Sam Allardyce is back in the top flight but will old truths still apply? | Jonathan Liew

Can the Premier League’s survival specialist, out of work since 2018, get the job done at his eighth club, West Brom?

There’s a knock on the sunbed. The lid swings ominously open, filling the room with an eerie blue ultraviolet glow. A 66-year-old man of medium to heavy build climbs out, accepts the bathrobe that is wordlessly proffered to him. There is a car out front with its engine running. A freshly-pressed suit and referee’s whistle hanging in the back. Destination: the West Midlands, and the Monster HydroSport Training Ground. And with that, Sam Allardyce returns.

Was this how it happened? On reflection, probably not. But then this has always been the thing about Allardyce, who has been summoned from the managerial antechamber by West Bromwich Albion after two years out of the game: the mythology performs as crucial a function as the man himself. When you hire Allardyce, what you’re paying for is not so much a coach or an employee, but a brand, a creed, a lifestyle. You’re buying wholesale into allardycismo as an idea. You’re painting your world, or your little corner of it, a vivid shade of Big Sam.

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