[attach id=304526 size="medium"]West Ham United’s manager Sam Allardyce. Photo: Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett[/attach]

I’ve always had a lot of time for Sam Allardyce. The West Ham United boss is an old-school, no-nonsense, tell-it-as-it-is type of manager – a breed that is heading rapidly towards extinction.

But even though I’m someone who once believed Allardyce might actually be worth a try as England manager, I can’t justify the dog’s breakfast he has made of his job in the past seven days.

Suffering from a horrific injury list, he rested most his first team for the FA Cup tie against Nottingham Forest, resulting in a 5-0 hammering by a club one league further down the pyramid.

That was a calculated risk aimed at keeping his remaining fit players fresh for the midweek Carling Cup semi-final and this weekend’s clash with Cardiff, two games he saw as more important.

But the first of those two key matches ended in an embarrassing 6-0 defeat to Manchester City that has widely been described as West Ham’s worst performance in generations.

And, by the time you read this, we will know if he was any more successful in his second crucial game, away to Cardiff yesterday, undoubtedly the most important of the three.

Few managers ever survive a vote of confidence. I don’t think I have heard of any who have survived a double dose of this dreaded football curse

Even if things went better in Wales, however, I still believe he made some disastrous calls in what was probably the most crucial week of his entire managerial career.

His best available team should have played against Forest. A win there would have given them some momentum going into the next two games and made the almost inevitable defeat by Man. City less painful.

But being on the receiving end of a spanking by a Championship club only served to demoralise everyone associated with the club which, in turn, contributed to the annihilation at the Etihad.

Even more important than the results themselves, however, was the effect they had on the fans – eleven goals in two games and a spineless performance at City served to turn the fans against their manager. And when that happens there is rarely any way back.

After the Forest debacle, Allardyce got the dreaded vote of confidence from his chairmen, never a good sign. But it got worse when that was followed by a second vote of confidence after the City disaster.

Few managers ever survive a vote of confidence. I don’t think I have heard of any who have survived a double dose of this dreaded football curse.

I would suggest the only thing that can possibly save Allardyce now is stringing together a run of victories that pull the Hammers clear of relegation. But having seen the way City tore them to shreds on Wednesday I wouldn’t hold your breath on that.

The biggest irony of all this? Under normal circumstances, a club in West Ham’s position would probably fire their manager in order to bring in a specialist at getting clubs out of trouble.

And towards the top of that list would be a certain Allardyce…

Another Fifa fail

Fifa’s secretary general Jerome Valcke said last week that the Qatar 2022 World Cup is going to be switched to the preceding winter sometime between November and January.

However, in a display of brilliant disharmony, the organisation itself later denied any such decision has been taken and that it is still waiting for the conclusion of a review into this self-made shambles before coming out with a plan of action.

I’ve thought long and hard about this but I don’t think it would have been possible for Fifa to have made more of a mess of this entire process if they had tried. From start to finish.

As an organisation it utterly fails to live up to the definition of that word and must now rank as the largest entity in the world largest that you wouldn’t trust to organise a piss-up in a brewery.

Side note to Fifa: By the way, if you move the tournament to those proposed dates, it becomes Qatar 2021. Just thought you might need someone to point this out to you before you print your brochures…

Adam shame

It’s nothing short of amazing that Southampton lodged an official complaint against referee Mark Clattenburg for ‘verbally abusing’ one of their players.

Apparently, during a heated disagreement over a handball incident, Clattenburg told Adam Lallana: “You are very different now, since you’ve played for England – you never used to be like this.”

Oh the horror.

However will that poor millionaire footballer get over such stinging, degrading abuse? He must be waking up in the middle of the night after having nightmares about such a vile and callous attack on his persona.

It truly is pathetic that a footballer would even think of reporting a referee for this sort of thing, and nothing short of staggering that his club would give him their full backing in his complaint, even asking for Clattenburg to be stopped from officiating their matches.

Have these people not heard the abuse that match officials have to live with, from all four corners of the ground? And what about the verbals the players themselves often direct at the ref?

Obviously, I don’t know Lallana but I would imagine playing for your country does change your outlook on life a little. And it would be easy to see how it might go to the head of a young player.

But even if it hasn’t, even if Lallana is still the most humble player in the entire Premier League, could he really find Clattenburg’s words so hurtful?

If he did – and I don’t believe for one second he did – then it is just one more example of how pampered and detached from the real world footballers have become when they can’t even handle a little banter.

On the other hand, if he wasn’t really offended, then this was nothing more than a childish and pathetic attempt at revenge. The ref didn’t give him what he wanted on the pitch so he decided ‘to tell on him’.

Hugely embarrassing for Lallana either way.

Cheeky training sessions

I imagine it must be hard work keeping football players interested in training – all that running round cones and jogging round the pitch must get quite tedious when you are doing it day in, day out.

Maybe clubs should take a leaf out of Belgian side Royal Antwerp – now managed by former Chelsea striker Jimmy Floyd Hasslebaink – who spiced up their winter shooting practice by bringing in a couple of glamour models.

But these scantily clad ladies weren’t there to watch the players go through their paces – they were there as target practice.

The unlucky ladies stood on the goal line while the somewhat luckier players tried to curl footballs on to their almost-bare behinds.

From the footage I have seen online, as an incentive it seemed to work rather well. The smirking players were exceedingly focussed and rarely missed the target.

Fair enough, this was only a publicity stunt set up by a lad’s magazine and not a real training exercise. But I think there may be some food for thought in it for other managers who want to improve their players’ efforts on the training pitch.

Arsenal may want to set up something similar for Nicklas Bendtner to try and improve his shooting skills, for example. Although they may want to get a couple of elephants in G-strings as opposed to glamour models…

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade