Arise Sam Allardyce, England’s Post-Brexit Saviour of Choice

Sam Allardyce. Big Sam Allardyce. Fucking Big Sam Allardyce. He's nearly done it. He's one FA announcement away from his destiny. One inch away and he's grasped the throne. Twenty-four years of plodding around in adidas tracksuits with adidas polos underneath them and adidas moldies and adidas socks, on training grounds in Preston, in frigid Bolton, in Newcastle, thru Blackburn, West Ham, fucking Sunderland, and now: big time. Big Time Sam Allardyce. England's manager elect and England's glory. Big Fucking Sam Fucking Allardyce. Kiss the King.

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I like to think the decision over who would be the next England manager was made in a tops-off, to-the-end wrestle between Sam Allardyce and Steve Bruce held at FA HQ. Though it hasn't been announced yet, they were the two frontrunners to the ascendant crown – a manager who finished 17th in the league last year, the third-best performing England manager behind Pardew and Howe, and a manager who just about promoted Hull to the Premier League via a playoff, a season after relegating them, O England My England, How Proud I Am Of Thee – but really the only way to get a cigarette paper between them is with a topless, to-the-end wrestle. Imagine Steve Bruce and Sam Allardyce going at it: Steve Bruce, like a brick with legs, pink and curiously supple-feeling, going at Allardyce arms-first; and Allardyce, not his first rodeo, all limbs, clamping onto Bruce like a crab, Trevor Brooking (officiating) having to keep telling him not to bite. I cannot get the image of Bruce and Allardyce toplessly fighting out of my head, which is why I have to share it with you. Whole ruck going down in an anodyne FA back office, tables moved to one side to accommodate. Both men allowed to punch but have the same fighting style – try and get two arms locked around the small of the back of the other man, and then just dig your heels in and lift while screaming – cancelling each other out, a minus and another minus. The smell of hot skin on the air. Tray of pork pie quarters for after. And, eventually, after 45 minutes of grunting and that kind of dad-in-the-park breathing which is just puffing your cheeks and blowing out and never inhaling, a winner: Allardyce slips Bruce against the corner of two temporary walls, his head slides down to the grey FA carpet, and he holds him in an armlock until he taps out. We have a champion. Sam Allardcye. Big Sam Allardyce. England's saviour.

I feel like Sam Allardyce is capable of eating an entire pie while smoking a cigarette simultaneously. I feel like Sam Allardyce is really good at throwing rocks long distances. Sam Allardyce, I imagine, on cats: "Never liked them." Big Sam on dogs: "They're alright, but I'm not fussed." Sam Allardyce hasn't got time for your modern whimsies, your halloumi, your coffee with milk in, your anything-more-than-a-pale-white-stick-of-soap-and-some-talc-for-the-bollocks morning routine, because Sam Allardyce is football, through and through, cut him open and '4-4-2' will bleed through him like a stick of rock, put a stethoscope to his chest and hear the dull thuh-thump-tha-thump of: kick it up to Andy, kick it up to Andy, kick it up to FUCKING ANDY! HEY! THEO, YOU LITTLE TWAT! KICK IT UP TO ANDY!

It's in this where lies the cold fact that Sam Allardyce is the Brexit of football management choices. He is English in the way that genuinely being upset at spilling gravy on a tablecloth is English. English in the way a day is grey enough to be overcast but not grey enough to rain is English. English in that way that says, 'brown bread? Brown? Fuck off'. Sam Allardyce's England team talks, you imagine, will be English in that same way: "Lads, the Portuguese are just woofters." Sam Allardyce's contempt for the concept of Europe. Sam Allardyce is English and utilitarian in that same way we are nostalgic for, at the moment, those 52% of us: we want an English manager who likes chips and has perfected the fine art of shouting really suddenly without his chewing gum falling out, and we want him to grind England in a 1-0-in-extra-time megamachine, England at it's most English, reclaim our Englishness, 4-4-2 and back to basics, hold them to the sword, boys, make Europe jealous, they'll come crawling back to us begging on their knees and we will say, oh yeah, well how much money you got? Because this is going to cost you. This is going to cost you.

The reality of England under Big Sam – Big Sam's Barmy Army, as I now insist the England team will be known – is pre-ordained: a combination of Steve McClaren's 16-month head-in-hands bit and Roy Hodgson's years of semi-hopeful mediocrity, England consistently proving the theory that a team is more than the sum of its parts is a fallacy, England the exception to the only immutable rule in sport. Big Sam will grow frustrated that England don't have a Kevin Nolan-shaped player to kick lumps out of the hole, will recall Jermain Defoe because "if there's a chance in the six-yard box, you want the little fellow to have it", then call Youri Djorkaeff up and see if he had an English grandmother, maybe, and is it too late to defect? England under Big Sam will be the same as any team under Big Sam: that certain allardocio, lofty promises of sports science and cutting edge techno-thinking, and then a rigid back line and a few Sunday league-looking cloggers and a 34-year-old former champion playing a crucial role, and, so inevitably, tactics will revert to 'just hoof it up to Andy and hope for the best'. He will somehow play three left backs at once. England under Big Sam will never get relegated, but it's hard to envision them excelling, either. Ball your eyes up and imagine Big Sam, his moustache thriving again, hands aloft under the shadow of the World Cup. You can't even see it, can you? It's literally unimaginable.

But then: perhaps this is the dose of reality we truly need right now. For a long time, the argument over who should be England manager has been dominated by the idea that the manager has to have experience of winning, of managing huge, world class egos, of taking thoroughbred Premier League colts and forging them into a team of world beaters. But we never do because we're shit. And that's where Big Sam comes in: to readjust the waterline, temper expectation, delivery a cold salty dose of perspective. Big Sam is exactly the manager England deserve right now. England are not Manchester City going for the title, Bayern Munich going for the continental treble: they are Sunderland just trying to stay afloat, they are Bolton praying for a Jay-Jay Okocha. And that's the exact moment you need a Big Sam. When you're on your knees and desperate for a miracle, Big Sam heft you up by your shoulders, leans his big face close to yours, Greggs pastry all down his front and on his trousers, and says: "Chin up, cunt."

Life under Sam Allardyce is a life without chaos. Life under Sam Allardyce is a life without trophies. It is safely bobbing in stormy waters without drowning. I am warming to the idea. Sam Allardyce does not bring with him promises of hope, wicked words about how we "might" make a run this year, how we "could" go all the way. His main tactic is going to tell Jamie Vardy to have two Lucozades before a match and "run about a bit". Maybe that's what we need right now. Britain is on its knees, politically self-immolated, the national team amongst the lowest it's ever been. In these dark times, maybe our saviour – our only saviour – is Big Sam. Arise, Lord Allardyce, and claim your crown.

@joelgolby

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