Andy Carroll

"Had we known he would be out for this long, we would not have signed him." David Sullivan on Andy Carroll

The most overpriced player in my lifetime I think.  What a waste of money and surely they have experts who should have known this...

I watched that interview on FF, and as he was showing his massive gaff off, I was waiting (and hoping) for him to open his arms wide, look around him and say "You know what paid for all this, my son....? Porn, that's what."

But he didn't......the bastard.

Sullivan is a loathsome slug. He made his money initially by conning people into thinking they were buying hard core porn (at hard core porn prices when porn was still illegal) but sending them soft core porn. Then he started selling "adult" magazines.

A lot of people, myself included, took issue with the money Allardyce wasn't allowed to spend. 

In all fairness, he's been absolutely stupid with it in parts at West Ham. I think Carroll's a great player when fit. He's like a Kevin Davies with more abilities with the ball at his feet. But there was always a decent chance it wouldn't work out and he will have cost them a fortune.

How Big sam managed to persuade the board to spend so much on a piss poor striker I will never know, I can't stand the guy.

On another note the boo's are ringing round West Ham at half time. Big sams time might be coming to an end at the spammers.

Duncan Ferguson the second.

Allardyce isn't infallible but he is the best manager we have had in the last 50 years in terms of achievement. The only ones who come even close are Rioch (and look how he fared at Arsenal) and Ian Greaves. The win percentages are interesting, although not weighted for the opposition played. Allardyce, Rioch and Greaves are 41.35, 48.26 and 39.13 respectively. The only other managers in the last 50 years with better figures are Jimmy Armfield (44.44) and Todd (43.17).

He's just a big cart horse with a ponytail, waste of money.

Allardyce spent loads of money though mostly on massive wages, then left us for Geordie riches leaving a load of overpaid has-beens that we've been paying for ever since. The issue is slightly clouded by Megson's attempts to replace the has-beens Allardyce left us with, but I still don't get his cult status with some fans. He was OK, but everyone seems to forget how lucky he was arriving at a time when the owners were prepared to spend a bit after the success of Rioch and Todd.
At the end of the day, he got us as far as we could go with the money available and pissed off when the money ran out. Allardyce hates our club and the smug bastard seems to revel in the fact that he f***** us over good and proper when he ran out of ideas and was asked to try to make us successful by being a good manager rather than splashing out on yet another European Cup Winner or African Player of the Year to paper over the cracks. Always a Judas in my mind.

WL I don't understand your attitude. We were not a successful club when Allardyce joined us. He made us a successful club. He left when the club wasn't prepared to spend money to consolidate our success. Why does that make him a Judas?

It is incredibly naive to think that managers or players owe us or the club anything. They have to manage their lives and careers to maximise their own futures. Would you continue to work for someone that fucked you over? Does that mean you are a Judas?

The groundwork at Wanderers was laid by Bruce Rioch.

Reebok Trotter wrote:The groundwork at Wanderers was laid by Bruce Rioch.

If anyone was a Judas it was Rioch.

Arsenal were a much bigger club with a lot more money to spend.

Rioch and Todd laid the financial foundations for our return to the top flight and they did it by some incredibly astute transactions and sheer managerial brilliance. Both had a higher win ratio than Allardyce despite having to earn money before they could spend it.
Allardyce was given free reign to go out and get top players. Rioch and Todd had no such luxury - they had to work hard to find bargains - and they pulled some absolute crackers out of the hat.
Allardyce had money to gamble with and he did it with mixed success. If you take the proven super-high earners like Okocha, Djorkieff, Campo, Hierro etc. out of the mix you're left with a Jardel for every success.
Finally, when it was clear that Allardyce's transactions were no longer sustainable and the aging team needed replacing - but he'd actually have to demonstrate good management to do it - he threw his toys out of the pram. His only major coup in the transfer market was Anelka. He knew that he hadn't created a young enough/good enough squad to take over from the 30 odd year olds and couldn't keep buying his way out of trouble so he left.

I have great respect for what Rioch and Todd did to bring our club back from the brink and we owe them a debt of gratitude.
For me, all Allardyce did was inherit a healthy situation and kept it going as long as he could. Decent effort for the most part, but hardly the complete transformation that Rioch and Todd brought about.
Allardyce did and still does remind me of Malcolm Allison - too much about his own personality and not enough hard work where it really matters.

Even if I accept your argument (and I do agree with some of your points) why is Allardyce a Judas and Rioch isn't?

Allardyce got us promoted and kept us up on a shoe string budget, I don't believe the argument that he was playing with Rioch/Todd's money, the money we spent was as a result of getting promoted to the richest league in the world.

You fail to acknowledge the players he brought through and cost us nothing, Nolan, O'Brien and Hunt and completely ignore the players he brought in for very little money and were highly successful for us like Ben Haim, Michael Ricketts, Kevin Davies, Speed and Abdoulaye Faye.

Even players he brought in but weren't given their opportunity by subsequent staff have proved good players like Dzemaili and Al Habsi.

Allardyce left because it was obvious he'd taken us as far as out budget would allow, I never held it against him leaving for Newcastle, he was very ambitious and quite rightly so having turned us from a mid table championship side into a top 6 Premier league side. You can't argue with his success or how he did it, we won't see such a level of success for a long time.