Brussels Sprout
7:38 Fri Mar 20
Re: 'We expect five new players minimum' says Dave
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Here you go, griffin:
Sam Allardyce: Nigeria? QPR? Sunderland? If they want me, I’d like to finish job at West Ham
SAM ALLARDYCE
Published: 20 March 2015 Updated: 09:41, 20 March 2015
At the last count I believe I’ve been linked with three jobs this week: Sunderland, QPR and Nigeria!
The first thing I have to say is that, in case no one noticed, I still have a job here at West Ham.
The season is far from over, there are 27 points at stake and it’s time we began helping ourselves to some of them.
I understand why the speculation is there, of course I do. Everyone knows my contract with the club expires at the end of June and, as yet, nothing further has been decided.
I would stress that, providing everyone is happy, I would like to stay at West Ham. They are a great club, moving in the right direction and a lot is now in place for sustained improvement.
I suppose, if a new contract has been signed and sealed, my name wouldn’t have been mentioned in connection with any other club or job.
While the owners and I have always been comfortable with waiting until the end of the season, the downside has always been that it fuels speculation. Are they going to give him one? Are they going to get rid of him? Does somebody else want him because he is out of contract so there is no compensation?
Finding a new manager revolves around the whole package — how good is the manager, what are the financial implications and what is the compensation?
A bubble of rumour and speculation is created and, really, it’s one we could all do without, particularly when one short, unsubstantiated tweet can quickly become ‘fact’ to a lot of people. I presume the Nigeria connection, for example, is because Jay Jay Okocha, who played for me at Bolton, and is now involved in football in that country.
For me, Jay Jay is a top man, one of the best I’ve met and Nigeria’s equivalent to David Beckham in his stature and the esteem he commands in his homeland. Here’s a small sample of the man. He can speak four different languages, he was seen as flamboyant on the field of play but off it he is very calm, collected, family orientated and quite a religious person.
He also has had the intelligence to learn valuable lessons from wherever life has taken him, from Nigeria to Germany, Turkey, France and then England.
I do not believe that any of this speculation about my future has affected the West Ham players, not based on their performances anyway.
A lot of the same lads went through something similar two years ago when my contract came up for renewal.
The owners quite rightly wanted to see how things went in the Premier League. They know now we massively over-achieved in the first season back, finishing 10th. Look at the three who came up last season — they’re all in danger of going back down.
The important thing for me and the players is to start winning games again, beginning tomorrow against Sunderland, who have Dick Advocaat in charge for the first time.
I’ve been in similar positions in my career and it’s not easy. The first thing I would do going into a club at this time is watch the players train, see what abilities they possess. At home later, watch recordings of recent matches — that will tell you a lot just about where the problems lie.
I don’t think it’s too difficult to work out that Sunderland haven’t been scoring enough goals, even though their draw ratio — 14 — is the highest in the Premier League, the inference being that if Gus Poyet had turned six of those into wins, there wouldn’t have been a problem. My first managerial experience of trying to turn things around was at Blackpool, where it was successful.
I made the mistake then of applying a similar formula when I went to Notts County and it didn’t work. That taught me a lesson.
Clubs and personnel are different and you need different answers. At Blackburn it was all about reassuring the players that they had the ability to win Premier League games.
As with most things in life, let alone sport, the psychology is all-important.
I remember taking the players away to Gleneagles in Scotland and being criticised for it. My answer was that the optimum time to take a break is when things are not going well and the pressure is growing. If everything is fine, then there’s no need to change anything.
When players surround a ref, it’s usually because he’s made a mistake
Greg Dyke, the chairman of the Football Association, has said he is concerned at what he calls the “scary” rise in players surrounding referees.
We were fined for one such incident at Southampton after the referee had made an obvious and glaring mistake, but the point is if players do see what they perceive as an injustice, then they will protest ... it is human nature.
One or two managers may use this as a tactic but there’s not many. I certainly don’t send out players to surround referees in a premeditated fashion.
I do believe that if the official is not coping and is making mistakes, then players will approach him and protest. If the referees make fewer mistakes, then the players won’t do it.
If referees make poor decisions, it ultimately leads to irritation in the stands and on the pitch.
That’s the effect referees can have on the game. The truth is, the game has never been as clean as it is now; players have never behaved better than they do now
You don’t even get the sort of verbal intimidation that used to go on, such as, “Have you seen the hospital menu? It’s not very good,” or “I’ve never seen anyone limp quickly”.
In the main, these kind of situations begin by referees making wrong decisions — and my opinion this season is they’ve made too many.
Sloppy late goals left me fuming
Neil McDonald, my assistant manager, did the press conference after the Arsenal game and said I was angry — he wasn’t wrong!
I asked Neil to go in because I was still going through the match with the squad and, yes, I wasn’t pleased the way we conceded two goals in the last eight minutes.
The second was from a throw-in, which is a complete no-no as far as I am concerned. It wasn’t Arsenal’s great football, just our poor judgment. At that stage I thought we had a realistic chance of an equaliser, they were tiring, we were getting more spaces to attack and then we conceded a really sloppy goal, then another one before the end.
If we had lost 1-0 and had done our best, considering our injury problems, then that’s fair enough, but those last 10 minutes, in my book, provided the best opportunity to take a point.
To have come off saying for the first time, “We didn’t play well but we got a point”, would have been perfectly satisfactory, rather than what has been happening, which is, “Yes, we have a point but it should have been three” or “We’ve got no points but we should have had at least one”.
I believe the team has lost some of its out-of-possession resilience. Last season we had 14 clean sheets. This season, so far, it’s six.
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