‘Like a prison’ – Allardyce reveals claustrophobic Leeds United he discovered and games needed to save club - YEP 1/6/23
Leeds United interim boss Sam Allardyce has described the atmosphere upon arriving at Elland Road as ‘like a prison’ owing to the lack of time off players had been given prior to his appointment.
By Joe Donnohue
Speaking on William Hill’s ‘No Tippy Tappy Football’ podcast
following Leeds' relegation, Allardyce returned to chair the show alongside
presenter Natalie Pike and former Premier League manager Tim Sherwood.
Allardyce reflected on various topics regarding his Leeds
United pit-stop including what the future holds and discussions which need to
take place.
In addition, Big Sam was asked whether he had any regrets
from his time at Elland Road, to which he described not having as much time to
‘investigate’ everything he would have wanted.
Allardyce was appointed at the beginning of May, faced with
four fixtures to preserve Leeds’ Premier League status – none of which he was
able to win – before bowing out at home to Tottenham Hotspur last weekend.
"I think realistically if I’d have got it when they
chose to pick Gracia to take over, which would probably have given you about
14-16 games, that would have been enough,” Allardyce said.
"I don't think I could have worked and tried and
investigated everything we possibly could have investigated to try and help the
players overcome the position that they were in to try and stay in the Premier
League.
"We changed training grounds, we changed direction in
terms of the last game, training at Elland Road for three days.
"We had some of the old players, iconic players like
Gordon Strachan, Eddie Gray, Gary McAllister come into the training ground and
have a chat with the players and what it means to them, what status it [the
club] is, what position they held in terms of when they played there.
"We tried to relax the players, give them some time off
when we first got there, they hadn’t had a day off in 24-25 days, they’d been
in every single [day]. Instead of a pleasant training ground, that becomes more
like a prison, claustrophobic. So, we gave them some time off and we saw the
benefit of that physically on the pitch because the levels of high intensity
and speed went right up compared to what it was before we got there.
"But obviously from the mentality point of view and
concentration point of view, we let ourselves down with the mistakes we made,”
Allardyce added.
