[Archived] Poll Time - Rovers 12 Months Under Big Sam

[Guest Kamy100]

So Sam has been incharge for a year now.

Did amazing last year to keep us up and this season we are in midtable few points clear of relegation zone but also few points of 10th place, some fans happy with things, while others are not.

Simple question - 12 months on are you happy with the direction that the club is heading under the management of Sam Allardyce?

[thenodrog]

Much happier than I was 12 months ago but not as happy as I was 24 months.

[Hughesy]

Much happier 12 months on....also feel much more confident about the future than I did under Ince.

Also happier with the young signings Sam has been making, rather than signing players who are north of 30. Hopefully bodes well for the future.

We also have a Semi Final to look forward to.

[Stuart]

To be honest, I'm getting fed up with the perseverence with the 'keep it at 0-0 for as long as possible' tactic. Maybe this is good for playing against the top 4 or 5 but not teams around us. We need to be more attacking as the players we have seem to prefer this style.

However, a lot rides on how he performs during the January transfer window. If he can remove some of the deadwood (even on freebies to free up wages) and bring in a (fit) creative midfielder and a striker then he gets a reasonably clean slate to try again. The team needs at least freshening up if we can't afford to upgrade. If he sticks with the likes of Andrews, Peds and Roberts after January then I fear for the rest of the season.

I do sometimes wonder what would have happened had we brought in Sam instead of I*** when Hughes left. I suspect Bentley would have stayed - at least until we managed to replace him - particularly in light of the sell-on fee we'd agreed with Arsenal. We may have kept Brad for a further season, but replaced him with who, Brown? Bunn? Robinson would probably be elsewhere by now and, although I still think he will improve, I appreciate a lot of posters are not so keen. Santa Cruz was injured anyway and this would probaby still have run its course. Cruz leaving for the price he did now looks like a superb bit of business given his injury record. We wouldn't have brought in Andrews, of this much I'm sure. Grella? Possibly but he may not have passed Sam's rigourous tests. RFW probably wouldn't have got away with foisting Simpson on us in the way he did with I*** and I doubt he'd have swapped our goalkeeping coach. We might have seen better of Carlos - but, again, may not have seen him at all. The money I*** spent might have been put to better use. Fowler is an odd one. Odd in that he probably fits Sam's M.O. for rejuvenating older players but again, he'd have failed the tests in the same way Vieri did.

There are some things which Sam does in running things which give me confidence that we have a safe pair of hands in charge, but I still feel that he is asking Blackburn Rovers players to do things which goes against their nature.

The games can be difficult to watch but I'm sure most of us would be happy with the football if we were winning games, even 1-0, like Arsenal under Graham and Chelsea under Mourinho but neither of those two would have lasted long if they'd been getting our results.

Am I happier than 12 months ago? Hard not to be. As Theno suggests, we are way short of where we were pre-P*** I***. However, I can't help but feel this is not all Sam's fault. The rot started when the board failed (or where unable) to back Hughes. If nothing else Sam has slowed down the rate of decline that I*** had previously accelerated at an alarming rate.

To turn it around, we'll need something more, with our without Sam.

[philipl]

Voted no.

The question is about the direction the club is headed in and I have to say I am very worried now. Even if we stay up, at what cost will it be in terms of alienating the supporter base, never mind the desire of current and potential future players to be at Rovers?

Obviously Sam is a massive improvement on Ince but that is a non-issue now.

[Amo]

Much happier 12 months on....also feel much more confident about the future than I did under Ince.

Really? It took you awhile to realize Ince was a dunderhead.

I'm sitting on the fence here. I feel we could be doing a lot better, in spite of our injuries. I'm growing disillusioned that Sam hasn't a clue what his best 11 is, and continues to chop and change. He keeps faith with perennial under-performers and refuses to give his most expensive signing a fighting chance. That said, I still believe Sam has enough nous to keep us in this league, and that with our current finances we aren't likely to find much better.

[S15]

Everyone is happier with where we are as opposed to twelve months ago, but only one person is genuinely happy about the way things are going.

Allardyce is scraping C's, which is fine, but I think we can be getting comfortable B's.

[tcj_jones]

I can't say that I'm happy with the direction in which the club is going under Allardyce. However, I am certainly more content than I was under Ince.

[JAL]

I'd wait until January is out of the way until answering this one Kammy.

[RevidgeBlue]

I have voted no but I would add the proviso that the Club has been in serious decline ever since Savage was injured and the blame lies far more at the feet of our unwilling Owners than the manager.

[JAL]

I have voted no but I would add the proviso that the Club has been in serious decline ever since Savage was injured and the blame lies far more at the feet of our unwilling Owners than the manager.

I struggle to understand this when the club pay out £6m on a striker, and £3.5m on a defender.

[RevidgeBlue]

I struggle to understand this when the club pay out £6m on a striker, and £3.5m on a defender.

Yes but that was a seemingly futile attempt to replace players sold for 18m and 8 or 9m respectively.

[JAL]

Yes but that was a seemingly futile attempt to replace players sold for 18m and 8 or 9m respectively.

Realistically that £18m player was only a £4m player and never worth the amount he sold for, good business do you not think.

Good business is getting good players for next to nothing just so long as we pay them a decent wage relative to their peers is that not the way forward.

[RibbleValleyRover]

I voted "Not sure either way at the moment" but I feel like I am not far off being in the "no" not happy with the way things are going camp.

If we had kept with Ince we would be playing championship football now, the managerial change was necessary and Sam did a great job keeping us up. Despite Sam's heroics last season in keeping us up i am far from happy with the current situation.

A few things that have irked me:

1- Formation:

I think Sam still believes the best formation for us is a 4-4-1-1, a targetman style type striker with someone playing in the hole. It seems to work well when you have a creative player like Dunny on form, but when he is out injured, suspended we don't have another player to play that role effectively. He has tried Benni there with mixed success but i think Benni would be more effective if he was playing in a pure and proper 4-4-2 rather than being so deep. Benni is a goalscorer and needs to be in and around the box.

2- Team selection:

Its more a case of an inconsistent team selection rather than specific player selections. I know we have been plagued with injuries in the midfield area to key players and i can understand the chop and changing there, but our defensive and attacking selection hasn't been consistent. It can't be helping that we change strikers every match, or he makes changes to the defence often. I'm not sure Sam really knows his best eleven yet. It also amazes me why Kalinic can't start games when he looks so more dangerous than Roberts, Di Santo and sometimes Benni. I feel a Di Santo/Kalinic partnership could work well given the time.

3- Some of the comments to the media:

Sam is a decent man manager going off player accounts and from other managers. But he has come out with some questionable comments during his tenure at Rovers. He has moaned about finances often, an issue he clearly knew about when he took the job. Some of his comments about players like Kalinic haven't been that great in trying to motivate a young player either.

Some of his post match comments have been baffling at times as well, saying we were unlucky when the stats and gameplay show we have been completely dominated.

4- Signings/transfer policy:

Sam has made some decent signings and some questionable ones. N'Zonzi has a bright future ahead of him but isn't the finished article yet and Givet overall has been solid for us. Kalinic i am willing to give time to adapt to the league, he looks bright everytime he comes on and we all know that scoring one goal can send a striker on a decent goalscoring run. Chimbonda has been reasonably good for us, but he shows moments when playing on the left that having a decent left foot would have been a huge advantage.

The Salgado and Van Heerden signings look pointless to me, especially the Salgado one. Salgado is reportedly on at least £30k, it looks like his legs have gone and looks a real poor singing. We would have been better off just signing Jacobsen on the free (who has been decent for us imo) and using Emerton as a backup right back or Chimbonda. The money would have been far better spent on a creative midfielder.

I also can't believe we didn't sell Andrews when Fulham were sniffing around. To be fair to Keith he gives his all and his fitness levels are great, but i don't think he is up to the standard we are looking for. I wouldn't be opposed to keeping him as a squad player, if we already had some decent quality in midfield.

We have a lot of deadwood in the squad that needs shifting, Roberts, Pedersen and others. If we can't get decent fees then so be it, we need to get some of these players off our wage bill.

Overall i haven't got to the point where i want Sam out yet, though i do have serious concerns. I guess what is holding me back somewhat with my views is that i can't think of a better alternative out there, a proven premier league manager who has experience with fighting a relegation battle (let's be honest the time when we were challenging for Europe has gone).

I also take the viewpoint that perhaps whoever was our manager after Ince would have struggled and if Sam goes they might struggle as well due to the lack of investment in the club. Hughes left when he thought he couldn't take the club any further, we were not far off a possible champions league place under Hughes and we still didn't finance him to make that final push. Don't get me wrong i wouldn't want us to go the way of Leeds, but a couple of astute signgings for a decent fee but not mega bucks could have seen us make a serious push for the champions league.

To turn this around is difficult to say however I feel that one or two signings could transform our season. In January our number one priority should be to bring in a creative central midfielder, attacking midfielder or a winger who can put decent crosses into the box on a consistent basis. Hand on heart i am not too confident that this area will be sorted out though, largely due to whether or not the manager can see what fans have been saying for three years and also whether we have the money to bring those type of players in.

[AggyBlue]

Quite happy with the younger players he's brought in but i would like to see us play less long ball stuff and mix it up more.

[RevidgeBlue]

Realistically that £18m player was only a £4m player and never worth the amount he sold for, good business do you not think.

It's ONLY good business if you can replace a player sold with another of equal or greater ability.

Selling one of your better players and replacing them with an inferior one is not good business in the long run regardless of the amount of profit you make on the player sold.

[JAL]

It's ONLY good business if you can replace a player sold with another of equal or greater ability.

Selling one of your better players and replacing them with an inferior one is not good business in the long run regardless of the amount of profit you make on the player sold.

You've not added my second sentence which is saying what your saying but in a different way Rev.

[RibbleValleyRover]

Good business is getting good players for next to nothing just so long as we pay them a decent wage relative to their peers is that not the way forward.

You can't always find cheap bargains JAL, sometimes you need to spend a bit of money to find the right player. Giving a manager more money allows a greater list of potential candidates to choose from. A good manager will go for the best option within their price range whether that player is the most expensive or the cheapest, having a bigger budget like i said will mean more choices.

[RevidgeBlue]

You can't always find cheap bargains JAL, sometimes you need to spend a bit of money to find the right player. Giving a manager more money allows a greater list of potential candidates to choose from. A good manager will go for the best option within their price range whether that player is the most expensive or the cheapest, having a bigger budget like i said will mean more choices.

True. I said at the time that RSC should simply have been replaced like for like with Darren Bent - who "only" apparently ended up costing Sunderland 10m.

Now that WOULD have been good business - starting off paying just c3m for Santa Cruz and ending up with a goalscorer as prolific as Bent.

[JAL]

You can't always find cheap bargains JAL, sometimes you need to spend a bit of money to find the right player. Giving a manager more money allows a greater list of potential candidates to choose from. A good manager will go for the best option within their price range whether that player is the most expensive or the cheapest, having a bigger budget like i said will mean more choices.

If ther previous managers hadnt left so many gaping holes in the squad/team, then instead of trying to spread £10m around, maybe the whole lump sum could possibly have gone on a Bent or Crouch.

[RevidgeBlue]

If ther previous managers hadnt left so many gaping holes in the squad/team, then instead of trying to spread £10m around, maybe the whole lump sum could possibly have gone on a Bent or Crouch.

Given there are glaring deficiencies in the squad should we be trying to spread 10m around when we've just banked 27m?

[roversWASmylife]

At the moment I'm un-decided. Big Sam has been here just over a year. After a disasterous start by Ince, Big Sam was brought in and had one job to do,which was survive. Big Sam did well,made us a harder team to beat and we started picking up points.

That's last season and forgotten about. He's had a full pre-season and bought the players who he's wanted, safe to say some have been a hit and some have been a miss.

Givet and N'Zonzi are the two that have stood out for me. Givet was on-loan but signed permamently in the summer, he's tough, strong in the challenge and does what a defender needs to do. N'Zonzi breaks the play up and give its simple, good asset to have as well in the air, was unsure of him when he had been playing French 2nd Division football but I expect that he never thought he'd be a first team regular in the Premiership.

Van Heerden? Well he can't be doing that well in training if he's hardly figured. Kalinic. Unsure, shows some good touches and awareness on the ball. Thought he linked up well with Di Santo against Sunderland. He needs confidence but I don't think he's the type of striker who's going to do well with balls being pinged up the park 60 yards. I'd like to see him do well, he does have talent but I'd question the amount of money that we paid for him.

Salgado, i'm not a huge fan of him. He brings experience to the squad and cover however he can't be here earning peanuts, not sure how much he's on but he won't be here on next to nothing.

Big Sam puzzles me, he says we did well at Wigan, which we did ok for in the first half but other than that I thought we lacked and ran out of ideas. If he's going to strengthen in the transfer market, he needs to buy a creative midfielder, defender with pace, as Nelsen is coming to the end I the end of his time.

Are we going in the right direction? I'm not sure. We'll stay up I think, but give him a full season first before people start saying he should be sacked, I'm not his biggest fan but Big Sam does deserve a full season. After the season then I'll make my mind up whether we've gone forward or not.

Otherwise, the football's not been the best at times it's been awful to watch. Yesterday showed glimpses of that we can play passing football and it was good to finally see two wingers on each flank.

Quite happy with the younger players he's brought in but i would like to see us play less long ball stuff and mix it up more.

That's what we miss, we're too predictable at the moment. We're not threatening in the midfield enough, unless Dunn is playing. Other than that teams know if they concede a free kick, doesn't matter where it is, it's going to get pumped in the box. Other than that we're poor.

Under Hughes we could mix it up, we were a good passing side with a high tempo but if we wanted to we could rough up the opposition and be physical.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Excellent post from RVR, more or less encapsulates my feelings. I'm also sitting on the fence at the moment, but if I had to jump one way or the other it'd be into the no camp. The transfer window could make or break both Sam and the Rovers. He's been in worse situations than this and pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

[JAL]

Excellent post from RVR, more or less encapsulates my feelings. I'm also sitting on the fence at the moment, but if I had to jump one way or the other it'd be into the no camp. The transfer window could make or break both Sam and the Rovers. He's been in worse situations than this and pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

Lets hope that rabbit isnt the talentless Beattie, as hes doing a great job of dragging Stoke down we wouldnt want to disturb that now would we.

[Hughesy]

WE ARE DOOMED - WE ARE GOING DOWN - AND BIG SAM SHOULD BE SACKED!