“It is time for us to deliver,” said Sam Allardyce upon being confirmed as the new manager of England. That may be music to the ears of some, but it is bound to rile others in one way or another.
The appointment of Allardyce to the top job in English football has been met with a predictably lukewarm reception, with the 61-year-old having developed a reputation over the years for structured and functional rather than exciting football with Bolton, Newcastle, Blackburn, West Ham and latterly Sunderland.
Many supporters are underwhelmed, while some believe his strict man-management to be exactly what the national team needs. Some onlookers say Allardyce’s appointment smacks of the FA conceding England’s position as scrappy underdogs, others say he’s the best man for the job.
Whatever Allardyce achieves as England boss over the next two years, there will be winners and losers. Below, Goal looks at who stands to gain from his arrival, and who might suffer.
WINNERS
MARK NOBLE
“Too good for England,” was the chant which reverberated most noticeably around Upton Park during the grand old ground’s final season last term, underlining the West Ham fans’ dissatisfaction at the decision by successive England managers to overlook midfielder and club captain Mark Noble.
But just as Noble will begin a new chapter at club level in August as the Hammers move into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, he may also find the international door finally opened to him by his former West Ham manager.
Allardyce selected Noble for 150 of his total 367 first-team appearances in the claret and blue during his four years at Upton Park, and was also the manager who handed the 29-year-old a new five-year deal in 2015. It would be a huge surprise if Noble’s 2016-17 season did not include international recognition.
UNFANCIED STRIKERS
Raise the name Sam Allardyce with an English football fan and they will often respond with that of Kevin Davies. The obdurate, no-nonsense striker was a regular under Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers despite never reaching double figures in the goalscoring column, such was the job his manager deemed him capable of doing for the sake of the team.
Andy Carroll fits a similar bill, having carried out the same role for Big Sam at West Ham at a time when he became exiled from the England setup. Jermain Defoe, meanwhile, is another who has performed a key role for Allardyce after being overlooked at national level.
Allardyce clearly doesn’t care what formations or which players are deemed ‘in vogue’. Instead, he will call up anybody he decides is in a position to fulfil a specific role in his England side, and nowhere is that more probable than in the forward line.
While Carroll and Defoe themselves aren’t guaranteed recalls, players of their ilk have every chance of claiming an England shirt.
EXPERIENCED PLAYERS (EVEN JOHN TERRY)
Big Sam has often filled his teams with experienced players, whether they be Fernando Hierro and Gary Speed at Bolton, Mark Viduka and Alan Smith at Newcastle or Marco Borriello and Razvan Rat at West Ham. And he won’t be favour age over beauty as England boss either.
That could mean Gary Cahill, his former Bolton charge, being given an extended run for the Three Lions despite his continued battle for first-team favouritism at Chelsea. Allardyce may even approach Cahill’s club colleague John Terry to discuss a return four years on from the saga which ended the defender’s international career and saw Fabio Capello walk out.
“It’ll not be his last game in the Premier League because somebody else will take him if he wants to stay here,” said Allardyce of Terry after the former national skipper came up against Sunderland in May.
“Or he might feel, like David Beckham did, that he won’t play for any other club in the Premier League and go venturing far and wide, because there’s that many places like America and China that will take a John Terry.”
The suggestion is that Allardyce still believes Terry to be one of the best defenders in the country, and so will at least look into the possibility of him returning to the England team.
LOSERS
WAYNE ROONEY
Who else could possibly have switched from being a centre-forward to a midfielder less than two months before a European Championship and then found the England team revolutionised to suit his position change?
After Wayne Rooney decided his future laid in the middle of the park in April, and even threw a strop at the idea of playing as an emergency striker in May when Anthony Martial limped out of Manchester United’s warm-up against Norwich, he convinced Roy Hodgson to use him in the engine room at the Euros in June.
But Rooney will have nowhere near as much say in his England role under Allardyce, if he has one at all thanks to the fight he has on his hands for a starting shirt at Manchester United as well as the struggle to prove he is worthy of an England place.
Allardyce is a professed admirer of Harry Kane, and claimed in 2015 that he may have more in his favour than Rooney. “His rise to prominence has been spectacular… it's great for England. He looks as though he might be an even more clinical and natural finisher than Wayne Rooney,” he said of the Tottenham striker.
Rooney is used to getting things his way, but that will not happen under Allardyce. After yet another failure at a major tournament, perhaps he will count himself lucky if he so much as adds to his caps tally.
PREMIER LEAGUE MANAGERS
Allardyce has a very particular way of looking at the game of football, and it is not a vision shared by too many of the managers currently occupying jobs at the top end of the Premier League. That immediately raises a question relating to the adaptability of players holding the dual role of playing under Big Sam and participating in a title race.
Can you imagine what it would be like to play tiki-taka for Pep Guardiola on Saturday, then turn up for England duty come Wednesday with the instruction to aim for the big man up front and play for set pieces in the final third? Poor Raheem Sterling! What about spending training sessions at Arsenal playing pass after pass after pass, then getting to St George’s Park and finding the length of the desired delivery multiplied by a factor of 400? Get used to it, Jack Wilshere.
Managers who want their players to get into good habits at club level could find their attempts undermined by a national team boss for whom substance comes first and style a distant 22nd.
THE FANS
If England can go to Russia in two years’ time and recreate the feat achieved by Portugal at Euro 2016, then surely few supporters will care exactly how they do it. But there is an argument that the English fans deserve more than Allardyce’s brand of football promises.
England are followed wherever they go by huge numbers of travelling fans, and the vast majority of them deserve to return home after each trip abroad with pride in their side’s efforts, feeling royally entertained by what they have seen. While the likes of Roy Hodgson, Fabio Capello and Steve McClaren didn’t always get silky, flowing football out of their sides, there was at least an effort to put on a show for the supporters.
When Allardyce first walked into Upton Park he told the West Ham fans he would play attractive football which would follow the club’s tradition of being an exciting proposition but four years later he left with a miniscule popularity rating on the terraces thanks to his inability to stir the senses.
If England don’t break down a barrier of some sort at the 2018 World Cup, then Allardyce is unlikely to win over the floating voters for whom enjoyment rates highly on their list of attractions in an international football team.
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