Why Big Sam’s timing in becoming England manager is immaculate…

Already the bunting is up. Already the nation is awash with fevered anticipation. Already the spring is visible in the collective step. Yes, today has come the news to quicken the pulse, put a smile on the face, send the FTSE index spinning in a northerly direction. Shares in champagne companies are sure no to head into overdrive. Sam Allardyce is the new England manager. Sound the huzzahs and alert the suppliers of pyrotechnics. This is something worth celebrating.

Or maybe not.

As it turns out the response to his appointment has been somewhat less charged. Everywhere – except perhaps in the Allardyce household – the announcement that Big Sam is to take over from Roy Hodgson has been greeted with a shrug of resigned acceptance. Talk about under-whelming. Really? This is the best possible candidate available for what many reckon is the most important job in the country after that of the Prime Minister? There’s no-one else worth considering? No-one else better than a man who has never been in with a whiff of a chance of landing a job at a Champions League club? Frankly, if she were not otherwise occupied it would be plausible to make a case for Theresa May becoming the new boss as legitimate as that for the biggest of all Sams.

So it is that England now has a man in charge who has been in the managerial dug out for more than twenty years without coming close to winning a trophy. Never short of self-promotion, he will doubtless remind anyone who points this personal statistic out that he has left every single club he has managed in a better league position they were in than when he took over. But as far as silverware is concerned, this is not a coach who has a trophy cabinet exactly over-flowing with booty.

The question he will now address is whether this matters. Will his inherent skills of organization and team building outweigh the knowledge of how to win trophies? Now that he is able to select from the elite, now that he is able to work with the best the nation has to offer, will he be able finally to achieve what he believes he should? We are about to find out.

One thing you cannot fault about Allardyce is his persistence. He has long felt he is the man to manage England and has manfully applied for the position every time it has become available over the last decade. In 2006, when Sven Goran Eriksson abdicated responsibility, he felt he was easily the best candidate. His powerpoint presentation at his interview, he reckoned in his autobiography, was a winner, a model of how sports science and statistical analysis could revolutionise the England set up. Or at least it would have been had the FA been in possession of the facilities with which he could show it. Instead, the FA went for Steve McClaren. And we know how that went.

Finally, by dint of persistence and determination, Allardyce has found himself at the head of the queue. By sticking in there, by maintaining employment, by continuing to do his Big Sam thing, he has remained in contention even as others have crashed and burned around him.

Say Hodgson had been fired in 2014, as many believed he should have been after the wretched England performance in Brazil, Allardyce would have found himself behind English candidates like Tim Sherwood, Garry Monk, Gary Neville and Gareth Southgate, never mind the adopted Englishmen Brendan Rodgers and Roberto Martinez. But all of them have suffered significant reversals in their careers since, their reputations damaged as Allardyce has sailed serenely on, doing his Big Sam thing, as he rescued Sunderland from ignominy.

And maybe that is a quality that will serve him well in his new position. Determination, resistance, hanging on in there: these were three characteristics that England were not exactly over-endowed with in France this summer. If he can somehow project that sense of stoical resistance into the dressing room, then England will already be improved.

Because this is the thing about the current England personnel. Eric Dier, Marcus Rashford, Delle Ali, Harry Kane: these are not bad players, players who you suspect might well thrive in a different environment. What went wrong in France was not a systemic failure, it was nothing to do with the training at academies or the lack of a winter break. What went wrong was a failure to make the most of what we have. And if there is one thing Allardyce has done throughout his career it is this: he has made the most of what he has.

Sure, the fans of Newcastle and West Ham baulked as his style of play, believing it was not conducive to their clubs’ traditions. But Allardyce is nothing if not a pragmatist. At Newcastle and West Ham he produced teams that were brusque and efficient rather than entertainers, partially a reaction to circumstance: he wasn’t imposing a blanket imposition of a tactical philosophy; he simply needed to pull them from the mire.

Importantly, players who have worked with Allardyce speak highly of his ability to forge a team spirit. And that is what he will need to do immediately. Watching the Wales players walk round the stadium the day before their Euro semi-final against Portugal was to see a bunch who were loving being together, loving what they were doing, who unanimously wanted that moment to go on forever. Watching England prepare for their game against Iceland was to see a disparate shower who couldn’t wait for it to all be over.

Changing that mindset will be Allardyce’s first and most crucial task. It won’t be easy. But turn that around and this generation of England players have it within them to produce. Big Sam’s timing has always been immaculate. Now he has arrived at the perfect moment to take over the job he always craved. After all, things couldn’t get any worse.