Danny Wright

Tue 5 January 2021 13:06, UK

A West Brom supporter has launched a petition for the club to sack manager Sam Allardyce after an awful start to his spell in charge at The Hawthorns.

Big Sam, who was hired to replace Slaven Bilic last month, has failed to see the Baggies win in his first four games, which have included heavy home defeats to Aston Villa, Leeds and Arsenal.

Allardyce did manage to oversee an impressive 1-1 draw away at Liverpool in his one and only away game in charge of the Baggies. However, it would be fair to say that Allardyce has well and truly failed to make the most of the so-called ‘new manager bounce’.

And now, one supporter has started a petition on Change.org which calls on West Brom chairman Li Piyue to sack Allardyce.

The petition says: “Sam Allardyce, has messed our team up. Defensively poor and attack is poor [sic].

“The players don’t want to play for him, they look uninterested.

“The players always gave a game for Slaven Bilic, so why change it?

“Get Allardyce out and save our team

“We don’t want another Tony Pulis.”

This is embarrassing and, quite frankly, pathetic.

Allardyce has to take a lot of blame for the last couple of performances against Leeds and Arsenal but the main issues at the club were there long before he was appointed.

Bilic oversaw just three wins in the last 11 Championship matches last season as West Brom staggered their way to automatic promotion.

A rot had set in just before the coronavirus-enforced break in the 2019/20 campaign and Bilic and his coaching team failed to keep the players motivated and fit enough to see out promotion comfortably – which they should have done.

In the transfer window that followed, Albion owner Guochuan Lai failed to invest any money into the club so that Bilic and Luke Dowling could improve the squad.

West Brom’s squad, right now, is barely better than it was last season in the Championship when they so-nearly missed out on a top-two spot.

Bilic pressed on with spending the bulk of his budget on Grady Diangana, who’s failed to shine in the Premier League, and saw himself at odds with the board over the protracted pursuit of Filip Krovinovic, who’s barely started and barely done anything of note in the top-flight, and the sale of Ahmed Hegazi, who was third or fourth in his centre-back pecking order.

Bilic fought fights that didn’t need to be had and he and Dowling wasted what little money they did have on players who’ve struggled in the Premier League like Karlan Grant and Diangana.

While a bigger transfer budget would have helped Bilic and Dowling immensely, the mess West Brom still find themselves in is partly down to the former manager and the sporting director.

Allardyce has been thrust to the helm of a ship that was sinking months before his arrival.

While he has struggled to get this group of players to perform, calling for him to be sacked at this stage and causing more of an uproar at the club would be nothing but detrimental to any progress that might happen in the coming weeks and months.

In other West Brom news, Alan Shearer has made a transfer claim about the Baggies.

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