Sam Allardyce has warned that Leeds could struggle in the Championship after his four-game interim tenure ended with relegation. After the 4-1 defeat by Tottenham at Elland Road – where two goals from Harry Kane lifted the striker’s Premier League tally to 30 for the season – Allardyce had a stark, unvarnished message for the Leeds board.
“There is a lot of work to be done here next season, even in the Championship,” said the 68-year-old, who is open to remaining in charge. “Goals need to be scored and you need goalscorers to score them. The squad is a little on the young side and lacks experience. As a squad they haven’t been good enough. You can’t keep making unforced errors. We gifted Tottenham three goals today. Which way does the club want to go?”
Allardyce said taking one point from his four games represented “a huge disappointment” but that he “could not blame” his players for lack of effort. The manager said his team had “given everything they have” but lamented: “You can’t keep making these errors at this level”.
He also did not blame a mutinous crowd for voicing its disapproval so loudly. “I’m disappointed for the fans,” said Allardyce. “They’re very entitled to show their disapproval. We tried all we could to get better results out of these players. But having not achieved one win has made me very disappointed in myself.”
After confirming his impending discussions with the Leeds hierarchy, he made it clear there would be no holds barred. “We need to sit down and discuss the whole infrastructure of the club,” he said. “Recruitment is the number one factor for any manager. You can’t improve a player by 10%; it’s going to be two to three per cent.
“If I do anything more [in management] it will be here and these discussions will happen across the next few days. We have to sit down for a couple of days and thrash it out to make sure both sides can be comfortable. The last thing I want is to walk in and things not go in the direction we agreed.”
Dean Smith sounded a more positive note about Leicester after their relegation, saying the club possess the tools to return to the Premier League at the first attempt. Leicester’s 2-1 win over West Ham proved inadequate because of Everton’s victory at home to Bournemouth.
“The raw materials this club has is an elite club,” Smith said. “It feels raw now and it hurts and everybody will be devastated, but with the infrastructure it has got it can bounce back. There has been plenty of times where you have knocks and your job is to bounce back, and make sure you improve on the things that let you down – and I have no doubt the club will.”
Goals by Harvey Barnes and Wout Faes earned Leicester a two-goal lead before Pablo Fornals replied for West Ham late on. Leicester’s fate was not in their hands, though, and Abdoulaye Doucouré’s superb strike at Goodison Park relegated Leicester, ending their nine-year stay in the top tier. Smith took interim charge last month after Brendan Rodgers’s sacking but Leicester are expected to look elsewhere for a permanent manager. Smith was given the job after Leicester’s talks with Jesse Marsch broke down.
“I will speak to Top [the chairman, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha], who I have an awful lot of respect for, over the next couple of days and commiserate with him because the time and effort he puts into this football club is there for all to see,” Smith said. “I am certainly not thinking about my future at the moment. It is raw getting relegated now, I’ll go away and reflect on it, speak to Jon [Rudkin, the director of football] and Top.”
