Sam Allardyce has revealed that he would never be offered the chance to return to Newcastle United as manager of the club.
The former Magpies boss was quizzed on whether he would take the vacant post at St James’ Park, after it was announced that Rafael Benitez will be leaving the club at the end of this month.
“I would never be offered that job again so I think that’s a hypothetical question,” he told talkSPORT [25/06; 09:45]. “I don’t think so. In my time I was between Freddie Shepherd losing the club and Mike [Ashley] taking the club.
“As the years have gone by, Kevin Keegan’s gone back, Alan Shearer’s been back and both of them didn’t quite do as well as the fans expected. So I think there’s less of an expectation for the manager of Newcastle now than there was when I was there.
“So I think whoever gets the job he needs to have a good relationship with the CEO or Mike, if possible, and keep taking the club forward until he sells it.”
OPINION
I think, if you peer between the trees here, you can just see Allardyce say ‘I don’t think so’ when asked if he would take the Newcastle job. Clearly he doesn’t think he’d even be offered it, but it’s unlikely that he would want to go back there even if he was. Allardyce was only on Tyneside for a short time and it really didn’t work out, while he has also had a spell in charge of the team’s heated rivals Sunderland. Getting rid of Benitez to bring in Allardyce is a sure fire way for Ashley to incite a full-on revolt against his control of the club. Allardyce does make some good points here, though. It didn’t work out for either Keegan or Shearer when they returned to St James’ Park, so Allardyce is obviously wary of making the same mistake as them. But what he says about having a good relationship with Lee Charnley, who is in the CEO-esque role at Newcastle, and Ashley is important. Clearly Benitez didn’t have that and it led to him leaving the club.
