Sam Allardyce admits lying to journalist over West Brom motives
Sam Allardyce has admitted that he was never planning on staying at West Brom in the event of relegation from the Premier League.
The experienced manager announced last night that he will be stepping down as Baggies boss on Sunday after their final game of the season against Leeds United.
He appeared on talkSPORT [11:15, 20/05/21] the morning after to discuss the decision with Sam Matterface and Simon Jordan.
“You said when we had our chat a couple of weeks ago that you would stay depending on the assurances you got about funds and whether you could give it a right good go about getting back into the Premier League,” Matterface said.
“Have they not given you those assurances or have you changed your mind?”
Allardyce replied, “No it’s nothing to do with that, I was only just telling you something to get by, we were in discussions then and I was thinking about it.
“I wasn’t actually telling you the truth mate, initially it was always the fact that at the very start that if we got relegated I wasn’t going to stay.”
Lip service
We probably shouldn’t be surprised by this news – after all, it’s the name of the game in management.
Big Sam has been hounded by journalists and pundits over his future and he’s clearly not wanted to distract his players from the task of avoiding relegation back to the Championship, something he was unable to prevent.
The only issue would be if he left the Albion hierarchy in the dark, in which case he would have really left us in the lurch.
But they should have known his intentions in the event of relegation so names should have been starting to get drawn up a long time ago, at least that’s how a well-run football club would approach it.
However, Albion supporters have little faith in the board after a series of costly mistakes and failure to communicate properly.
Losing Big Sam isn’t a catastrophic blow but it will certainly take a big character to follow his footsteps and stamp their authority on the club.
In other West Brom news, ‘Nightmare’ – Sky Sports pundit slams Albion ace in clash v West Ham.
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