Two years ago this month Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds beat Sam Allardyce’s already-relegated West Brom 3-1 on the final day of the Premier League season.
How quickly things can change in football.
Fifteen months on from Bielsa’s dismissal, with another two managers already come and gone, now it is Allardyce who is tasked with preserving Leeds’ Premier League status.
The 68-year-old will attempt to do so with a brand of football that has proved divisive over the years, in what is his ninth role at a Premier League team.
The West Brom gig goes down as Allardyce’s most recent job until now, and also the only occasion where he has experienced relegation from the Premier League.
He took over in the December of that campaign with the club 19th, overseeing 25 league matches and winning just four, and they never once changed position under Allardyce – staying above Sheffield United but crucially never threatening to leave the drop-zone, finishing 13 points adrift of safety.
The spell dented Allardyce’s reputation as a survival specialist, but not enough from Leeds’ perspective, who can expect more of the same from the man who believes he would have landed bigger clubs roles were he called “Sam Allardicio”.
That means a focus on defence, somehow fixing overnight this side who have conceded 22 goals in their last six games. “There is not a problem with Leeds in possession, but there is a massive problem off it,” Allardyce said himself on Wednesday. “If they want to stay up, they have to stop conceding. We have to cope out of possession.
“We need a pattern, system and style of play to say: this is how we stop the opposition. You can then get more possession higher up the field and attack them. You get two benefits: stop the goals going in and get more opportunities to score goals.”
So, 4-4-2, obviously? Don’t bank on it. At West Brom, Allardyce flirted with the 4-2-3-1 formation that Leeds have used almost all this season, while a defensive 5-4-1 against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in April 2021 led to a stunning 5-2 win in what was otherwise a forgetful season.
Mainly operating a 4-1-4-1 that campaign, Allardyce’s tactics prompted a frustrated Jurgen Klopp to label it “6-4 or whatever it was” when Liverpool drew with the Baggies at Anfield in December 2020.
“I’ve been able to master that over many years and that’s why I’ve been doing it so long,” Allardyce said in response to the Liverpool boss’ comments.
“You can challenge the best in your league and you can challenge your tactics against theirs as, more often than not, my players are seen as not as good as the opposition.
“We have to set out a tactical situation to nullify their strengths really and see what we can do by capitalising on what possession we get.”
All eyes, then, on Leeds’ formation at Manchester City this Saturday. The Premier League favourites have lost just one league game at the Etihad this season, scoring at a rate of more than three per game (54) there and conceding a goal per game (16). No team has more passes or touches this season than City, likewise goals, and they top the possession charts too.
That bodes for one-way traffic and Allardyce setting up Leeds to snatch a point, perhaps all three if they can somehow contain City and catch them unawares, while Wilfried Gnonto can hope for a recent run in the side after Allardyce recently asked Jermaine Beckford, on his No Tippy Tappy Football podcast, why the Italian winger does not start more often.
Realistically, though, Allardyce will know his target of six points is more likely from their final three games – at home to Newcastle, away at West Ham, then back at Elland Road on the final day against Tottenham.
Both West Ham and Newcastle fans will be accustomed to the ways of Allardyce. The Hammers was his second-longest managerial stint after Bolton, but despite securing promotion and then three mid-table finishes, the club opted against renewing his contract in 2015.
“I suppose you can say it’s mutual,” Allardyce said at the time, with West Ham’s chairmen stating their desire for a “new philosophy” and a manager that could take them to “new heights”.
This proved a recurring theme for Allardyce, who despite lifting Everton from 13th to eighth in 2017-18 was dismissed after just six months.
By that point Allardyce had truly lost the Everton fans. “I can’t honestly produce any more than I’m doing,” he had said in April 2018. “I’m sorry some fans don’t like it but we are trying as hard as we can, myself, my staff and the players.”
This despite a run of 14 points in seven games, and indeed these comments after a 2-0 home win over Huddersfield, where supporters unfurled a banner reading “Our survey says… Get out of our club”.
It was a reference to a survey Everton had sent out earlier that month, whereby fans were asked to rate Allardyce’s performances on a scale from zero to 10. It went down as a “marketing slip-up”, but the discontent was vocal enough at Goodison Park – let alone whatever responses Everton may have received.
Winger Nikola Vlasic did not exactly hold back either. “The football played by Big Sam was awful, if it could even be called football,” Vlasic told Croatian newspaper Sportske Novosti in January 2019.
“In such football I do not have a place. The football team was terrified by everything, the fans mostly. This season, Marco Silva plays different, much nicer football, but has not got results. It is true that Everton did not make an expected breakthrough but at least fans now look at the normal football in which the guys, through their actions, are trying to score and win.”
Under Allardyce Everton were 19th for shots, third for long balls and 14th for touches that 2017-18 season, but 11th for goals, joint-eighth for clean sheets and ultimately eighth in the table.
Everton would eventually finish eighth again under Silva, but having slipped down the table since, Allardyce is likely to feel justified in the belief that his approach produces results.
West Brom is the outlier here, but two years later Allardyce has a chance to prove his doubters wrong. Leeds are yet to place in the relegation zone this season, and he has three million reasons to ensure that remains the case.
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