Making an impression

Interview with Sam Allardyce: Michael Walker talks to the Bolton manager who, after working up through the ranks, is finally receiving the recognition he deserves

Sam Allardyce has raised a few eyebrows these last seven days and on Wednesday morning one of them was his own.

Sitting in a health club on the outskirts of Bolton, some 12 hours after the Wanderers had edged into a League Cup semi-final past Southampton, a feat that surpassed their 2-1 win at Stamford Bridge last Saturday, Allardyce was asked what he thought his odds were to be the next manager of England.

"Rather large," he replied dismissively.

"Twenty to one with William Hill," came back at him.

It was then that the Allardyce left eyebrow arced north: "Really?" he said. "One never knows, then."

But what Allardyce does know is that those are short odds - Ladbrokes have him at 66 to 1 - because there is mirth implied in the suggestion that Allardyce could manage England.

Yet Bolton Wanderers are 10th in the Premiership and only three English managers, Bobby Robson, Alan Curbishley and Steve Bruce, are above Allardyce. Then there is the League Cup semi-final against Aston Villa, which if Bolton were to win and then face Arsenal in the final it would almost certainly mean Allardyce had led his club into Europe, and that win over multi-platinum Chelsea.

Today it is Arsenal who visit Bolton and a home win, or a repeat of the tumultuous 2-2 draw there in April, and Allardyce's reputation should rise further. In less than a month Bolton will have met Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, plus Leicester City, and Allardyce might even yet be flavour of it.

Not that he is counting on it. "A lot of the job today is about how you hold and portray yourself," he said, "about how people perceive you to be, not how you are, is, were. But the bottom line is that you have to be able to do the job. If you are good-looking, slim and a very fluent talker but can't do the job, then you are not going to survive.

"Unfortunately I cannot help the way I were born and the way I look. If people see you skin deep then they'll make a skin-deep judgment. The 'rugged' perception comes from the past, the career history: not a flamboyant or cultured footballer, a fairly straightforward, basic defender that played in all four divisions of the English Football League - though quite a long time in the top division. But it's never really worried me. I do whatever I think needs to be done. It's about what I think. We're not looking for adoration, at least I'm not."

But recognition has been a theme of Allardyce's for some time. The superficiality of football, which leads to shallow understanding of the game, is one of his key complaints.

"There is little appreciation of context. The bottom line is results, the only thing that matters now, nothing else. Look at Andy Preece at Bury. I signed Andy Preece at Blackpool and I'm very protective of people in the Football League, I know what it's like. There's a manager who's lost his job because the chairman says he can't afford him.

"That has to be utter, utter hogwash, the most feeble excuse I've ever heard in my life. But that's what we're faced with as managers - unreal scenarios.

"There is less tolerance in the game than before. Expectation exceeds reality for nearly all of us. As a manager it's a huge problem. I don't think it's an argument we're winning. Andy's the 21st manager to go this season, I think. It's a very unstable industry."

However, it is stability that Allardyce has at Bolton. A joke by the chairman that Allardyce might face a pay cut this week was dealt with "in 60 seconds" when it could have been destabilising. Allardyce's 10-year contract helps and ensures that although Bolton have quietly been taken over by a businessman called Eddie Davies, a kettle thermostat entrepreneur, the transition has been smooth.

"He has always been there since I came," Allardyce said of Davies. "In these difficult times, for someone to back you financially is good, if not for me to buy players. There are the usual conflicts, we're not nice to each other all the time, but we reach a solution. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. It all boils down to pounds, shillings and pence. Generally we do as much as we can with as little as we can."

The last sentence could be the motto of both manager and club. Fifty on his next birthday, Allardyce has been to Limerick- where he won promotion back to the Premier Division in his one season in charge - Preston, Blackpool and Notts County along the way. He had first been an employee at Bolton as a 15-year-old in 1969. Nat Lofthouse signed him but, as he said, he was never a glamour boy. Allardyce arrived back at Bolton as Colin Todd's successor in October 1999 and within 18 months had won promotion back to the top flight.

By keeping Bolton there for more than one season - the first manager to do that for 24 years - Allardyce made a little piece of club history.

Tuesday night's win over Southampton, in a week bookended by Chelsea and Arsenal, might have seen him exuberant about Bolton's prospects. But asked about "best-case scenarios" he immediately talked about the opposite.

"If you're waking up in the morning and you're satisfied, then you have to begin to worry - there's a problem there. While things are going well at the moment, I'm always worried by the next group of games. I go to the board with the worst-case scenario and say: 'It can happen so it might happen, and don't say it won't - can we try and do this?'

"The game is so cruel - for instance, in year one back in the Premiership, Leicester was our crucial game. We had two sent off and were 2-0 down after 35 minutes. This was supposed to be our turning point! All of a sudden, bang. Incredibly we drew 2-2. The best-case scenario today is that the players will stay fit and keep getting the results they've been getting. But you have to put 'unlikely' here and 'unlikely' there. It's a possibility."

Acute pessimism or acute realism? Back to personal recognition. Allardyce is receiving some now but as he has remarked, if his surname were Allardici or D'Allardyce, there would have been more of it and sooner.

Certainly the Big Sam image does him a disservice. He has long stressed the importance of nutrition, psychology and, of course, has lured footballers of the calibre of Youri Djorkaeff and Jay-Jay Okocha to Bolton. His teams are organised and, like his counterpart this afternoon Arsene Wenger, Allardyce has former players who speak of how he has changed their attitudes to life as well as football.

"He's a bit like myself, having not had the most distinguished career as a footballer," Allardyce says of Wenger. "The challenge is to get to the top and deal with those who have achieved more than yourself. It's very nice when appreciation comes your way but for me it's not an overnight thing. The job started in 1991 in Limerick and the road I have had to go down has been a long and arduous one.

"Maybe that has stood me in good stead but it wouldn't be a route I'd choose or recommend, what it can do to you mentally, dealing with unemployment, being let down. The good side of the game is fine; the bad side, it's pretty harrowing. If you come through it then you look back and think it's all been worth it. But it's always been at a cost, always."