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Allardyce’s acquisition strategy earns admiration of his peers
Ashling O’Connor on how the Bolton manager is keeping up with the best while maintaining a tight rein on costs
It is appropriate that Eddie Davies, the benefactor and new owner of Bolton Wanderers, should have made his multimillion-pound fortune in the manufacture of electric thermostats for cordless kettles. Sam Allardyce, the manager of his first team, has been a conductor of free-flowing elements ever since he took the heavily indebted club into the Premier League in 2001 – 02.
Some of the 35 players who have come to the Reebok Stadium since then chose to return to the clubs that loaned them out. Others, such as Iván Campo and Florent Laville, sparked a revival of fortunes and signed on full time to try to extend the club’s stay in the top flight to a fourth season. Only four transfers incurred a fee.
Allardyce has made his name in football management through a policy of acquiring players on short-term loans, giving them trials for a few months and signing them – preferably on free transfers – if they work out. His most recent acquisition, on Monday, was Javi Moreno, a striker not getting a regular game at Atlético Madrid.
Tonight, Allardyce takes on one of the biggest spenders in the business when Bolton play Manchester United at the Reebok Stadium. The clubs’ respective approaches to team-building are chalk and cheese. Bolton have spent only £3.15 million in the transfer market in the past three seasons, while Sir Alex Ferguson’s budget over the same period has topped £87 million.
The last time the sides met, in August at Old Trafford, United destroyed Bolton’s defence to score four goals. It could have been 5-0 if Ruud van Nistelrooy had been successful from the penalty spot. The result was regarded as reflective of the yawning financial – and thus competitive – gulf between the top teams and the rest of the Barclaycard Premership.
Yet, subsequent victories by Bolton over Chelsea, the expensively assembled glamour outfit backed by Russian oil dividends, and Liverpool showed they could still compete with the best in the division.
Initially, Allardyce was labelled by critics as a mercenary, especially for his tactic of raiding benches across Europe for underemployed talent. But, more recently, he has received plaudits for hedging a virtually non-existent transfer budget against a knack of finding disaffected foreign players keen to raise their profile with regular first-team appearances. Ferguson yesterday was full of praise. “What Bolton Wanderers are proving is that they are a very good team,” he said. “Sam Allardyce has a great ability to pick the right moment to get these players. It’s an amazing job he has done with virtually no money. He has had to beg, steal and borrow, really.
“It only ever seems to be the high-profile managers at the big clubs who get the credit, but, as Sam has said himself, if he was Sam Allardici, he would get better recognition.”
Contrary to appearances, Bolton’s squad-building policy does not qualify as the cheap option. “Short-term business is expensive,” Phil Gartside, chairman of Burnden Leisure, the club’s parent company, said. “It has to be attractive to the players so we probably end up paying more in wages.” In the past financial year, Bolton’s wage bill soared from £5.2 million to £21.7 million.
The pressure of wage costs is why the company has been unable to restructure its debt, now standing at £35 million despite receiving about £17 million a year in its share of television income from the Premier League.
Until now, it has been more important for the board that Bolton have a flexible cost structure in the event of relegation when TV money would plummet to about £1 million before parachute payments. If they were to go down, short-term contracts would allow them to instantly slash the wage bill to more realistic levels of between £5 million and £6 million.
Martin Wood, managing director of BIE, whose company places interim executives in businesses on much the same terms as loaned footballers, believes Bolton are setting a new template for mid-table Premiership clubs.
“I think they’re ahead of their time,” he said. “It’s a pioneering option that people will accept as the norm in a couple of years. It’s the only way you can manage a team in the Premiership, unless you are Manchester United or Chelsea.”
Bolton’s league position of twelfth, above seasoned campaigners such as Tottenham Hotspur and Leeds United, speaks for itself. Certainly, spending heavily in the transfer market did not ultimately help Leeds, now fighting administration and relegation.
“Our plan is to be in the Premier League,” Gartside said. “That’s a serious ambition and this has got to be the way. It’s equalising. We’ve got clubs being more realistic about the long term and that can only be good for football.”
The Times, Wednesday January 7th 2004
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