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Allardyce till the end of the season !

CodeRed

By CodeRed
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Mr Popodopolous

Mr Popodopolous

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, 2015 said:

Didn't Bielsa win Leeds the Championship with 93 points with his gung-ho football and in his first season in the Prem have them finishing 10th by playing this way?

Fair enough you like a more pragmatic approach to Football that's up to you, but I'd be bored shitless if the whole aim whilst being in the Prem was just to simply survive every season which is what most of the bottom half are doing right now.

You forget that Bielsa was a mentor to Pep Guardiola during the 2000's in Mexico and is a highly respected coach across Europe and South America. I have nothing against Allardyce because like has been said he has been a pioneer for his tactical insight and methods, but his style aint for me.

Tbh if you look at some of the stats from the time vs middling and lower opposition anyway, at home moreso they did batter a reasonable number in terms of shots and at times possession.

What they didn't do was score many goals but it's a different type of dominance. Of course a top striker through the middle the goals for may reflect it better- he finished top 8 on a bottom third wage budget at Bolton 4 times.

Afterwards more sketchy I'll grant you.

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frenchred

frenchred

Posted
Posted
26 minutes ago, 2015 said:

He's the best out of the 'dinosaurs' that are left remaining. I just find it sad that sides are so scared to get relegated to the EFL that they go for a win at all costs approach rather than sticking to their more progressive style of play, which for clubs like Brighton and Fulham it has worked.

When you talk of dinasours do you include Pearson? Or is he immune jest because he's with us?

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SecretSam

SecretSam

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, chinapig said:

He was an innovator in his early days at Bolton and rarely gets credit for that it's true. More recently he has become a bit of a parody of a "proper football man".

It's been a while since he's gone down well with fans of clubs he's managed certainly. Will be interesting to see what Leeds fans think.

"Was" is the operative word here, the rest of the world has caught up, and those gains are no longer available. Immense tactical fluidity is now where it's at. But, you are right, he was well ahead of his time back in the day.

However, Allardyce's teams have always been tough to beat, not something that could be levelled at the current bunch. But I would suggest it's too late.

I'm torn as to whether I'd prefer Leeds or Everton to come down. Certainly, Everton would be funnier...

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Numero Uno

Numero Uno

Posted
Posted (edited)

Unless Big Sam can catch the odd cross that comes into the Leeds penalty area and save the odd pea roller his appointment will make no difference at all. I'm sure Meslier will be a good keeper in time and would no doubt look different gravy in the Championship but if he stays between the sticks I think Leeds are done for.

Edited by Numero Uno
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Numero Uno

Numero Uno

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, mozo said:

I personally think this culture of sacking managers shows that owners of clubs have zero understanding of football. 

How they expect a rotten culture, confidence issues and poor form to be turned around in a matter of weeks, just bemuses me.

If a team is capable of being revived, it will do so irrespective of the manager change.

I know Villa sticks out as having instant success, but they've gone from a rookie manager to a top proven winner. Most of the sackings do not mirror those circumstances. Typically clubs are just bouncing from one punt to another punt and it's the recruitment of those managers that is to blame.

........and if a few people on this board had their way we would have punted Nige up the M32 long ago and probably his successor by now. Luckily it was never an issue for us because Steve simply couldn't afford to do it from an FFFP perspective.

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Mr Popodopolous

Mr Popodopolous

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, ExiledAjax said:

I wish we could somehow view the parallel universe where all 20 PL managers stay in thier jobs for the whole season. My hypothesis is that the final league table in that universe and ours would barely be any different.

I see two PL exceptions to that rule maybe 3 but bottom 3rd for sure.

Bournemouth with Parker would be worse off I suspect.

Southampton would be better off as they would have had no brief Nathan Jones interlude debacle and Selles is probably also inferior to Hassenhuttl, certainly less experienced.

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ExiledAjax

ExiledAjax

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

I see two PL exceptions to that rule maybe 3 but bottom 3rd for sure.

Bournemouth with Parker would be worse off I suspect.

Southampton would be better off as they would have had no brief Nathan Jones interlude debacle and Selles is probably also inferior to Hassenhuttl, certainly less experienced.

I see the arguments for sure. I think you could argue that Chelsea might be better off, and I guess many would say Villa would be worse.

But honestly I suspect most of this difference would amount to 2 or 3 places either way. I understand that's sometimes the difference between relegation, Europe, or even a title, but I suspect those times would be rare and that as a whole switching managers (especially multiple times in a season) doesn't yield as big a change as might be hoped for.

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beaverface

beaverface

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, 2015 said:

The man is very intense and the style his sides play are super intense. This cannot be sustained for a long period, which is why he wont be at club's for a long time. However, his entertaining style of play is great to watch from a neutral POV and Leeds fans were very lucky to have him until the final season. They can't say they were not enjoying the ride under Bielsa. 

One day I hope English football becomes more Latin in the way we approach football rather than playing for the percentages and set pieces.

That's my memory of him, and I thought the enforced Covid break the year they went up actually benefitted Leeds as it effectively gave them a mid-season break that allowed the Leeds players to recharge their batteries.

In the previous season, didn't they run out of steam towards the end of the season due to the intensity they played at?

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chinapig

chinapig

Posted
Posted
43 minutes ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

The Bielsa Book of Football Tactics surely has just one page - "Run you b@st@rds!" ?

Pep disagrees.?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/54392207

Bielsa is the most authentic - Guardiola

I admire Bielsa "the most in world football" - Guardiola

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has described Leeds United boss Marcelo Bielsa as "the most authentic manager" before his side's trip to Elland Road.

Guardiola, 49, regards Dutchman Johan Cruyff as his coaching inspiration, but hugely admires the Argentine, 65.

The Spaniard met Bielsa in Argentina before becoming Barcelona B boss and has adopted many of his philosophies.

"He is probably the person I admire the most in world football - as a manager and as a person," said Guardiola.

"He is the most authentic manager in terms of how he conducts his teams. He is unique. Nobody can imitate him, it's impossible.

"I don't see him quite as much but when I get the pleasure to spend time with him, it's always inspirational."

The charge sometimes levelled against Bielsa is that for all the plaudits he receives, he lacks major honours.

While Guardiola has won eight league titles, two Champions Leagues and five domestic cups in a glittering career, Bielsa's best achievement has arguably been guiding Argentina to gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Until he won the Championship with Leeds last season, his major club feat was leading Athletic Bilbao to the Europa League and Copa del Rey finals in 2012, both of which they lost.

However Guardiola, whose side face Bielsa's on Saturday, does not believe the lack of silverware matters.

"The value of a manager does not depend on how many titles or prizes you won," said Guardiola.

"My teams won more titles than his but in terms of knowledge of the game and many other things, including training sessions, I am still away from him.

"It's a good gift to the Premier League to have him here because his teams are always a joy to watch. They are honest, they always want to attack and they produce good football for spectators."

Bielsa, in contrast, played down his influence on Guardiola's football philosophy.

"I do not feel like a mentor to Guardiola," he said. "It's not just how I feel, it has been evidenced to not being the case. If there's a manager who is independent in his own ideas, that is Guardiola.

"It's not just because I say it is, it's because his teams play like no other team. Many believe that [Guardiola's Barcelona team] is the best club team ever created."

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Mr Popodopolous

Mr Popodopolous

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

I see the arguments for sure. I think you could argue that Chelsea might be better off, and I guess many would say Villa would be worse.

But honestly I suspect most of this difference would amount to 2 or 3 places either way. I understand that's sometimes the difference between relegation, Europe, or even a title, but I suspect those times would be rare and that as a whole switching managers (especially multiple times in a season) doesn't yield as big a change as might be hoped for.

Aston Villa are another good point, Emery >>> Gerrard. Chelsea maybe, hard to say isn't it- chaos there this year.

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chinapig

chinapig

Posted
Posted

An interesting insight into both the good and bad sides of Allardyce:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2023/may/02/could-sam-allardyce-the-anti-bielsa-cross-philosophical-chasm

When Nicolas Anelka played for Sam Allardyce at Bolton the France striker described the training-ground environment as surprisingly reminiscent of Clairefontaine. Although Allardyce lacks the time necessary to transform Leeds’s weekday HQ near Wetherby into a mini-mirror image of the French national football school, Javi Gracia’s old squad should expect the unexpected if – as scheduled – he takes training for the first time on Wednesday.

The 68-year-old has plenty of critics but a close examination of the former England coach’s often impressive body of work at, among other clubs, Bolton, Blackburn, Sunderland and Crystal Palace, indicates that Pep Guardiola was not exaggerating that much when he dubbed Allardyce “a genius”.

Admittedly Big Sam remains an acquired taste but even the arch-purist Guardiola appreciates Allardyce’s role as a pioneer of elite football’s now routine use of data analysis, sports science and psychology.

Given the emergency nature of Allardyce’s anticipated four-game appointment by Leeds, the application of psychology will prove most relevant when he and Guardiola are reunited at Manchester City on Saturday. “Sam’s man-management is second to none,” says his close friend and former Bolton sidekick Phil Brown. “He gets the very best out of players.”

The trip to the Etihad Stadium represents the first of a formidable-looking quartet of fixtures also involving a home date with Newcastle, a visit to West Ham and a final-day game against Tottenham at Elland Road. Staying up will surely involve Allardyce persuading Junior Firpo and co to leap through metaphorical hoops of flame.

Further spice is added by his status as a former manager of Newcastle and West Ham, coincidentally two of the postings where Allardyce’s pragmatic, sometimes ultra-direct, game plans proved most unpopular with fans.

Although his tactics have always been far too nuanced to lend too much credence to José Mourinho’s claim that Allardyce played “19th-century football”, Leeds fans had never been overly taken by a man whose Bolton side sealed Leeds’s relegation to the Championship with a 4-1 win at the Reebok Stadium on 2 May 2004.

Who, back then, could have imagined that 19 years to the day after that nadir in West Yorkshire football history Allardyce would be lined up as Leeds’s third official manager of an intensely troubled season?

As he establishes the training ground “War Room” which has proved the tactical nerve centre of his previous clubs, Allardyce may need to draw on all the calm engendered by the daily transcendental meditation sessions which helped him secure Sunderland’s Premier League position in 2016.

That triumph prefaced an ill-starred, 67-day, one-game tenure in charge of England. Despite Allardyce having broken no rules, his ill-advised entrapment in a well-documented newspaper sting proved thoroughly self-destructive.

It also emphasised the brasher, sometimes arrogant, side of a character which, as much as any tactics, helped him acquire as many enemies as admirers and, unforgivably, involved Allardyce mocking Roy Hodgson in front of undercover reporters, dubbing the then outgoing England manager “Woy”.

There is a certain irony that 75-year-old Hodgson’s success in steering Crystal Palace clear of relegation waters this spring may well have helped persuade Elland Road executives to hire a fellow veteran.

Those directors can at least rest assured that confidence will not be a managerial commodity in short supply. Leeds have been leaking goals at an alarming rate since Hodgson’s Palace put five past them last month so it is probably no bad thing that Allardyce regards rearguard repairs as his specialist subject. The only real stain on his impressive record of relegation avoidance arrived at West Brom in 2021

“Teaching players to defend is my area of expertise,” he said in April 2016. “I can coach in all departments, especially team play, but when it comes to defending you name it and I’ll tell you about it.”

Allardyce, who previously worked with Angus Kinnear, the Leeds chief executive, at West Ham, is believed to have lobbied for the Elland Road job before Gracia replaced Jesse Marsch in February.

Back then though Victor Orta, whose time as director of football ended on Tuesday, was still fixated on the pressing game introduced at Leeds by Marcelo Bielsa. With Orta having regarded Marsch as Bielsa’s ideological heir apparent, the philosophical chasm between that pair and Allardyce looked too much of a quantum leap.

Little more than two month later, though, the Leeds owner, Andrea Radrizzani, has sacked Orta and pinned his trust in Allardyce’s forte for set-piece choreography. The only problem is that there are almost certainly too few hours in the day in which a man who has recently alternated hosting a podcast “No Tippy Tappy Football” with holidaying in his beloved Dubai can properly perfect Leeds’s dead-ball drills.

Perhaps significantly, the spring of 2016 involved Allardyce sparring with his old enemy Rafael Benítez as Sunderland and Newcastle vied to survive. He once let it slip that, privately, he rated Benítez extremely highly but suspected the Spaniard had insufficient games to turn things around after Steve McClaren’s sacking.

He believed everything hinged on whether Benítez’s tactical mantra would kick in during the fourth or fifth game of his initial 10-match tenure. Allardyce was strangely adamant that a corner would be turned at one of those junctures and, sure enough, after Newcastle collected one point from the Spaniard’s opening four fixtures, they accrued 12 from the subsequent six.

For Benítez game No 5 proved a watershed but Allardyce must hit the ground running. Can a hugely polarising coach who, in so many ways, remains the antithesis of everything the still-revered Bielsa stood for, end up protecting the Argentinian’s West Yorkshire legacy? Might Big Sam conjure the unlikeliest of happy endings?

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ExiledAjax

ExiledAjax

Posted
Posted
32 minutes ago, SecretSam said:

 Wonder if he can beat the recent record of Frank-Lampard's-Chelsea™️ - 6 out of 6?

Would need to lose all 4 remaining games, stay through the off season, and then lose the opening fixtures of what would presumably be a Championship campaign.

I think Frank's record is safe.

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Curr Avon

Curr Avon

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, eardun said:

Being assisted by Karl Robinson (MK Dons manager in our league one promotion season and more recently Charlton and Oxford). Have they worked with each other before?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65444406

Ex-Oxford and Charlton manager Karl Robinson joins Leeds United (footballleagueworld.co.uk)

Why has Sam Allardyce decided to bring Karl Robinson to Leeds?


Allardyce knows all about Robinson from his time as a young coach at Blackburn Rovers.

Between 2007 and 2009, Robinson was a first-team coach at Ewood Park and he was kept on the coaching staff by Allardyce, who had come in to replace Paul Ince in the dugout.

Whilst he didn't follow Allardyce around in his future career as he forged his own path in the managerial world, Robinson has seemingly found his way back to the veteran boss having been out of work for a couple of months and will help him try to mastermind the survival of the Whites.

It will likely only be a short-term partnership though as regardless of what division Leeds are in next season, they are more-than likely going to go in a different direction when it comes to a long-term head coach.

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