Sam Allardyce – England’s saviour?

Recently, former Sunderland boss Sam Allardyce was appointed as England’s new manager. Personally, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he turned it down, after the way that they treated him on his initial application a long time ago. Allardyce had all of the blueprints to make England a great football team again, but he was shunned in favour of a more “popular” manager – basically, a manager whose face fitted the role better. After Hodgson’s resignation, England didn’t really have an alternative, so it had to be Allardyce, which is pretty embarrassing for the deciding committee because it’s disrespectful to a very good manager.

Now, whether by accident or on purpose, I believe that England finally have the right man for the job. Why? It’s because he’s straight-talking, and experienced. He knows as well as anybody that England aren’t a great team. However, his tactics and motivation will make them play as if they were one. England aren’t going to be great until there’s a massive Premier League overhaul, which is a long way off! The English Premier League game is very quick and exciting, but is not technically good, which is why England struggle to beat any team that knows how to play possession football. The players will only learn to play otherwise if the league changes, basically.

Therefore, Allardyce needs to draw upon all of his experience to steer England to any kind of success. He needs to make them believe that they’re really good – that’s the first battle. He can do that, though – he’s had years of practice. If England believe in themselves, then half of the battle has been won. The rest is down to tactics, and Allardyce is very good at beating teams tactically. No, it’s not always pretty, but let’s be realistic here; England are not going to beat any good team in the world right now by playing an open game, and thinking that we’re better than we are. However, if we play with confidence, and we still to a gameplan that accommodates for our shortcomings, then we can actually compete for trophies. Portugal won the UEFA European Championship 2016 by simply being good tactically. Yes, they had one or two good players, but it was all about tactics. The only thing to stop England from doing the same is having the right manager – and now we do.

If Allardyce is given the chance, he will improve England, or at least make England a lot harder to beat, and a lot more likely to win games. It’ll take time for him to undo all of the work of managers done before him, though, so I doubt it’ll be an overnight job. It just really gets my goat that we could have had the right man a long, long time ago, and we’ve lost some of our best players during that period whilst other managers misuse them, and that blame is placed squarely at the door of the FA.

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