Newcastle welcomed Sam Allardyce as Glenn Roeder’s replacement earlier today, an event the Guardian’s Rob Smyth and Tom Lutz note was only attended by “a few hundred fans and none of them were topless.”
This is despite Allardyce’s unbelievably good record at Bolton where, if he didn’t quite turn water into wine, he at least turned Bulmers into Magners (what d’you mean they taste exactly the same)? And what better way to rouse a sleeping giant than by exposing him to the Dutch Oven that is Allardyce’s unique mixture of science and economics? He is the best, most innovative English coach around, a decisive judge of both talent and character who will systematically purge the dressing-room of dosser by wage-claiming dosser, and who justly has a sufficiently gargantuan ego to have no fears about taking over an apparently jinxed club.
All evidence suggests that Allardyce will get the Barcodes bleeping after the three years of mediocrity that have followed Bobby Robson’s sacking. Not that you’d know it from today’s slightly subdued scenes. “Ah reckon we shoulda gone fre Gerard Houllier-type coach,” articulated one gentleman doorstepped by Sky, as the Fiver pondered the fact that there is an example of that specific type of coach. Called Gerard Houllier.
The scepticism seems to owe most to the naive perception that, under Allardyce, Bolton’s tactics were antediluvian. Not that he was having any of that. “When I beat big clubs, their manager used to have to come up with an excuse for beating them and that was because we play long-ball football,” he said, submitting a transfer target list of Kevin Davies, Jeff Goldblum, that really tall feller off the news and the Empire State Building. “When they did it at the MU Rowdies they called it a long pass. They were jealous.” So long as Sam plays it again just like he did at Bolton, Newcastle fans will not care how they achieve success.
Not to be outdone by the former Metro Stars’ recent acquisition of Juan Pablo Angel, the Los Angeles Galaxy became the latest MLS club to add another washed up old fuck recent Premiership reject, signing defender Abel Xavier.