Speaking exclusively on the Footy Accumulators No Tippy Tappy Football podcast, in partnership with BOYLE Sports, Sam Allardyce was joined by former Liverpool striker Dean Saunders, and the pair discussed Chelsea’s sacking of Enzo Maresca and the subsequent appointment of Liam Rosenior, with Allardyce supportive of the move.
Sam Allardyce says he’s surprised by the appointment of Liam Rosenior, but believes it’s a positive move, and gave the new Chelsea boss some advice. He said: “He’s English, which is very good.
“He’s built himself a really good reputation behind the scenes from what I can gather. I just wonder at this early stage of his career whether he’s ready or not. If he does a good job at Chelsea, he’s going to be some coach.
“He’s going to gain so much management style, because I think he’s all coaching, he has all these ideas of this way of playing. I want him to do well, it’s just whether he can handle it.
“Newcastle is probably as hard to manage as Chelsea, and I’ve been there. Everton is hard, I’ve been there.
“But if you’re doing well, it’s fine. If you’re not doing so well, it’s hard. Rosenior will have in his head what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. If it doesn’t work, they need to change it as quick as they can.
“Don’t have it be like United with Amorim and stick to your guns. He needs to be flexible. He’ll want to play a certain way, but he needs to assess whether those players can do that. If they can’t, he’s got to be flexible enough to moderate that style to work for them.”
Dean Saunders said that he’s surprised Enzo Maresca lasted as long as he did at Chelsea and hit out at their huge squad. He said: “When Maresca got the job at Chelsea and they signed lots of players, I thought he wasn’t going to last six months.
“The minute you start losing games, you’ve got 33 players unhappy every morning. There’s more unhappy than there is happy, and they’re all knocking on your door. I think he did brilliantly well to survive as long as he did, with all them players he had.
“He won a couple of trophies, had one team for Europe and one team for the league, which pacified a few of the unhappy players. He left Nicholas Jackson out of a League Cup game, and he played Christopher Nkunku, who’s been waiting for his chance, and I know, because I’ve been a manager, that Maresca must’ve been saying to him, wait for your chance.
“Nkunku scored three or four that game, and then he put Jackson back in the game after.” Allardyce believes that Maresca will still land a top job in the future, despite the Chelsea fallout.
He said: “He had a reputation behind Pep [Guardiola] for a while, and he got Leicester up, and he’ll get another job based on that previous reputation alone. They’ll look at the situation at Chelsea and say he got them into Europe and won the Club World Cup.”