Has modern football adopted the Allardyce playbook? We asked him

Five minutes are on the clock. The goalkeeper has the ball at his feet. Rather than pass it to a defender, he hits it long. The big striker gets a flick-on. A fellow forward chases it down to go through on goal.

It sounds like football from a bygone era.

But no - this is Manchester United versus Chelsea in the Premier League, 20 September 2025.

With modern coaches placing increased emphasis on set-pieces and 'going long', forgoing a possession-based game in favour of a more direct brand of football, it is beginning to feel like we have been here before.

Sam Allardyce guided Bolton Wanderers from the second tier to Europe, before managing a host of other clubs including Newcastle, Blackburn and West Ham, and he did it with a style of football that is becoming a regular sight in the Premier League again.

"We got heavily criticised at the time," Allardyce tells BBC Sport. "But we were ahead of the game and lots of people, particularly at the bigger clubs, or even the press, were not too complimentary."

So just what does 'Big Sam' make of football in 2025 seemingly adopting the playbook he was enacting more than 20 years ago?

When Paris St-Germain began their defence of the Champions League with a win against Atalanta last week, head coach Luis Enrique was absent from the touchline in the first half.

He was not suspended - he chose to watch the game from a seat high in the stands.

"I've been watching rugby coaches analyse matches from above for a long time," said the Spaniard. "I'm always open to anything that can improve our performance."

Rewind 25 years and Allardyce was one of a handful of coaches who preferred the stands to the touchline.

"You've got the bigger, better overview," he says. "You're not as emotionally attached."

In contact with the bench by walkie-talkie, it was also the communication with his assistants, the sports scientist, the physio and the fitness coach that Allardyce saw the value in.

"Rather than just talking in the dressing room, anything I wanted to show the players I could actually show them directly.

"I did Bolton in the stand, Newcastle in the stand, Blackburn in the stand," he explains.

So why did he stop doing it?

"When I went to West Ham [in 2011], the complaints were 'what is the manager doing in the stand and not down on the bench shouting at the players?'

"It was not only the fans, but also the directors saying 'why are you doing that?'"

Those external pressures over his seating arrangements weighed heavy.

"In the end, I gave it up. I went back to it occasionally, but never as much as I did at those three clubs.

"If you're getting stick off your home fans for not being where they expect you to be, you've got to provide the right environment for them to see that you're doing the right thing, even though I thought it wasn't.

"It's a great shame based on what people's perceptions are."

Kevin Davies, Mark Viduka, Andy Carroll and Christian Benteke - Allardyce liked a big man up top, and so did his system.

They were key in a tactic that favoured a direct brand of football, placing emphasis on the first pass going forwards.

Some notable transfers this summer have seen Manchester United sign Benjamin Sesko (6ft 5in), Newcastle secure Nick Woltemade (6ft 6in) and Everton bring in Thierno Barry (6ft 5in), while Erling Haaland (6ft 5in) continues to flourish at Manchester City since joining in 2022.

To get the best out of these players, the choreography of carefully woven passes from the back is appearing to become more unfashionable.

"It's great to see forwards played as a frontman for a change," says Allardyce.

"For the past three or four years they have been stood in the middle saying 'when am I going to get a kick?'

"Frontmen will not be as bored as they have been for the past four years. That will be the case because the frontman loves being brought into the game to hold it up or run down the channel."

So as Manchester United and Manchester City discard goalkeepers brought in as much for their ability with their feet as their hands, are we seeing the end to what Allardyce refers to as a 'pandemic' of playing out from the back?

"It's changing again," he says. "The damaging stats are that giving the ball away in your own half leads to a goal against you more often than the opposition building up from their own defence and scoring.

"So perhaps the trend is going back to being more sensible about using the skills that you've got within your team to their maximum. We don't want centre-halves having more possession than anybody else in the team. You know what centre-halves are? Centre-halves are defenders!"

In 2015, Allardyce took over a Sunderland side sitting 19th in October with no wins in eight games, and guided them to Premier League safety.

Admittedly, having a striker like Jermain Defoe scoring 15 goals helped, but the Black Cats' unlikely weapon was set-pieces.

"Corners and free-kicks are extremely important. Long throws must be used. If a player's not comfortable, you don't use it. But if they are, you do," says Allardyce.

Excluding penalties, no team scored more than Sunderland's 14 goals from dead-ball situations that season. They avoided relegation by two points.

"In my time, the overall targets with our players would be trying to be greater than what the average stats in the Premier League were," Allardyce explains.

"Defensively we had to be better than the rest of the bottom eight and scoring more, if not in open play but with set-pieces."

So far this season, 27.7% of non-penalty goals in the Premier League have come from set-pieces, more than any campaign in the past 15 years.

With Arsenal the most potent Premier League side in this regard in the past two seasons, their set-piece coach Nicolas Jover was even celebrated with a fan-painted mural near Emirates Stadium.

Allardyce believes the Frenchman, and his fellow dead-ball trainers, are trendsetters.

"There's more and more set-play coaches than ever before," the 70-year-old continues.

"Arsenal have done very well on that. They've changed slightly this year because everybody's had to spend a lot of time trying to stop them against that particular corner."

How do you best utilise a corner though?

"The beauty is who puts the ball in the box. Arsenal's players put the ball in the right areas nearly all of the time," Allardyce explains.

"If you haven't got that player, your set-pieces fail."

Allardyce was never afraid of trying something new, and his advice is clear for any young coach hesitant about testing their own tactical innovation - be different.

"The continuing brainwashing of 'you can only play in this way', up until recently scared the living daylights out of coaches, particularly young coaches," he says.

"Coaches are fearful of bringing in a great tool because of the criticism, not only from the fans, but maybe certain journalists."

So could teams mixing things up, employing long throws or lumping the ball straight out from the kick-off - another tactic adapted from rugby - be the new normal?

"After a few weeks go by, everybody else all over the pitch knows what's coming. So you start coaching towards it," Allardyce says.

"The element of surprise is massive, particularly in the first 15 minutes. I've seen coaches jumping and dancing on the touchline when they haven't worked out our system yet.

"We got many results on that sort of tactic, then reverted back to where we'd be most comfortable.

"I would go down this route. Find something on your own. Be the first to do it and see if it works. And if it does, you'll surprise everybody."