Allardyce plays dangerous game

I can't help feeling that you're playing a dangerous game if you walk into a new job and start telling the team that they aren't good enough as Sam Allardyce has done. He has 27 senior players to choose from, barring injury, so is he really saying that he can't find a match squad that he's happy with? Admittedly his preference, I'm sure, is to have bought the whole squad himself so that they are his own choices, but no manager is ever in that situation unless he first buys himself time with the current crop of players, like Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have done. By leaving Bolton he forfeited that, but it was his choice to go to a bigger club and, presumably, make more money.

I'm sure he came in with a brief to strengthen the squad, but he is under pressure and he's lashing out at the players, many of whom will have a say in his future - hardly the most sensible of moves. He needs to quietly manage those players he doesn't want out of the club, while bringing in some he does, but publicly slating them means that he won't get much out of them before they leave, and it doesn't exactly enhance their value in the transfer market.