Pushing boundaries

West Ham’s Sam Allardyce is a very different manager to the man who first took his place in the dugout 21 years ago. We find out how he has shaped his role and how the role has changed him.

“As a leader, you need the courage and belief to think ahead, decide where you want to go, how you are going to get there and with what philosophy,” says Sam Allardyce. “Then you have to sell that vision and philosophy to your staff.”

While this need for long-term planning is true in any business, the high volume of sackings in football means managers often don’t have the luxury of looking too far ahead. “As a result, your vision might be broken down into shorter periods of six or 12 months, maybe two years maximum,” says the West Ham manager.

Given the likely short timescale in which a manager has to make a difference, most would be tempted to make quick changes in an effort to make an early impact on performance. However, while the steamroller approach might work in some organisations, Allardyce has learnt that in football things need time to evolve if they are to be accepted and reap rewards.

“Radical changes can upset the equilibrium,” he says, citing his time at Newcastle United as an example. “I tried to bring success to the club as quickly as I possibly could, but on reflection I think I tried to change things too radically, too quickly.” Allardyce came to the club armed with knowledge, new ideas and a firm belief in how he should do things, but the dramatic changes he had planned were too much for some, particularly the existing players. “They weren’t used to sitting in meetings analysing performance and attending one-on-one appraisals,” says Allardyce. “Perhaps if I had integrated the changes a little more slowly they might have been better received.”

Looking back over his 21-year career in management, Allardyce says it was when he joined Bolton Wanderers in 1999 that he began to develop most as a manager. “Up until that point I had been experimenting at clubs like Limerick, Blackpool and Notts County, but although I had the desire to develop, there simply wasn’t the budget available to create the structure and philosophy I’d have liked,” he says.

Although Bolton wasn’t an affluent club, it benefited from a new stadium and a real desire to change and improve. “There was a willingness and an intent to evolve,” says Allardyce, who sold the idea of building something that was sustainable to the board of directors. “I instigated the evolution of the club by first bringing on board a number of highly qualified staff,” he says. “I then let them work with their staff to raise standards and move things forward at a departmental level.”

Allardyce’s job was to pull all of this together, interlinking the departments and establishing open communication between them. “It is so important to sit down, share information and almost take minutes of what you have been doing, just as any well-managed business would do,” he says. “After all, if each member of staff is expert in what they do and passes their knowledge on to the players, those players will have greater self-belief and be stronger physically and mentally. As a result, the whole culture will grow, as it did at Bolton during my time there.”

Now approaching his 22nd season in management, Allardyce’s thirst for knowledge and self-improvement is still as strong as ever. The challenge now, he says, is finding new ideas and inspiration. “As managers in the Barclays Premier League, we are all evolving and pushing the boundaries to see how we can get to that next level,” he says. “We’re always looking to embrace new ways of thinking from inside or outside of football; ideas that might add to our teams’ performances in some small way. Given all the new methods I’ve taken on board over the years, the differences may only be small now, but I’m always looking at new ways to fine tune.”