The only surprise about the enormous chip on Sam Allardyce's shoulder is that he hasn’t yet dunked it in gravy.

There it resides, making up half of who he is, representing a deep and long-standing resentment at how he is perceived and how he is portrayed.

In the minds of everyone, both inside the game and watching from a distance, he is the epitome of the meat-and-potatoes, Mike Bassett-a-like managers who used to roam the land, preaching only passion and a well regimented 4-4-2. In a brave new world, English football has embraced continental flair and nuance.

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It has willingly succumbed to the tactical revolution. And in that world ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce is considered a dinosaur.

It would be immensely unfair of course to cast the temporary Leeds gaffer as a villain solely based on him having a problem with this negative rendering of his abilities.

Who, after all, in their right mind would easily accept such an insulting slight on their good name? No, it’s perfectly understandable that Allardyce has that chip and duly takes offence. 

But with the seasoned 68-year-old it goes far beyond mere indignation towards his public image. He actually believes the very opposite is true.

More accurately, he really, really believes the very opposite is true, his colossal ego manufacturing a delusion that would be hilarious if it wasn’t so exasperating. 

“I won’t ever be going to a top four club because I’m not called Allardici, just Allardyce,” he famously said when boss of West Ham, blaming his Englishness on big clubs overlooking him and absolutely not countenancing for a second that it might be because he’s a limited one-trick-pony who turns sides into a 21st century Wimbledon. 

Furthermore, has any individual in living history – royalty aside – ever benefited greater from being so quintessentially English? He should thank his lucky stars each and every day that he was born in Dudley, not the Dordogne. 

It somehow resulted in him becoming an international coach for goodness sake, if only for one game.

Big Sam Allardyce is one of football villains

On picking up his firefighter’s helmet again recently, charged with rescuing a Leeds side whose betting odds suggest they are unsalvageable, he then revealed he is still living in a fantasy land that presumably has a pub dispensing free pints of wine on every corner. 

“There is nobody ahead of me in football terms. Not Pep. Not Klopp. Not Arteta,” he stated to a poor press corps that had to keep a straight face throughout.

“I’m certainly as good as they are,” he ended with, this manager with 32 years of experience, whose biggest achievement was to take the Hammers up via the Play-Offs.

This gross distortion of the truth ignores the fact that Allardyce has been sucking the vitality out of clubs for decades, hated by Newcastle fans and West Ham supporters alike while it would be a huge mistake to even mention his name on Merseyside for the manner in which he stultified Everton.

Granted, at the latter – just like at Sunderland and Crystal Palace prior – he staved off the threat of relegation and subverted the football betting. But no-one would deny his ability to do that, to strip a club back to its basics and get them functional again.

The rest? The rest is just sycophantic journalists talking him up and Allardyce hyping himself louder than anyone else. 

He is a man who in all reasonable judgement should be counting his blessings. Yet he insists, without any cause of logic, that he has been deprived of so many more of them.


*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to AP Photo*

Stephen Tudor is a freelance football writer and sports enthusiast who only knows slightly less about the beautiful game than you do.

A contributor to FourFourTwo and Forbes, he is a Manchester City fan who was taken to Maine Road as a child because his grandad predicted they would one day be good.