Allardyce Sacked / Telegraph investigation
Big Sam was sacked last night as England national team manager. An outcome to be expected I suppose. He took money several months ago for a meeting with football agents to expose loop holes in rulings of third party ownership. It has been quoted in The Sun newspaper that Sam Allardyce received 400,000 pounds for his insight into these loop holes. I said to my brother last night that I wondered when someone would merge a picture of Big Sam and Del Boy, and hey presto, two hours later and Paddy Power came up trumps.
In my opinion, Big Sam acted unprofessional but these incidents happened before he was England manager, so to sack him was a little unfair but you can understand why. Allardyce may struggle to get another job with this corruption on his CV, but i'm sure come February/March time, Premier League teams are struggling to stay up and need help of someone proven, I'm sure Sam will get a call. In the mean time, It'd be wise for Sam to go on an extended holiday and get away from the limelight. I've been impressed with how well Allardyce has excepted the decision and acted respectively.
For England, Gareth Southgate takes charge of the next four games. He has games against Malta at home, Slovenia away, Scotland at home and a friendly against Spain. You'd expect wins at home against Malta and Scotland, although Scotland will be really up for the match, so England need to match their energy, if they do, they should be ok. The match is at Wembley, anything other than a win and it'll be very disappointing for them two matches. The Spain friendly is a good chance to see players in other positions, new players play and try new tactics. It'd be great to give Spain a game and show England mean business for the next two years... I wouldn't get your hopes up though. England love delivering disappointment. Speaking of disappointment, the game away in Slovenia will be difficult, they'll defend well and make life difficult for England, like Slovakia did in the Euros and in the World Cup qualifier. England need to raise their game, break them down and score early to open the game up. That's in the perfect world and we don't live in that world. I hoped England would change management, look for change in style of play and philosophy after Roy Hodgson's disappointment, but they brought in big Sam who likes to play negatively and brought in another yes man in the England under 21's manager in Gareth Southgate. I don't expect things to get better but I hope Southgate proves me wrong, but I'm not expecting him to. He's favourite for the job on a permanent basis. The joys. I just think i'm spoilt with Guardiola, with new initiatives, ideas, passion and a will to win every game. England and Southgate bring back the reality that English management just isn't that good. I'd like to Howe as England's next manager, young and passionate, he couldn't do any worse and done fantastically well with Bournemouth and has his teams play football the right way, not the English "hoof and hope" way.
Just going to end this brief blog on the Telegraph newspaper. They've waited for their right time to expose big Sam, why not do it when they first find out or when he ways first appointed or just before? Why now? Well, my thinking behind the reason is rather simple. They've got ammunition of big news and wait for no big news to be around and break their news when they want to maximise sales and have everyone talking about them... And it works. Classic English media. They did the same with Sven, they did the same with love rat Giggs, they did the same with Terry and Bridge and even the Pakistan cricket team twice in the last ten years. They never change. I hope they name more corruption and root it out of English football and not just using their power to ruin Allardyce's career as he isn't the man they want in charge (that's what it looks like to me). The telegraph have a chance to make a difference and claim they have more managers involved in bribed, selling information and being corrupt... Well name them and lets be rid of corruption in the beautiful game!
