Sam Allardyce did not expect to be sacked as manager of Newcastle. It was a gray Wednesday in January 2008 when a message was passed on the club’s training ground that he was needed to meet chairman Chris Mort at St James’ Park.
Assuming it was transfer business – he wanted Lassana Diarra from Arsenal and Wes Brown from Manchester United – he hitched a ride with a member of staff across town. The compact car lacked a hubcap – a low-budget hearse, on reflection. Allardyce was still wearing his tracksuit and a gold chain around his neck. In the boardroom, however, a golden handshake awaited him.
Not that Allardyce felt like shaking hands with anyone. After just eight months, 24 games and with the team 11th in the Premier League, he was stunned. Mort said they would settle the exact details of the severance payment later, but Allardyce, as was his right, refused to move. Finally, after five hours and through calls to lawyers in London, the terms were agreed.
Newcastle players were also shocked to hear the news via television and telephone calls from journalists. That’s not to say some of them weren’t relieved.
Allardyce had landed on Tyneside by helicopter in May, with an ego the size of a jumbo jet. His stock was high after his work at Bolton, but nowhere near as high as his self-esteem. With veteran international stars like Michael Owen, Shay Given and Nicky Butt, some felt a little more humility was needed.
Sam Allardyce arrived on Tyneside with the ego the size of a jumbo jet after working wonders with Bolton
The atmosphere at the club soon turned sour with fans and some players never going to see him
Mike Ashley was only too happy to pay the outrageous bar bills from the pre-season trip
A source said: ‘He came up with a lot of ideas about sports science, preparation, recovery and data. That was all well and good, but it was like saying everything the players had done their entire career was wrong. It rubbed people the wrong way almost immediately.’
A preparatory trip to Stegersbach in Austria was also not well received. Not as good as the beer down the throat of Allardyce and his staff, that is. It is said that the drinking sessions took precedence over the training sessions and that players were irate when some club employees reeked of alcohol during morning practices.
‘A bachelor party’ – they played golf and went canoeing – was how one of the attendees described it, and a five-figure bar bill – cognac, cigars and all – was happily settled by the club, by now owned lager – Waving Mike Ashley. Indeed, the man who appointed Allardyce co-owner Freddy Shepherd had disappeared within a month of his arrival.
But the drinking culture was at odds with the manager’s obsession with sports science and medicine. Nearly every hour, new backroom staff, from analysts to psychologists, arrived on the training ground as well as laptops and state-of-the-art equipment. The diet was revised and Allardyce ordered a discount on pasta and potatoes. There were also nine signatures.
On the practice fields, the manager was sidelined via microphones on booming loudspeakers to deliver his message. He wanted his team to get the ball forward quickly. When goalkeeper Given started up the field for goalkeeper Mark Viduka, the players laughed at the sound of Allardyce drooling through the loudspeakers… ‘Oooohhhh’.
Some loved his man management and to this day speak well of his “old school” values in that regard. But they joked about the tactics, claiming that the team of masseurs were only there to soothe their necks after watching the ball fly through the air.
Allardyce shouted ‘POMO’ (Position of Maximum Opportunity) during practices and games. One player said, “It was like a secret code for ‘Launch it forward.'”
Older players were offended by the tone of Allardyce’s messages
Fans wanted Allardyce out of the club within months of his arrival and they got their way
POMO became a term of fun around the training ground. He also had a phrase – “nullify their strengths” – which he repeated over and over during team meetings. Once, after an extensive analysis of the opposition, an international raised his hand and asked, ‘What do we do when we have the ball?’
Vibration plates, to strengthen the muscle core, made players run to the toilet, which was the direction supporters feared their team’s football was heading.
Allardyce wanted to inculcate an ‘up and at em’ style, but signed some players who were more ‘down and out’. When Geremi’s free transfer from Chelsea came up, Sir Bobby Robson tried to warn the club by relaying a phone call to Jose Mourinho questioning the midfielder’s ’40-year-old legs’.
To think, the alternative was a 21-year-old from Croatia named Luka Modric. That was until Ashley, realizing the magnitude of the club’s debts, cut spending.
Brazilian defender Claudio Cacapa also arrived from left field, but left the podium in right after 18 minutes of November’s home game with Portsmouth, with the team trailing 3–1. It was here, during a 4-1 loss, that the fans first turned against Allardyce. His wife, Lynne, vowed never to go to competitions again.
Players would love it if Allardyce could hear about Shay Given’s long balls in practice
Mark Viduka was an outlet that Allardyce used to the max during his spell at the club – an approach that never really endeared him to the supporters
Joey Barton, another signing, labeled the audience “mean.” He was arrested the following month for assault and brawling and later sentenced to six months in prison. Allardyce called him a “damned liability.”
The entire episode captured the club’s “soap opera” reputation that Allardyce had sought to cleanse. Little chance. He lost Kieron Dyer to West Ham early in the season after the England midfielder complained of a row with fans that saw his home and car vandalized by eggs. Dyer had clashed with Barton. During a pre-season five-a-side, Barton told him, “You think you f***ing Pele,” to which he replied, “I f***ing Pele, compared to you.”
Fan favorite Nobby Solano was sacked by Allardyce and told he was not needed, Barton subsequently broke his foot in July and senior players were unconvinced by the quality of their new teammates.
Despite that, the season started with a 3–1 win at Bolton and Allardyce, elated to beat his former club amid bitterness over the many staffers he had taken on, partied late into the night. There were later beers with Ashley and Mort in Newcastle, trips to London casinos with the owner and after six games Newcastle finished fifth.
The issues surrounding Joey Barton were well documented and added to the sense of great unease
But supporters never went to Allardyce and results fell, the team taking one point from 12 over Christmas. Since Ashley was standing and drinking on the terraces among those fans, he listened. Steps were taken to line up Harry Redknapp, who expressed interest. Allardyce even called him to confront him about the rumours, but he denied contact.
After Allardyce was fired and Redknapp got cold feet, Ashley turned to Kevin Keegan. He was startled 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 hardest decision for outings was which of the staff to leave behind.
Meanwhile, Allardyce took a call from Shepherd, inviting him to his Barbados retreat, an offer he accepted. Had Big Sam turned down 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 win over Newcastle on Saturday. But his new players should remember this first: POMO.