OTD: BIG SAM LEAVES FOR ENGLAND

On this day ten years ago, Sam Allardyce stepped down as Sunderland boss to take the England job. This would cause a knock-on effect which led to our back-to-back relegations.

Having played for the Lads at Roker Park between 1980 and 1981, he had history on Wearside when he was appointed in October 2015. It was in fact not his first managerial role in the North East, having been in charge up the road at Newcastle from May 2007 till January 2008 before being replaced by Toon legend Kevin Keegan.

Having taken over from Dick Advocaat, the Black Cats sat 19^th in the league with just three points. In what seemed to be a theme of new managers having a derby early in there Sunderland careers, on just his second game in charge he welcomed the visitors to the Stadium of Light. The scoreline was, you guessed it, 3-0 to the hosts with goals from Johnson, Billy Jones and Steven Fletcher seeing the Lads to victory.

January 2016 was an absolutely crucial window where we desperately needed reinforcements. In came Jan Kirchoff from Bayern Munich as well as Lamine Kone from Lorient and Wahbi Khazri from Bordeaux. All three would end up playing a huge part in another great escape. Kirchoff, despite a terrible debut at Tottenham, turned out to be a great signing for us in the midfield, who you do feel would have played at the very top of the game had it not been for constant injuries. Kone was absolutely incredible for those first six months and Khazri’s set pieces added much needed quality in those areas, including his impressive ability to shoot from range.

It was not till a win in April against Norwich where the annual escape act got going, with Big Sam’s side going unbeaten for the remaining five games. The standout games in that run being a 3-2 comeback victory against Chelsea, with many probably agreeing that, until the Regis Le Bris era, was the loudest the SoL had ever been. As well as of course the 3-0 win against Everton which not only secured safety but also relegated the Mags.

For the first time in a long time, Sunderland were heading into the season with high hopes of progress under a manager they had a proper connection with. However, after crashing out of Euro 2016 at the hands of Iceland, Roy Hodgson was relieved of his duties and the FA were on the lookout for a replacement.

Sadly, for us England wanted Big Sam and understandably Big Sam wanted England and with just over three weeks till the start of the season, Sunderland were left managerless.

The club did react quickly, though, appointing David Moyes…

Sam’s England career somehow went worse than Moyesy’s Sunderland career with just one game in charge, a 1-0 win over Slovakia thanks to Adam Lallana. He was sacked 67 days into the job following allegations of malpractice. He remains the only England manager to have a 100% winning record.