‘Long-ball reputation I had was a load of b******s – opposition managers only moaned because they lost’: SAM ALLARDYCE on the unseen revolution at Bolton, the time his team made him eat sheep testicles and why he’s not done yet at 71

Sam Allardyce spends most of our time together chuckling, beaming with pride or cracking little one-liners in an afternoon of reminiscing.

But one question sees him cut a more serious figure. Does he get the respect he deserves?

‘The big stigma is the way I play, that has never left me,’ he tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘Every club I have been at, the stigma has been there. It is a sad undermining of what I was and what everyone else that worked with me was.

‘All those players I managed at Bolton, you’re talking about them playing long-ball tactics? That’s a load of b******s! Do you think Jay-Jay Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff, would put up with that?

‘There were Press and there were managers that could not cope with it, they would criticise us. Arsene (Wenger), (Rafael) Benitez, they would criticise us because we beat them. At Newcastle, Graeme Souness had a go at us once… because we beat them.

‘That sort of stuck and never left me. Maybe in the early days we were a bit gung-ho but we were no more physical than Arsenal are now.’

Allardyce, now 71, is lumped in the same category as some long-ball, old-school coaches because of the era he started in. The ‘Fireman Sam’ nickname speaks to his ability to rescue teams in need – but he is also keen not to be remembered in such a way.

He managed a record nine Premier League clubs, and wants his legacy to be as the revolutionary coach who was ahead of the curve with his methods, many of which were labelled as wacky at the time.

He points out that between 30 to 40 per cent of his goals at Bolton were scored from set-pieces, now a craze across the league. You wonder where his Wanderers team might have finished in this top-flight season.

Walk around any elite club now and data scouting, plunge pools, cryotherapy, sports science and nutrition would be commonplace all over. In the late 1990s to early 2000s, Allardyce was pioneering all these methods at Bolton.

It is showcased in a Sky Sports documentary, released this Sunday, about his tenure there. Many will not realise the full scale of how ahead of his time Allardyce was.

‘Redeveloping the Bolton training ground was a big ask because it was big money and they were saying, “If you do that, you lose the budget for new players”,’ he explains. ‘We had to make sure the training ground was a place to come.

‘It was a bit of a s***hole really so in the early days, we didn’t show new players the training ground until after they signed! We built massage rooms, gyms with music, hydrotherapy chambers, hot and cold plunges.

‘We changed all the food and chefs and service staff, serving the sort of stuff that was nutritionally important to the players, as well as coaching and analysis. Dave Fallows became the head of analysis, he’s at Chelsea now (and was a key man at Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool).

‘He probably had about 8-10 lads working with him. We filtered stats to look at players we could buy. We grew the whole network for recruitment on the back of analysis and stats.’

After promotion to the Premier League in 2001, Bolton managed to stay up on a shoe-string budget and then consolidate with four top-half finishes, European tours and a League Cup final. The Wanderers were the Noughties’ answer to Brighton, Brentford or Bournemouth – but better.

‘I was inspired by America, we trained in Tampa Bay,’ says Allardyce, who spent a season with the Tampa Bay Rowdies in the MLS’ predecessor, and trained at the home of NFL team the Buccaneers. ‘We would hire out a part of their training ground. There was a big, huge guy who my son went fishing with. He told me to come to watch training after we finished.

‘I did that a couple of times and saw all this stuff. It was mind-boggling, “What on earth is all this?” The way their units were set out, coaches for absolutely everything. You’d have an intriguing playbook, all written down with pen, the quarterback would remember it all.

‘On the back of all that, there were kit men, four or five masseurs, so many physios, nutritionists, dieticians, strength coaches, sport psychologists, clinical psychologists… that was something that never left my head.

‘How could we be different? How could we be different from the same old, same old that I grew up with? I wanted to make a change. People don’t like change. In this country, they’d say, “Why’s he got so many staff? That’s a waste of money!”.

‘So we got a curious guy who did all the coding for us. We put him in the dugout on purpose so everyone would say “who’s that?”. He was on the laptop coding for us, in-game, then I could tell him to show me incidents. Players would hear about this and want to come and join us.’

And so they did. Fernando Hierro, who had played 602 times for Real Madrid and won 89 Spain caps, moved to Bolton, following in the footsteps of his former team-mate Ivan Campo. Djorkaeff turned down Liverpool and Manchester United, Okocha was a coup.

Allardyce made the newly built Reebok Stadium the place to be. His mid-season breaks were the talk of football. On one trip to the Lake District, players were made to race while sitting on toilets.

He had a fines system – if Bolton lost by three or more goals, the players would have to do eating tasks and, likewise, if they won by three or more, the coaching staff would.

‘A delicacy,’ is how Allardyce describes the sheep testicles he ate after a 5-0 win at Leicester.

They soon had to temper all this because of paparazzi and being criticised for enjoying themselves too much. ‘People would criticise it so we would end up getting a proper four or five days in Dubai instead,’ says Allardyce.

‘It would be improving the mental and physical strength in the sunshine, we’d relax the strict diet a bit, then come back and blitz the last 12 games or so.

‘The fitness lads would say, “Gaffer our fitness is declining massively because of Christmas and New Year, we have lost five per cent”.

‘We would go to Dubai, gain that back and get another five per cent on top. It gave us a massive advantage. You start winning more games later on.’

Allardyce receives kind words from Sir Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola and David Moyes in the documentary. ‘He was ahead of his time, he was underrated, he was a visionary,’ says Ferguson.

It is why Big Sam is slightly irked by the way he is talked about these days.

‘The Invincibles at Arsenal, they went the whole season without losing,’ he says. ‘They were as hard and dirty as you wanted to be. I got the stick and they didn’t because they were top of the league.

‘At one point, Sir Alex told me they were the dirtiest team in the league in terms of cards. That is admirable, they went the whole season without losing. But with me it was, “Oh, long ball, long ball!”.

‘It has had an effect on me at some clubs, they have a go at you before you’ve even done anything. You just have to override that in the end. Yes, you’re sad about it but you have to get on with it.

‘I have managed more clubs than anyone else in the Premier League and then became a factor of circumstances which ended my career instead of improving it (ownership changes at Newcastle and Blackburn).

‘I am glad that we were one of the first to do all that (data and science-led approach). If I had been doing it but everyone else was, I don’t know if the Wanderers would be successful. These lads were just world-class – and not just one or two, there were a lot of them.

‘I had a fantastic time at Bolton. I am not a Bolton lad, I was born in Dudley, but I am here now, my wife and all the kids are here. Bolton is where my heart lies, I would say. Don’t forget as a player too… the best ride of my life.

‘People might watch this documentary and think, “wow”, whatever they might have thought, they might have a better opinion of me. For me, it is there for life now. It is there for the grandkids, their kids and then their kids, that’s what pleases me.

‘It gives me a bit of a legacy, if you like. Not that the Bolton fans don’t appreciate me – every time I am in town… I am never not approached. It is still, “Sam, we loved your time at Bolton”, I really appreciate that. It is nice to know you’re not forgotten.’

At 71 and with no club since his four games at Leeds nearly three years ago, is it the end of the road as a manager for Allardyce, who in total has managed 1,063 games at club level and one in charge of England?

‘I would say I am nearly done but not quite,’ he admits. ‘I am there if anyone wants me. But at this moment in time, it has been less active than ever before, put it that way. There have been fewer opportunities in the last six months than ever before.

‘But you never know what’s round the corner.’