I’ve been writing these weekly columns for the best part of a decade and in all that time I don’t think I’ve ever felt as disappointed, frustrated, let down and angry as last week.

Why, Big Sam, why?

For the briefest of moments it felt like England might actually be on the right track. After decades of heroic failure, the Three Lions finally had a man in charge who looked like he could make a difference. A man who wanted the job, believed in his ability to do the job and had spent the best part of a decade planning for the job.

Then, after just 67 days, the whole bloody thing comes crashing down.

I’m not a big fan of entrapment. In fact, I think it is pretty shoddy journalism that oversteps more than a few boundaries. If you work it well, you can pretty much get anybody to say anything you want, especially when beer is involved.

Once Big Sam had been caught in the Telegraph’s trap, and in view of the things he said, it was inevitable that he would have to go.

I think he may have got away with most of the stupid things that slipped out of his mouth, no matter how puerile and childish, if he hadn’t hit on the topic of how to get round the Football Association’s third-party ownership rules.

That was a straw that no camel’s back could have survived.

How could the FA even think about tolerating the national team manager, their most high-profile football representative, going around telling strangers how to bend their own rules? From the moment those words left his mouth, Sam Allardyce’s England career was finished.

The unpalatable but equally undeniable truth is that this whole situation boils down to greed. A despicable and epidemic type of greed that is prevalent throughout the game these days. Bottom to the very top.

If Allardyce really was so enamoured with his new job – and I believe he was – then why on earth did he even agree to meet these people? True, £400,000 (€462,460) for a few keynote speeches is good money, but nothing in comparison to what it has ultimately cost him, not just in reputation but also financially.

And why did he allow himself to get dragged into something so sordid so quickly? The England manager making a few extra bucks on the side might be understandable if he had just qualified for the World Cup, for example. But these meetings with the undercover reporters happened before he had even taken charge of a game.

If managing England was all Allardyce had ever dreamed of doing, surely he should have been focussing on the upcoming clash with Slovakia, not making himself a few extra pounds on the side.

A despicable and epidemic type of greed is prevalent throughout the game these days. Bottom to the very top

He allowed his thirst for money, like so many others in modern football, to cloud his judgement. And let’s not forget that, on £3 million a year, he was the highest paid international manager on the planet. It’s not like he needed a part-time job to pay the bills.

I feel totally and utterly let down by this man. Hopefully he feels the same about himself. His uncontrollable avarice means we will never know whether his ideas on the pitch would have worked, we will never know if he was the manager who was capable of turning England into a proper football team.

There has been speculation as to whether or not Allardyce will return to football. I suspect he will. A man with his record will always be in demand and, as he has shown money is his prime motivator, it won’t be long before one desperate club or another waves big bucks in his direction. And he will ride to the rescue, drooling at the thought of adding more money to his collection.

Frankly I couldn’t care less what he does in the future. My faith in football was already running pretty low. Finding out that one of the few people I thought was in the game for right reasons is just another money-grabber who is only interested in lining his own pockets has only served to further undermine that faith.

As for the Football Association and Team England, what now? Losing to Iceland last summer made you wonder if English football had finally reached its low point. And then this scandal comes along to make you realise that England can always find new depths to visit.

It’s not even like we can say the FA needs to find someone to carry on Allardyce’s work as he hasn’t really done any.

Under-21 boss Gareth Southgate has been put in temporary charge for the next few matches, including this week’s clash with Malta. Even though he ruled himself out of the job just a couple of months ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if his appointment became permanent.

A few good results over the next few games and suddenly it will start to look like a match made in heaven. Southgate will develop a taste for the big time and the FA will feel safe – he has already been their employee for three years, which is plenty of time for any skeletons to have fallen out of his closet.

They have been badly burned by this Allardyce disaster and – sadly, very sadly – I can see them putting as much emphasis on the next manager’s potential to cause them embarrassment as on his football skills.

So while Alan Pardew, Steve Bruce or Glenn Hoddle may actually be more sensible appointments in terms of experience, Southgate is the safe option who isn’t going to say stupid things while drinking beer with people he doesn’t know.

There is one other, possibly far-fetched option – Arsene Wenger. The Frenchman’s contract at Arsenal is up at the end of the season and he has said himself that he could be tempted by the England job.

But will the FA be prepared to wait that long for a permanent appointment?

It’s unlikely Southgate could do much damage to England’s World Cup prospects given the relative weakness of the qualifying group. So keeping him in charge until next May is not beyond the realms of possibility.

However, I think the FA would need to have something concrete in writing from Wenger for that to happen. And as the Frenchman doesn’t normally discuss his future while under contract, it all seems a little bit out of reach.

Up until last week I have been adamant that the English manager should be English.

Thanks to Allardyce and his sleazy shenanigans, I suspect English managers might actually be part of the problem, not the solution.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade