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Sam Allardyce did not expect the sack as Newcastle manager. It was a grey Wednesday in January 2008 when, at the club’s training ground, a message was relayed that he was needed for a meeting with chairman Chris Mort at St James’ Park.
Assuming it was transfer business — he wanted Arsenal’s Lassana Diarra and Manchester United’s Wes Brown — he caught a lift with a member of staff across town. The compact car was missing a wheel trim — a low-budget hearse, on reflection. Allardyce was still wearing his club tracksuit and gold chain around his neck. A golden handshake, however, was waiting for him in the boardroom.
Not that Allardyce felt like shaking anyone’s hand. After just eight months, 24 games and with the team 11th in the Premier League, he was stunned. Mort said they would sort the exact details of severance later but Allardyce, as was his right, refused to move. Finally, after five hours and via phone calls to lawyers in London, terms were agreed.
Newcastle’s players were shocked, too, learning of the news via television and phone calls from journalists. That is not to say some of them were not relieved.
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Sam Allardyce arrived on Tyneside with the ego the size of a jumbo jet after working wonders with Bolton
One source said: ‘He came with a lot of ideas around sports science, preparation, recovery and data. That was all well and good, but it was as if he was saying everything the players had been doing their entire careers was wrong. It rubbed people up the wrong way almost immediately.’
A pre-season trip to the Austrian town of Stegersbach did not go down well, either. Not as well as the ale down the throats of Allardyce and his staff, that is. It is said the drinking sessions took precedence over training sessions and players were miffed when some club staff stank of alcohol during morning workouts.
‘A stag do’ — they played golf and went canoeing — was how one of those present described it, and a five-figure bar bill — brandy, cigars and all — was happily settled by the club, by now under the ownership of lager-swilling Mike Ashley. Indeed, the man who appointed Allardyce, co-owner Freddy Shepherd, was gone within a month of his arrival.
But the drinking culture was at odds with the manager’s obsession with sports science and medicine. New backroom staff, from analysts to psychologists, as well as laptops and state-of-the-art equipment were arriving at the training ground almost by the hour. Nutrition was reviewed and Allardyce ordered a reduction on pasta and potatoes. There were nine signings, too.
On the practice pitches, the manager was mic’d up to booming speakers on the touchline, using them to deliver his message. He wanted his team to get the ball forward quickly. When goalkeeper Given booted it downfield for target man Mark Viduka, players would laugh at the sound of Allardyce salivating through the speakers… ‘Oooohhhh’.
Some liked his man-management and, to this day, speak well of his ‘old school’ values in that regard. But they joked about the tactics, insisting the team of masseurs were only there to soothe their necks after watching the ball fly through the air.
Allardyce would shout ‘POMO’ (Position of Maximum Opportunity) during training and matches. A player said: ‘It was like a secret code for “Launch it forward”.’
POMO became a term of fun around the training ground. He also had a phrase — ‘nullify their strengths’ — that he repeated over and over in team meetings. Once, after a lengthy analysis of the opposition, an international raised his hand and asked: ‘What do we do when we’ve got the ball?’
Vibration plates, to strengthen muscle core, had players running to the toilet, and that was the direction in which supporters feared their team’s football was heading.
Allardyce wanted to imprint an ‘up and at em’ style, yet signed some players who were more ‘down and out’. When the free transfer of Geremi from Chelsea was mooted, Sir Bobby Robson tried to warn the club, relaying a phone call with Jose Mourinho in which the midfielder’s ‘40-year-old’s legs’ were questioned.
To think, the alternative was a 21-year-old from Croatia called Luka Modric. That was until Ashley, realising the extent of the club’s debt, put the freeze on spending.
Brazilian defender Claudio Cacapa also arrived from left field but exited stage right after 18 minutes of November’s home match with Portsmouth, with the team trailing 3-1. It was here, during a 4-1 loss, that fans first turned on Allardyce. His wife, Lynne, vowed never to go to games again.
Joey Barton, another signing, labelled the crowd ‘vicious’. He was arrested the following month for assault and affray and later sentenced to six months in prison. Allardyce called him a ‘bloody liability’.
The whole episode captured the club’s ‘soap opera’ reputation that Allardyce had intended to wash clean. Fat chance. He lost Kieron Dyer to West Ham on the eve of the season after the England midfielder complained of a fallout with fans in which his house and car were vandalised by eggs. Dyer had clashed with Barton. During a pre-season five-a-side, Barton said to him, ‘You think you’re f***ing Pele’, to which he replied, ‘I am f***ing Pele, compared to you’.
Fan favourite Nobby Solano was pulled aside by Allardyce and told he was not needed, Barton then broke his foot in July and senior players were not convinced by the quality of their new team-mates.
For all that, the season started with a 3-1 win at Bolton and Allardyce, thrilled to beat his old club amid acrimony over the many staff he had taken, partied long into the night. There were later beers with Ashley and Mort in Newcastle, trips to London casinos with the owner and, after six matches, Newcastle were fifth.
But supporters never took to Allardyce and results dipped, the team taking one point from 12 over Christmas. Given Ashley stood and drank among those fans on the terraces, he listened. Moves were made to line up Harry Redknapp, who indicated interest. Allardyce even rang him to confront him about the rumours, but he denied contact.
After Allardyce was sacked and Redknapp got cold feet, Ashley turned to Kevin Keegan. He was alarmed, on his first morning, when 25 of Allardyce’s backroom team squeezed into a small room for a staff meeting. He used to laugh that his toughest decision for away trips was which of the staff he had to leave behind.
Meanwhile, Allardyce was taking a phone call from Shepherd, inviting him to his Barbados retreat, an offer he accepted. If only Big Sam had refused Shepherd’s initial offer eight months earlier, his ‘St James’ Farce’, as he later called it, would have been avoided.
He would certainly enjoy a Leeds victory over Newcastle on Saturday. But his new players must first remember this: POMO.
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Assuming it was transfer business — he wanted Arsenal’s Lassana Diarra and Manchester United’s Wes Brown — he caught a lift with a member of staff across town. The compact car was missing a wheel trim — a low-budget hearse, on reflection. Allardyce was still wearing his club tracksuit and gold chain around his neck. A golden handshake, however, was waiting for him in the boardroom.
Not that Allardyce felt like shaking anyone’s hand. After just eight months, 24 games and with the team 11th in the Premier League, he was stunned. Mort said they would sort the exact details of severance later but Allardyce, as was his right, refused to move. Finally, after five hours and via phone calls to lawyers in London, terms were agreed.
Newcastle’s players were shocked, too, learning of the news via television and phone calls from journalists. That is not to say some of them were not relieved.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Sam Allardyce arrived on Tyneside with the ego the size of a jumbo jet after working wonders with Bolton
One source said: ‘He came with a lot of ideas around sports science, preparation, recovery and data. That was all well and good, but it was as if he was saying everything the players had been doing their entire careers was wrong. It rubbed people up the wrong way almost immediately.’
A pre-season trip to the Austrian town of Stegersbach did not go down well, either. Not as well as the ale down the throats of Allardyce and his staff, that is. It is said the drinking sessions took precedence over training sessions and players were miffed when some club staff stank of alcohol during morning workouts.
‘A stag do’ — they played golf and went canoeing — was how one of those present described it, and a five-figure bar bill — brandy, cigars and all — was happily settled by the club, by now under the ownership of lager-swilling Mike Ashley. Indeed, the man who appointed Allardyce, co-owner Freddy Shepherd, was gone within a month of his arrival.
But the drinking culture was at odds with the manager’s obsession with sports science and medicine. New backroom staff, from analysts to psychologists, as well as laptops and state-of-the-art equipment were arriving at the training ground almost by the hour. Nutrition was reviewed and Allardyce ordered a reduction on pasta and potatoes. There were nine signings, too.
On the practice pitches, the manager was mic’d up to booming speakers on the touchline, using them to deliver his message. He wanted his team to get the ball forward quickly. When goalkeeper Given booted it downfield for target man Mark Viduka, players would laugh at the sound of Allardyce salivating through the speakers… ‘Oooohhhh’.
Some liked his man-management and, to this day, speak well of his ‘old school’ values in that regard. But they joked about the tactics, insisting the team of masseurs were only there to soothe their necks after watching the ball fly through the air.
Allardyce would shout ‘POMO’ (Position of Maximum Opportunity) during training and matches. A player said: ‘It was like a secret code for “Launch it forward”.’
POMO became a term of fun around the training ground. He also had a phrase — ‘nullify their strengths’ — that he repeated over and over in team meetings. Once, after a lengthy analysis of the opposition, an international raised his hand and asked: ‘What do we do when we’ve got the ball?’
Vibration plates, to strengthen muscle core, had players running to the toilet, and that was the direction in which supporters feared their team’s football was heading.
Allardyce wanted to imprint an ‘up and at em’ style, yet signed some players who were more ‘down and out’. When the free transfer of Geremi from Chelsea was mooted, Sir Bobby Robson tried to warn the club, relaying a phone call with Jose Mourinho in which the midfielder’s ‘40-year-old’s legs’ were questioned.
To think, the alternative was a 21-year-old from Croatia called Luka Modric. That was until Ashley, realising the extent of the club’s debt, put the freeze on spending.
Brazilian defender Claudio Cacapa also arrived from left field but exited stage right after 18 minutes of November’s home match with Portsmouth, with the team trailing 3-1. It was here, during a 4-1 loss, that fans first turned on Allardyce. His wife, Lynne, vowed never to go to games again.
Joey Barton, another signing, labelled the crowd ‘vicious’. He was arrested the following month for assault and affray and later sentenced to six months in prison. Allardyce called him a ‘bloody liability’.
The whole episode captured the club’s ‘soap opera’ reputation that Allardyce had intended to wash clean. Fat chance. He lost Kieron Dyer to West Ham on the eve of the season after the England midfielder complained of a fallout with fans in which his house and car were vandalised by eggs. Dyer had clashed with Barton. During a pre-season five-a-side, Barton said to him, ‘You think you’re f***ing Pele’, to which he replied, ‘I am f***ing Pele, compared to you’.
Fan favourite Nobby Solano was pulled aside by Allardyce and told he was not needed, Barton then broke his foot in July and senior players were not convinced by the quality of their new team-mates.
For all that, the season started with a 3-1 win at Bolton and Allardyce, thrilled to beat his old club amid acrimony over the many staff he had taken, partied long into the night. There were later beers with Ashley and Mort in Newcastle, trips to London casinos with the owner and, after six matches, Newcastle were fifth.
But supporters never took to Allardyce and results dipped, the team taking one point from 12 over Christmas. Given Ashley stood and drank among those fans on the terraces, he listened. Moves were made to line up Harry Redknapp, who indicated interest. Allardyce even rang him to confront him about the rumours, but he denied contact.
After Allardyce was sacked and Redknapp got cold feet, Ashley turned to Kevin Keegan. He was alarmed, on his first morning, when 25 of Allardyce’s backroom team squeezed into a small room for a staff meeting. He used to laugh that his toughest decision for away trips was which of the staff he had to leave behind.
Meanwhile, Allardyce was taking a phone call from Shepherd, inviting him to his Barbados retreat, an offer he accepted. If only Big Sam had refused Shepherd’s initial offer eight months earlier, his ‘St James’ Farce’, as he later called it, would have been avoided.
He would certainly enjoy a Leeds victory over Newcastle on Saturday. But his new players must first remember this: POMO.
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