opponent difficult enough is enough to stop the slide.
You cannot convince yourself that this will ever work. But you can’t let your pride precede your downfall when you categorically say it isn’t. Big Sam will return in 2023. And nothing else makes sense.
Source: I News
I’m Dave Martin, and I’m an experienced journalist working in the news industry. As a part of my work, I write for 24 News Reporters, covering mostly sports-related topics. With more than 5 years of experience as a journalist, I have written numerous articles on various topics to provide accurate information to readers.