Sam Allardyce 'waiting' for Premier League return after 'childhood favourite club' sack manager

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Sam Allardyce has refused to rule out becoming Wolverhampton Wanderers manager and believes he would be capable of keeping them in the Premier League . Wolves sacked Vitor Pereira on Sunday, with the club winless this season and already eight points adrift of safety.

Allardyce has not managed a club since his infamous 30-day tenure at Leeds United , which was the shortest-ever stint for a Premier League boss. Ange Postecoglou at Nottingham Forest even lasted nine days longer.

That time at Leeds came at the end of the 2022/23 season and consisted of just four matches. They lost three and drew the other, with relegation the result.

His previous job at West Bromwich Albion lasted six-and-a-half months during the 2020/21 campaign and they also failed to avoid relegation, winning just four of 26 games. Allardyce, however, now sounds open to taking charge of their Black Country rivals.

"I suppose the amount of times I've said I might retire," Allardyce said on talkSPORT, "I can never say never, with the amount of times I've actually bounced back. So, I think that possibly Wolves was one of my childhood favourite clubs that I started watching, I suppose, but you know, who knows?

"I think I've heard they're looking for a younger coach anyway, so not too sure my time'll ever come round again. But I sit and wait; you never know.

"I'm not actively searching. If it happens, it happens; if it doesn't, it doesn't.

"If you're in sunny Dubai like me, you often think, 'why would you bother?'" Allardyce explained: "The love (for the game) is there, never lose the love.

"You have to talk about the pressure. I mean, you can see a number of managers have lost their jobs again, and I think that it's a big pressure job.

"I don't know why - well, probably do know why - but the pressure gets ever greater and greater, because of the size of the money and size of the money you have to pay for the players, the size of the contracts.

"The experience and absolute skill that you need to deal with the players today. I feel that's a lot more a part of the job than it ever has been before.

"I think that you upset a player now, and you're held against the consequences of upsetting that player, rather than perhaps sometimes the club backing you and saying, you know, 'you've got a contract here, get on with, earn your money and do your job. I think sometimes the player almost becomes bigger than the manager and the club sometimes."

Asked if he could keep Wolves up, Allardyce responded: "Yeah, if they're good enough, I have to weigh it up. Obviously, Leeds was just a journey for me - four games, it would have been an absolute miracle if I pulled them out.

" West Brom was probably the most disappointing because I didn't realise the effect of Covid would have on trying to get the team to play better. As hard as we tried, we didn't quite manage, all the efforts that we put in, to get West Brom out of trouble. That was bitterly disappointing for me, because I wanted to try and keep the record of never being relegated from the Premier League, but that, obviously, didn't happen in the end.

"Experience in these situations, I think, is inevitable. But more importantly, it's the reaction of the players to you, and are the players capable or good enough?