As statements from football clubs about departing managers who have done a good job go, this is probably close to as churlish as it gets:
Sunderland AFC confirms the departure of Sam Allardyce, who takes up the position of England manager with immediate effect.
The focus of everyone at Sunderland AFC now is on moving forward quickly and decisively, with the appointment of the club’s new manager to be confirmed at the earliest opportunity.
It threatens to be a sad day. The FA is expected to be appoint Big Sam to the England job and will not be apologising to Sunderland for the disruption its wretched foot-slogging has caused to our pre-season plans. Then the stage is set, or so we have been led to believe for David Moyes’s arrival as our new boss. Let Pete Sixsmith take up the story from what is likely to have been Allardyce’s last match in charge of SAFC, last night’s friendly at Hartlepool …
Fifty one weeks ago, the Sunderland first team were losing at Doncaster Rovers, having turned in a performance which left many in the crowd worried for the coming season.
That night, they looked unfit, lacking cohesion and an absolute shambles from front to back as they lost to a side that ended up being relegated to the bottom tier.
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Apologies for typos that appeared in an earlier version: an unedited draft somehow managed to replace the finished article and this remained in place, with spelling mistakes, until spotted …
No one knows, or no one is saying, when the FA’s three wise men will put us out of our misery, and end the damaging disruption to Sunderland’s pre-season preparations, and announce their decision on England’s new manager.
Perhaps we have no real right to place our own concerns above those of England, much as some of have felt detached from the national team for years.
So within a day of an unnamed Sunderland AFC source assuring The Northern Echo and presumably others that Sam Allardyce’s abrupt departure from the Austrian trainingcamp had nothing to do with the England job, he pops up at the Cheshire home of David Gill, FA vice-chairman and one of the three wise men deciding who should follow Roy Hodgson.
Also present, along with what the Daily Mail calls Sam’s “£1,000 Louis Vuitton man-bag” containing his presentation, were the other two members of the selection panel. In other words, it was a job interview
Deputy Editor Malcolm Dawson isn’t party to what goes on behind closed doors at the Stadium of Light. Like most …
With no interest in the final of the European Championships later this evening, Deputy Editor Malcolm Dawson‘s thoughts have centered …
Pete Sixsmith casts some light, and also some wisdom, on talk of Big Sam for the England job, finding relief in reports – albeit from an occasionally dodgy source – that the FA don’t want him anyway …
Bear with the clip. It’s a Breton musician , Alan Stivell, singing Brittany’s version of Land of My Fathers, also …
We started our season at Leicester with a line up that included Seb Coates and Costel Pantsilimon. Substitutes included Adam Matthews, who came on for Billy Jones.
By the time we got to the final game Seb Coates, Costel Pantsilimon and Adam Matthews were no longer at the club. Billy Jones, subbed 12 games previously and subsequently dropped, came on for the final fifteen minutes, replacing DeAndré Yedlin, who hadn’t featured at Leicester.
They weren’t the only changes. Our manager had long gone, as had Danny Graham, Stephen Fletcher, Emanuelle Giaccherini, and Liam Bridcutt, all subs for that first game. Our new manager had made room for players who could bolster a leaky defence and strengthen a porous midfield.
They were Lamine Kone, Whabi Khazri and Jan Kirchoff.
And the rest is history
Malcolm Dawson, deputy editor, writes: this hiatus which falls between the end of season and the opening of the transfer window sees me scouring the media for scraps of gossip that may or may not indicate which way the club is going. Most of it will turn out to be idle speculation and bear little resemblance to what actually transpires between the 1st of July and the end of August.