Newcastle biting their nails tonight.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:I think there's some very poetic justice here.

newcastle are relegated by their biggest rivals managed by a man their own fans hounded out of the club. I wonder how hard Big Sam will try to avoid looking smug when he gets interviewed.

Right on LPP - Wish he was looking smug again with us... but that won't happen (unfortunately)!

Good team Sunderland. Already spent a load of cash before the £20 million Allardyce spent in the January window and the players plus cash deal for Defoe who is being paid £70k a week! Small price to pay when you consider the rewards.

Everton are underperforming woefully and Martinez may be on his way with the Ajax manager coming in. Hard to understand why they are so poor with those players.

wanderlust wrote:Everton are underperforming woefully and Martinez may be on his way with the Ajax manager coming in. Hard to understand why they are so poor with those players.

 It really is strange. They should be much higher in the table with that squad.

As for Newcastle??? Mike Ashley must rue the day he sacked Big Sam because he apparently didn't play Ashley's type of football. 

Reebok Trotter wrote:

wanderlust wrote:Everton are underperforming woefully and Martinez may be on his way with the Ajax manager coming in. Hard to understand why they are so poor with those players.

 It really is strange. They should be much higher in the table with that squad.

As for Newcastle??? Mike Ashley must rue the day he sacked Big Sam because he apparently didn't play Ashley's type of football. 

The Toon were 11th in the Prem when they sacked BSA. 

When I mentioned it to my Geordie mate this morning,he messaged back 'Newcastle were too big a club for Allardyce'.

What bollocks.

boltonbonce wrote:

Reebok Trotter wrote:

wanderlust wrote:Everton are underperforming woefully and Martinez may be on his way with the Ajax manager coming in. Hard to understand why they are so poor with those players.

 It really is strange. They should be much higher in the table with that squad.

As for Newcastle??? Mike Ashley must rue the day he sacked Big Sam because he apparently didn't play Ashley's type of football. 

The Toon were 11th in the Prem when they sacked BSA. 

When I mentioned it to my Geordie mate this morning,he messaged back 'Newcastle were too big a club for Allardyce'.

What bollocks.

Precisely why I can't stand the everton mint/barcode brigade. They're even more deluded than West Ham fans. Personally I'll laugh if they go down again and I'll crack a bottle of champers if they hit L2.

The Toon were 11th in the Prem when they sacked BSA. 

When I mentioned it to my Geordie mate this morning,he messaged back 'Newcastle were too big a club for Allardyce'.

What bollocks.

I agree. How conceited, especially when they have nothing in their favour other than large crowds.

I think BSA has proven what an idiotic attitude they had/have. Maybe a season's worth of humble pie will straighten them out.

It's a case of history repeating itself with Big Sam. Just look at Blackburn and where they are now. I reckon they would have stayed in the Premiership if they hadn't sacked him.

Just imagine if we'd have backed him all those years ago. He'd have established us as top 6 side.

Boggersbelief wrote:Just imagine if we'd have backed him all those years ago. He'd have established us as top 6 side.

I completely agree.

Boggersbelief wrote:Just imagine if we'd have backed him all those years ago. He'd have established us as top 6 side.

You never know, we could have done what Leicester have recently done! 

Slim chance I know but we can dream.

I do think we'd have eventually won the Prem if allardyce stayed, we were certainly on that trajectory.

Boggersbelief wrote:I do think we'd have eventually won the Prem if allardyce stayed, we were certainly on that trajectory.

I think we were on a bit of a plateau to be honest, the team was ageing and slowing down. We got four consecutive top 8 finishes true but the last one was seriously laboured. I think Sam knew that and wanted to rebuild the squad but Gartside and Davies told him no which is why he went.

Had they backed him then I think we'd have bounced around mid-table for a couple of years while he was doing the rebuild and then started climbing again. But of course we'll never know now.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:

Boggersbelief wrote:I do think we'd have eventually won the Prem if allardyce stayed, we were certainly on that trajectory.

Had they backed him then I think we'd have bounced around mid-table for a couple of years while he was doing the rebuild and then started climbing again. 

I agree. We wouldn't have been relegated that's for sure.

There were already plenty of numpties about moaning about how Allardyce played the game whilst he was still here, they would be moaning like the Arsenal fans are over Wenger now if he was still here and kept us up season after season.

Christ how much bellyaching was there going on when Megson was doing a job keeping us up over how they would rather see us play well and lose than grind out the results to keep us safe?

They got their wish (and their messiah) when Coyle took over and even today many of them can't see how the clueless twonk cost us our Premier place by getting us relegated when it was easier to actually stay up!

That catastrophe (and loss of the mega Sky money for simply being there) has directly led to where we are today.

My point being that most fans are fickle.

It's not a new thing I've seen the same things happening 50 years ago when Ridding was sacked and even club legend Nat Lofthouse suffered his fair share of abuse during the times he managed us too.

Allardyce was the best manager we have had in my lifetime and proved his worth now at several clubs over the years.

He probably has never been given the full recognition as a manager that he deserves but he's never ever going to come back now (unless as some sort of figure head or something) and I for one can't blame him. He's nothing left to prove to anyone.

Allardyce was a good manager, but he had no long term plan. Every player we bought seemed to be 30+ and on huge wages. Fair play, it gave us some great days and nights, but long term it crippled us as few of these players had a sell on fee.

He left because he knew we were fucked, he'd managed for the here and now, not giving a shit about the future.

Love Allardyce all you like, but he isn't immune from blame for our current level.

Natasha Whittam wrote:Allardyce was a good manager, but he had no long term plan. Every player we bought seemed to be 30+ and on huge wages. Fair play, it gave us some great days and nights, but long term it crippled us as few of these players had a sell on fee.

He left because he knew we were fucked, he'd managed for the here and now, not giving a shit about the future.

Love Allardyce all you like, but he isn't immune from blame for our current level.

I do take your point Nat but I think you're being a bit over harsh. Don't forget that Sam got those players for either no fee at all or a very small one to begin with and their wages, while high weren't by any means ridiculous. In fact Djorkaeff took a huge pay cut to come here on the basis he felt he'd get first team football and thus earn a place in the French squad for World Cup 2002. Even after that tournament he stayed on and a lot of the guys who came to BWFC then had similar motives. They wanted to play, Sam wanted to get us up the league and we wanted to be entertained by players we'd never previously have dreamed would be in our shirt.

I think the true rot actually set in immediately following his departure. Great players left and were replaced by players unfit to lace their boots for truly stupid fees (9mil for Elmander is one that springs to mind instantly) and higher wages than Sam was paying the likes of Stelios, Okocha and Campo. I would be willing to bet that Sam's signings were actually self funding in terms of increased revenue from such things as ticket and other matchday sales, merchandise such as team shirts etc, higher prize money, bigger sponsorships and of course our eventual entry into European competition. I still have huge questions about where all that money went because I for one don't believe for a moment this club was losing thirty million a year while in the Premier League. I think Eddie Davies has left an awful lot of unanswered questions and Phil Gartside's death means we may never know exactly what happened to make a club with 11 consecutive seasons in the prem wind up owing one man more than 170 million pounds. Especially given that he was taking money out on a pretty regular basis such as the "success fee" he took when Anelka and Cahill (yes he got one for Cahill too) were sold.

Something smelled rotten a long time ago to many of us but somehow ED managed to wriggle out from under without ever really explaining any of it. I'd still give a lot to know just who else was involved in Moonshift, Burnden leisure, Fildraw and all the other little "shell" companies that were supposedly part of BWFC's corporate structure. There's a black hole in those accounts that makes Phil Green look like a model of virtuous transparency.

Natasha Whittam wrote:Allardyce was a good manager, but he had no long term plan. Every player we bought seemed to be 30+ and on huge wages. Fair play, it gave us some great days and nights, but long term it crippled us as few of these players had a sell on fee.

He left because he knew we were fucked, he'd managed for the here and now, not giving a shit about the future.

Love Allardyce all you like, but he isn't immune from blame for our current level.

Agree with this.

What he did was to get as much as he could out of the players, hence our renowned backroom support team being the 'best in the league'. His biggest error, I believe, was not bringing in replacement  players when he should have. I cant believe he didn't have the cash for it,and decided to squeeze the team until their pips squeaked. Unfortunately, the following managers didn't have the same ability, nor did they wish to run the team in the same way, and their replacements just didn't fit in to the teams way of working.

He was a good manager, but a lot of his current approach/skills were learned at the expense of Bolton, and as Nat says, were still paying for it.

I'm with Pete on this one. It's a bit harsh to say it's partly Big Sams fault we are in this Position. Sam didn't have massive transfer fees to spend so got the best he could with the wages that we could offer instead. Some of the finest players in world football, albeit past their peak, gave us the most exciting times ever witnessed as Bolton fans. He got us in a position where big money could be made and could finally afford to rebuild an ageing team and move on to the next level. Unfortunately the club didn't want to give him any of the fruits of his labour and clearly didn't share his long term ambition. If they had backed him I believe he would have made back what he would eventually spend tenfold. They didn't so the rest is history. For the record I was never one of those who were calling for change because the team and football had become stagnant. I always feared the day big sam would leave as I could only see us going one way, and that's exactly what happened. Sam was an innovator, the likes we'll probably never see manage us again. Can't understand the negativity towards him at all. As sluffy said, he's proved his worth time and time again.

He has proved his worth, and I believe the best manager we ever had. I spoke to him a few time at the various fans meetings, etc, and he really was a very nice guy, with a good sense of humour. As for being an innovator, I also agree, but people learn as time goes by, and with hindsight, the beginnings of all our current problems began not after the Sam era, but towards the end. Acknowledging this point, however minor, doesn't mean people are being negative towards him.

Love this guy.