Sam Allardyce is in the news today. Remember him, Big Sam? Allardyce is the original OG when it comes to chucking the ball upfield and getting players to chase the ball. I don’t even want to talk about it as it just brings bad memories.
So, he’s in the news today. He talked with No Tippy Tappy Football Podcast where the discussion was on the title race and the transfers that happened between Manchester City and Arsenal. The ex England manager spoke about the ‘bond’ between Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola that allowed the transfers of Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko to take place.
“He’s (Guardiola) going to get some stick though for selling those players to Arsenal if they win the league. He’s going to get some stick about that by the way. All the fans will look and say ‘look at what it’s cost us’ if they don’t win the league, he’ll be right under the cosh I think.”
When talking about the transfer of Zinchenko, Allardyce was particularly puzzled. He talked about it being a strange one for him, “It’s a strange one for me because he can play left-back and left midfield, but left-back particularly, they haven’t really got a natural left-back now, they’re playing a centre-half there at the moment and they let the other full-back go on loan, Joao Cancelo, which is another unusual one.”
However, Big Sam did not mince words when giving his theory on how the two players landed up at Arsenal. He talked about how Mikel Arteta being Pep’s ‘buddy’ meant that Manchester City manager helped Arteta land the Arsenal job as well as continuing to help him at this current time.
“It’s his buddy isn’t it, he (Arteta) was with him for years and he helped him get the job at Arsenal and now he’s given him two quality players to go.”
Mikel Arteta did not get this job due to Pep Guardiola
No matter what anyone says, Mikel Arteta did not get this Arsenal job due to him being buddies with Pep Guardiola. It is well documented that Manchester City were extremely unhappy that Arteta decided to leave the assistant manager job to take the head coach position at Arsenal.
So it’s unfortunate that we are seeing folks like Sam Allardyce rewriting history here.
