Leeds and Sam Allardyce – an unlikely alliance that simply has to work - The Athletic 3/5/23

Phil Hay

The reason Leeds United knew they could dial up Sam Allardyce, aside from him being out of work and open to offers, was that the idea of him riding to their aid had been floated before — and fairly recently.

Just under two months ago, after Leeds sacked Jesse Marsch and set about trying to replace him, they were made aware that Allardyce was interested, at the end of his phone and willing to speak, as out-of-work coaches usually are. He and Angus Kinnear, the club’s chief executive, had crossed paths at West Ham United many years earlier and they were still in contact sporadically. Allardyce put himself forward as a solution; a way out of the tangle Leeds were in.

The invitation was politely declined because Leeds, at that juncture, were still trying to think about the medium to long term. Even when approaches to Andoni Iraola and Arne Slot yielded nothing, they opted for the interim appointment of under-21s coach Michael Skubala and then, when Skubala felt like too much of a risk, offered an interim deal to Javi Gracia with the option to extend if the job went well. For all the danger their league position posed, the club were not ready to reduce themselves to simple firefighting.

But on Sunday evening, as the realisation dawned after a 4-1 defeat to Bournemouth that imploding results had made a busted flush of Gracia, the Leeds board thought again. They had four games left and, based on the evidence in front of them, they were driving over a cliff. If Allardyce would do it, they could spin the wheel with him. And there and then, the image Leeds like to project of themselves — of being different, of being innovative, of being ahead of the game — bowed to one of English football’s most stereotypical contingencies: Big Sam to the end of the season.

Tactics and philosophy are largely irrelevant because four games is no time for a coach to rip everything up. Allardyce will bring his methods and his building blocks, most likely as people remember them from his time in football going way back, and there are things about Leeds he can seek to change. But what Leeds are clinging to are his perceived powers of motivation, at a time of the year when a kick up the arse is about the only tool left in the box.

Allardyce looks like he can read the riot act and, if nothing else, Leeds look like a squad who need it read to them. Nonetheless, there is no way of dressing this up as anything other than dreaming of a dramatic colour scheme and abandoning it for beige. Forget all claims of imagination because Allardyce for four games is the layman’s solution.

Leeds, in fairness, are past the stage where perception or reputation matters. They have sacked two head coaches already, dispensed with their director of football and killed the belief they have any idea what they are doing. So this is about cold hard results delivering cold hard points, scraping them over the line and stopping this season from having the denouement which seemed inevitable at the start of the week.

Gathering points was proving beyond Gracia. At full-time at Bournemouth, he had one from a possible 15. If Allardyce can make something of these four fixtures, Leeds will be glad they turned his way. If he can’t, they were hardly on the straight and narrow in the first place. And no manner of survival would stave off the pitchforks, the demand for root-and-branch reform.

Gracia, for all that he was in Yorkshire, exits with the guise of a Massimo Cellino appointment, one you never got to know and can only vaguely pass judgment on. For a few weeks, it was good. For the rest of it, the football was carnage. Which is odd because, initially, he was seen by the players as more realistic than Marsch, more adaptable and more alive to the fact Leeds were not good enough to plough on against any form of opponents with a fixed plan that did not bend.

Gracia’s tactics were on the cautious side, but there was a horses-for-courses attitude and different strategies depending on the game ahead. Marsch cut an on-the-pitch type of coach, active to the point of wanting to lay out the equipment for training sessions himself. Gracia delegated more to a trusted backroom team and Leeds hoped the familiarity of those staff might help him. Marsch’s staff, to some extent, had been put together piecemeal.

A fines system similar to the punitive one introduced by Gracia at Watford was imposed a few weeks in, before Leeds lost 4-1 at Arsenal. Personality-wise, he was somewhere between Marsch and Marcelo Bielsa; less distant than Bielsa but stricter than Marsch, polite and courteous but disinclined to explain decisions like team selection at great length.

The lack of communication on that front, the absence of direct conversations about who was in and who was out of his line-up, did not sit comfortably with certain players, but it was still the case that, after six matches, Gracia had accrued three wins and 10 points. Prior to that, Leeds had taken 19 points from 23. There were no issues with his sessions or his approach to training, but in no way was he the archetypal motivator, something the club saw an urgent call for after Sunday. He appeared at Thorp Arch for the last time on Tuesday, saying goodbye to the squad with a warm speech as the appointment of Allardyce was being wrapped up.

Last week, Allardyce spoke about Leeds on the ‘No Tippy Tappy Football’ podcast, explaining how the starting point in his method of coaching was always to “stop goals going in” and construct a competent defence. It was, he said, “One way of working which everyone sees as a negative but is actually the best positive of all” and while he is right that defensive-minded managers are unfashionable, Leeds can hardly argue with him focusing there.

Bournemouth on Sunday was the fourth time in seven matches they had conceded four times or more. Their tally of concessions in April, a Premier League record of 23, is the highest in England’s top division in a single calendar month for almost 40 years. They are a team who cannot defend and are showing nothing like the ability to score one more than they let in. Gracia hit a downward spiral and was not about to get out of it.

It stands to reason that, in trying to stop a four-game appointment from being an aimless throw at the dartboard, Allardyce will revert to type and go back to what he sees as the basics. How ready he is for the job will be known soon enough. On the one hand, he has ample experience and proven self-confidence. On the other, this is his first post for two years and during his last at West Bromwich Albion, the club went down having won four games in 25. Bielsa’s Leeds trounced them twice.

It should also be noted that of the last 20 permanent managers to leave their jobs from March to May in a completed Premier League season, on only three occasions has their former club actually improved its league position.

Though it might not seem like it, Allardyce has been on the back burner for a while: one club job since 2018, England coach for a single friendly as far back as 2016. Even he must have wondered if the game had left him behind. But like Roy Hodgson and Neil Warnock, time is no barrier to a comeback. And in those two cases this season, no barrier to a healthy impact, either.

 

The combination of Allardyce and Leeds, the outcome of their partnership, is not purely about him. The fixtures he has landed are demonstrably difficult ones, with Manchester City away this weekend the most likely to terrorise an already bruised squad who are showing little backbone. But those bruises and the boardroom’s lack of confidence in Gracia’s ability to soothe them was what made the thought of Allardyce more attractive to Leeds this time than the thought of him last time.

It was twist or be damned on Sunday night — and it might be that Leeds are damned anyway. But when Allardyce sits down to talk for the first time, there will be that look, that smile, the insistence from him that the club can get out of this. And unlike another press conference with Gracia, it might tempt people to think that chaos theory is afoot. That somehow, this last-gasp plunge could work.