Big Sam none the wiser but a whole lot richer
That’s the game. You sign a new deal when you’ve knocked in six in six. Or at the very least, you let everyone know how well things are going.
Jurgen Klopp got out there on Monday Night Football, seizing a moment while his stock soared. Locking in his rep as a charming tactical wizard. Playing the percentages with a visit from Manchester United on the horizon.
Theo Walcott has been telling anyone who will listen all about his latest reawakening. In the last few weeks, Pards has gone back to talking about “my team” instead of lamenting “the players”. Brendan Rodgers held off printing CVs, but the words “all my teams have played with that intent” didn’t slip out accidentally after the City performance.
And naturally Arsene Wenger, a man perfectly attuned to the rhythms of opinion after all these years, knows exactly when the first whispers of a new two-year deal should start to leak and the flirtation with England step up a level.
Big Sam has played the PR game too, over the years. Last time he went for the England job, he considered hiring publicity guru Max Clifford to push his case, though eventually decided against it. It might have been the £20,000 a month price-tag.
According to Sam’s book, Steve McClaren hired Clifford instead and successfully locked in that decent European run with Middlesbrough.
And Sam eventually had to fork out too to “rehabilitate” his image when he ran into that little bit of strife with a previous undercover operation.
Clifford earned his corn and Sam’s moment finally came. And if there was ever a time for Sam to lock in his standing as England manager, it was before he had played a match or even held a single training session.
So, in a sense, it was perfectly understandable that a conversation should take place in a Mayfair hotel about monetising Sam Allardyce England Manager and promising a relationship with mystery investors that “can grow down the line when he is no longer involved at the FA”.
That said, Sam’s haste in looking towards a time when he would no longer be England manager may have been the first clue as to how he would fare as England manager.
The next came during negotiations. After telling the Telegraph’s man that his old pal Alex Ferguson gets “four hundred, five hundred grand a pop” for speaking engagements, Sam was happy to settle for £150,000.
Less than a 10th, Sam pointed out, of what Robbie Williams gets for “just singing”. Sam’s regard for song has been clear from the moment he chose to tell jokes instead of sing at his Bolton initiation 45 years ago, prompting his fellow pro to “blacken his bollocks with boot polish”. And it was Paddy McGuinness and Bradley Walsh who got the call rather than Robbie Williams for Sam’s first England camp.
In those early signs of weakness, there were indicators that Sam the England manager might not be as big as billed.
In his last interview for the England job in 2006, he promised the FA that if a player walked into an England dressing room carrying a mobile phone, he’d “take it off him and throw it in the bin, even if it was Wayne Rooney”. But once he had his foot in the door, it soon emerged that, job spec notwithstanding, Sam wasn’t certain he was in any position to tell Wazza what to do.
Those early failings aside, it’s hard to see what the FA have got him on now that they didn’t know before.
He laid it all bare in his book, admitting to being warned about his “banter” at West Ham, the club reminding him it could be considered verbal abuse.
And having read Fergie’s foreword describing Sam as “one of the great characters of the game”, surely someone with a little imagination at St George’s Park might have been able to picture Sam slugging a pint of wine, slagging off ‘Woy’ and talking about Prince Harry’s bum, and promising the England manager would “deliver value” in China by standing at the bar, “having a few social drinks”.
Surely the FA haven’t, belatedly, become squeamish about Sam finding himself in embarrassing situations where “no wrongdoing has been proven”.
Pleading his innocence regarding the Panorama sting, Sam once said: “I was earning £1.5m a year, so I didn’t need a little bit extra from an agent. It would have been madness.” On £3m a year with England, he might seem twice as mad now. But there is a poignant reflection in Big Sam: My Autobiography of which he may gradually be gaining an even deeper understanding.
“There was a TV programme called Who’d Be a Billionaire? which revealed that the more money you have, the more insecure you are and the less real friends you have. I think there’s a lot of truth in that.”
Even as he walks away with another mil, does Sam really know who he can have a drink with anymore?
Dubs’ old boys make a hash of it as Keegan trends
Lee Keegan bailed out the banks, nominated Donald Trump, shot JR and was groundskeeper in Saipan.
And the #ThingsLeeDid campaign has broken a mind games mould.
Here, five years ago, I wondered when a tweet would be printed and hammered to a GAA dressing room door.
We are well beyond that now. And history might yet record this as the first All-Ireland won on Twitter.
Old media got its fair shake too this week. The Dublin Old Boys Network stuck to traditional methods and got their message out there in print and radio and TV. Unanimously, their concerns were for law and order, and the policing of Keegan.
But, as Andy Townsend would probably put it; they almost got it out too well.
In fairness, John Fogarty of these shores was calling out the campaign, even as it was going strong.
But by Tuesday evening, Mayo had mobilised and tabletised. And rather than dispatch Brady or Padden or McHale to fight their man’s corner, a whole county socialised their scorn and laughed Dublin out of the box seat.
On Wednesday, the Mayo GAA Blog assured the faithful that an official defence had been prepared but was no longer needed, so effective had the mob been in realigning the agenda.
By Thursday lunchtime, Jim Gavin was seeking distance, assuring us Diarmuid Connolly could look after himself.
Too late, alas, for one more plea for vigilance from Coman Goggins in Thursday afternoon’s Herald.
Net result? Keegan is surely at least 10% less likely to get the line than seven days ago.
A people’s umbrage has been harnessed, for release again this evening.
And maybe, before the winter is out, even the doyens of influence in the Kerry Old Boys Network will be brushing up on their social skills.
