Source: Daily_Mail
'I'll be the one to decide if I'm finished' - Blackburn boss Sam Allardyce
Festive spirit: Sam Allardyce won't be calling his players in for training on Christmas Day[LNB]When the heart specialist broke the news to him that there was a problem, Big Sam just didn't feel like Big Sam any more.[LNB] 'To be honest it came as a bit of a shock because you do think you're indestructible,' he says. 'You think you're tough. You think it's something that happens to other people. It's the whole macho thing.' [LNB]But then the Blackburn manager sat down and watched the DVD. Sat down and saw how the doctors performed an angioplasty that left him with what he describes as a 'small piece of scaffolding' in his femoral artery. [LNB]A procedure, performed at the end of last month, that saved the 55-year-old from what the doctors told him could have been a massive heart attack. [LNB]Wounded pride quickly stepped aside for an overwhelming sense of relief, and Allardyce began to think more deeply about life as well as his life in football. About the madness of modern football management and the mad men who just can't leave it alone. [LNB]His first question to the specialist when he emerged from surgery? Would he have to quit his job. Not would he return to a healthy existence and see his grandchildren grow up. Not even if he would still be able to enjoy a drink. It was football. Only football. [LNB]'I asked him if the job was something I needed to stop,' he says. 'But he said, "No, not really". It might have been a consideration had I had a heart attack. But he said everything else was fine and that I'd be OK.[LNB]'Lynn (his wife) took a bit more convincing but then she always does. She wasn't over keen on me coming back in the first place after Newcastle. Mainly because she got used to seeing more of me for the first time in a very long time. We had reinvented our lives in the time I was away from the game. [LNB] Pressure of the job: Stress was one cause of Allardyce's heart problems[LNB]'And I was enjoying myself. When I took this job at Blackburn, a year ago today, we were about to head off to Dubai for Christmas and New Year. When I suddenly got the call, and we did the deal in a day, it didn't go down too well! But after being sacked at Newcastle I wasn't going to let someone else finish my career. It will finish when I say so.' [LNB]When it came to identifying what caused the heart problem, stress was seen as an issue. 'The pressure of the job was given as a reason,' he says. 'Not the main reason. But it certainly had an effect on me. [LNB]'The specialist said it was something that had probably been building up over the last 10 years and, had it not been detected when it was, I probably would have had a heart attack. That's how a lot of people find out their artery is blocked. [LNB]'I just started to feel rough in Doha, when England were over there to play Brazil. It felt a bit like indigestion but it wasn't going away and when I got back I went to see the club doc. He didn't like what he was hearing and that was that. We went to the same guy who'd seen Sir Alex Ferguson and Graeme Souness.[LNB]'I don't live perfectly. I like a bit of fine dining and a nice glass of wine. Sometimes I like a few beers. But I don't eat much fatty food. I don't do anything excessively. But I have to be a bit more careful now.' [LNB] Simple take: Sir Alex Ferguson (right) will leave football if it stops being enjoyable [LNB]Not too careful, mind you. For the next year or so he will be on six or seven tablets a day but he insists on meeting at one of his favourite restaurants. Northcote Manor is a stone's throw from Blackburn's training ground and boasts a Michelin star chef in Nigel Haworth.[LNB] Allardyce enjoys a superb langoustine ravioli before devouring a piece of grilled turbot he declares 'cut to perfection'. All of which he washes down with a glass of a very pleasant Chilean sauvignon blanc.[LNB] 'What's happened is always going to be in the back of my mind and I'm always going to have to pay a bit more attention to myself,' he says. 'But the main thing is not to get so worked up about things.[LNB]'It's almost impossible in football. In fact it is impossible. But the best way to avoid getting too stressed is to get your players performing to their best for you, making sure they don't let you down. That makes the job a lot less stressful. [LNB]'Look at Brownie (Phil Brown). You couldn't get a bet on him being sacked at Hull. But his players got a few results for him and suddenly the pressure is off again. [LNB]'You work hard to make sure it's not your turn. It's Sparky's (Mark Hughes) turn now after losing 3-0 at Tottenham. He needs a couple of wins now to get people off his back, because that's when the stress comes, when people start talking about you being under pressure.' [LNB]Young Gunner: Jack Wilshere is one of several Arsenal youth players used ahead of first-team stars by Arsene Wenger in some cup competitions[LNB]It was a subject that dominated the conversation over lunch with Ferguson and a few other colleagues last week. [LNB]'I think Alex's take on it is simple,' he says. 'You get out when you stop enjoying it. I can understand how that could become a factor, because it's not as easy for me to enjoy this job as it is for him. He's the best, the best we've ever seen, and he's been the best for a long time. [LNB]'He's nearly 68 but I don't think he has any intention of retiring. He looks as fit as a fiddle and he loves it as much as he did when he started. And if that's how he feels, and he feels healthy, he should carry on. [LNB]'But he often says he would hate to be starting now, the way it is today. The pressure there is just to stay in the Premier League - the pressure that now comes from the chairmen. [LNB]'My chairman's great, he really is, but we didn't win the last game of last season - we drew - and I know what he's thinking. He's thinking, "That's cost us two places and one-and-a-half million quid". Because every place is worth another 750 grand. Never mind that we were second from bottom when I took over and keeping us up amounted to a mammoth task. [LNB]'Talk to managers who have retired and they all say you know when it's time to go. Some of them say they're just walking across a pitch one day when they suddenly ask themselves, "Why am I still doing this?" [LNB]'It is different to any other job. You see captains of industry who change jobs, switch to something new every three years. But we just bash away, season after season.' Why? 'Because it's hard to walk away,' he says. [LNB]'It's hard to walk away when you know it's a job you get better at the longer you do it, when you work so hard to get in the position you've reached in the first place. The longer you do this job, the better you get at coping with the good, the bad and the ugly of football.' [LNB]He says it was an experienced manager who left out 10 players at Old Trafford this week. Mick McCarthy has taken an awful lot of stick for his team selection against Manchester United but Allardyce fully supports his contemporary at Wolves. [LNB] In the firing line: Allardyce says Mark Hughes needs wins to ease the pressure[LNB]'Your first priority is staying in the Premier League,' he says. 'And Mick would have drawn on the experience of being in the Premier League before, and not staying there, and decided he was better off saving his best team for the game against Burnley (tomorrow). [LNB]'Whenever I send a team out against Manchester United, whether it be my strongest XI or not, I always tell them that they might very well play their best and still lose. It just takes the pressure off them a bit. [LNB]'But every manager has to make the decisions he thinks will give his team the best chance of staying in the Premier League and if that means leaving out 10 players then that's up to him. [LNB]'He's put enormous pressure on himself and on his team to beat Burnley. But that's Mick's call. He's in charge and only he will suffer the consequences if it goes wrong. People need to remember that.' [LNB]Arsene Wenger disagrees, as he revealed after a draw at Burnley on Wednesday night when he said McCarthy had damaged the integrity of the competition. 'How can Wenger go potty?' says Allardyce. 'He does that kind of thing all the time, leaving players out. Fielding a team of kids.[LNB] Anniversary: Allardyce has been in the Rovers hotseat for a year[LNB]'Mick has concluded that Wolves are not going to follow a win at Tottenham with a win at United. You're talking a million to one. It's a very brave decision but he's based it on the experience he's had. Good luck to him.'[LNB] Allardyce is in good spirits. Feeling rather festive, in fact. He says his players will not have to go in for training on Christmas Day, even though they meet Wigan at the DW Stadium on Boxing Day. [LNB]'I've never had players in on Christmas Day,' he says. 'A lot of my players have got kids, there are kids everywhere, and home is where they should be. I can trust them to behave themselves.' [LNB]It must have been hard for him to trust anyone after what happened at Newcastle. 'It's amazing what has happened there since I left,' he says. 'That wasn't a club that was going down. I had three players lined up for January I think would have taken us into Europe. One's now in Spain and two are in the Premier League. [LNB]'Unfortunately, they (the Newcastle board) didn't have the patience. They didn't appreciate it was going to take time. Newcastle finished 14th the season before I took over and they were 11th when I was sacked. I'd changed 12 players. I was changing the whole culture of the club. But I was only a small way into doing it. [LNB] Long-ball merchant: Allardyce says Arsenal 'hated' playing his direct Bolton sides[LNB]'Things happened that were beyond my control. A change of ownership for a start, with Mike (Ashley) coming in. I quickly discovered that the money wasn't there, that I was working under the same financial restrictions I'd dealt with at Bolton. [LNB]'Everyone said that I spent 20-odd million at Newcastle but I brought in £16million. We'd enjoyed the best start in 10 years, then we hit a barren patch, the pressure mounted and that was that.' [LNB]At Blackburn, he is so much happier, even if money is alarmingly tight. 'We're going through a period of transition,' he says. 'We've moved about 12 players in the last year, sometimes because we've wanted to and sometimes because we've had to for financial reasons. [LNB]'But I'm trying to build something here, trying to build a staff around me similar to what I had at Bolton. [LNB]'I take great satisfaction in the fact that certain people have come round to my way of thinking. [LNB]Numbers game: Allardyce admits he knows each position in the Premier League table is crucial come the end of the season due to financial reward [LNB]'In the early years there was a lot of jealousy about the amount of staff I had at Bolton. And yet now everyone is doing it. Sports scientists, psychologists, all that kind of stuff. All the staff I had are still working in the Premier League at the best clubs - Chelsea, Manchester City.' [LNB]He does admit to one thing, though. Long ball tactics. 'Bolton actually became a fashionable club because we attracted some top European players,' he says. 'But we also got labelled a long ball team and, while it was true in the big games, it wasn't true all of the time. [LNB]'Against teams like Arsenal we did play long ball. We played to our strengths and what we considered to be their weaknesses. And Arsenal, in particular, hated it.' [LNB]In an effort to remain calm, Allardyce tries not to hate anything these days. But he does think the recent furore over one or two dressing room bust-ups - namely those concerning Tony Pulis and Jim Magilton - points to a 'political correctness' that makes him feel slightly uncomfortable. [LNB]'I know you can't condone the kind of behaviour that ends up with someone being head-butted,' says Allardyce. 'But we used to see fights every other week. For me it was the sign of a healthy dressing room!' [LNB]Big Sam is still very much alive and kicking. [LNB] Andy Townsend's Boot Room: Zola doesn't need executive stressBLACKBURN v Tottenham: David Dunn a doubt as Rovers take on SpursDi Santo set to stay at Blackburn as Chelsea give deal the green lightBLACKBURN ROVERS FC
