Speaking on the No Tippy Tappy Football Podcast, Sam Allardyce has been discussing his first season at West Ham United and Scott Parker.
Allardyce, of course, took over at West Ham after they were relegated from the Premier League, and he says that the job was tough to begin with.
Understandably, a number of West Ham’s players at the time wanted to leave in order to play Premier League football, and Allardyce says that one player in particular who caused him a lot of trouble was Scott Parker.
Allardyce says that Parker knew he had a move to Spurs waiting for him and that he understood why he wanted to leave.
Parker caused problems
Allardyce spoke about taking over at West Ham and Parker.
“I think you get stuck in straight away and you find out. We had some terrible trouble early doors with Scott Parker and people like that who wanted to get away. They were saying like ‘we don’t want to play in the Championship.’ And I said the only reason we’re in the Championship is because of you and all the other players,” Allarydce said.
“I understand because he know, Tottenham had tapped him up you know what I mean, so I can get all of that. We changed a huge amount of players.”
Challenge
That’s always the challenge of taking over a recently relegated club. You basically have to start from scratch.
West Ham’s squad that went down was, realistically, too good to go down, and it’s understandable that most of the players wanted to leave in the summer.
Parker, in particular, was worthy of a move. After all, he did win the FWA Footballer of the Year award that year, and the fact that Spurs came in for him was a testament to his talent.
Despite a rocky start, Allardyce got the Hammers up at the first time of asking, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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