We saw Big Sam at his most Big Sam last night: exulting in a victory over Arsene Wenger while speaking to Sky Sports, telling all and sundry of exactly how he masterminded the victory, between gasps for the oxygen necessary to power his mega-watt grin.
At times like these, The Big Sam, as Pep Guardiola referred to him as, seems imperious and beyond reproach.
But times are not always so. Ian Marshall, who worked with Allardyce while he was Bolton, told BoltonNews.co.uk of a surreal tale of how he fooled Allardyce over a training regime.
While praising Allardyce's harnessing of sports science and technology, Marshall revealed he duped his manager over the results of a heart monitor in surreal circumstances.
He was one of the first people in football to really utilise all the medical equipment and one day his physio issued us with a heart monitor. He let me take it home then bring in the results later in the week. But as you’ll know, I wasn’t dead keen on running. And I had this old dog, called Tess.
She was about 15 and I worked it out in human terms and reckoned she could handle a run about in the park. It turns out the heart monitor fitted her perfectly. When I took the monitor back Sam got me in his office and said the results were a bit off. I told him it must be broke. We went on like this for two weeks. Tess had never been so fit.
But they caught me in the end. Thankfully Sam saw the funny side but he wouldn’t let me have any more days off. You’d never manage that these days – they could probably tell you what type of dog was doing the running for you.
Outstanding.
Read the full piece here.
