First he gets a mug of tea from the canteen and then takes me to his office. Big desk, lots of space and things are in their place — Christmas cards on top of wooden cabinets, little trophies that testify to the progress he has achieved at Bolton, Jose Mourinho’s recently published book on a shelf by his desk and not a hint of clutter. If it is true that a man’s office is a reflection of his soul, Sam Allardyce’s life is under control.

Under control but not perfect. Fourth in the Premiership table through the first three months of the season, Bolton have since fallen into the purgatory of mid-table. Before yesterday’s match against West Bromwich Albion, they had lost their past six Premiership games. Allardyce knows the game, understands how these things unfold.

“Oh yeah, unless I turn this around they will be saying, ‘He has taken us as far as he can, it is time for a change’. They’ve been a bit spoilt around here because for five years there has been nothing but progress. We finished eighth last year and now we must go on from that. We’ve got to win a cup final, try to get into Europe for the first time in the club’s history and it doesn’t matter that we’ve no money.”

On the same evening that Allardyce caught up with his friend, and West Brom’s manager, Bryan Robson, fans were analysing his performance on supporters’ websites. Some thought the slump in form was temporary and wouldn’t stop the team finishing in the top half of the table; others argued the manager had lost it. Three days later, Bolton lost to Blackburn at the Reebok stadium and attitudes hardened.

“Big Sam trots out the same excuses!” said the World Wide Wanderers website, and everybody had an opinion. The following evening the mood was less considered. “Is this clown for real?” and, again, there were no shortage of takers. The scrutiny is unrelenting, often brutal and it does not go unnoticed.

“There are so many forums for expressing criticism,” says Allardyce, “television, radio, internet messageboards. I am on the LMA (League Managers Association) committee and the figures they produce on managers are staggering. Out of the 450 managers who have managed in the past four years, only 50 are still managing. So to stay in the game as a manager for over 10 years, as I have done, is an achievement.”

HIS face is open and expressive, his manner gregarious and from Allardyce there is a sense of the bloke next door: take him off the shelf, the book is open. So you ask how he has dealt with El-Hadji Diouf’s spitting at opponents, with the loss of form of his star player, Jay-Jay Okocha, and you wonder if the slump may be attributable to a number of his key players being given the security of medium- to long-term contracts? He says he will, of course, answer the question but people must first understand Bolton Wanderers Football Club and the journey it has travelled to arrive at this little impasse. “From the moment I came here, we said, ‘There ain’t no money, this club’s bust. It’s skint, it’s lucky to be still around’. We’re dealing with our own administration. Rather than calling an administrator in, we are our own administrators. The starting point is that the banks own Bolton Wanderers. We have to satisfy them in terms of how we are going to reduce our borrowings and our debt. We’ve been lucky that at the time I joined, the chairman Phil Gartside found Ed Davies, who is now the biggest shareholder and has put in his own money into the club.”

Allardyce became Bolton manager in 1999 and inherited a First Division side with Premiership aspirations. The team’s three best players were Eidur Gudjohnsen, Claus Jensen and Mark Fish and when the side was beaten in that season’s playoffs, all three were sold. “Our best players were sold, they were replaced by lesser players. It was a fact of life. At that time I had to have a real look at the football club; I couldn’t let them get relegated out of the First Division, I had to beg, borrow or steal to get new players, create some extra revenue through cup runs. They wrote me a business plan that said, ‘You don’t have to get into the Premiership for three or four years’ and I said, ‘Bollocks to that, I’ll do it sooner’. When people say you can’t, I say I can.”

The following season Bolton again reached the First Division playoffs but this time they got through and returned to the Premiership. Allardyce recalls a story about the first-leg semi-final tie at West Brom that portrays him as he would wish to be seen.

“We were 2-0 down, there’s just 35 minutes to go and we were in trouble. I turned to Brownie (Phil Brown, Bolton’s assistant manager) and went, ‘Take Colin Hendry off’, and he’s gone, ‘What? Hendry?’ All that season Colin had been a rock for us but that day he couldn’t cope, he’d been booked and was one tackle away from being sent off.

“Everyone was going, ‘Colin? Are you sure?’ I said, ‘Yeah, get him off’. We put Mick Whitlow on, Colin couldn’t believe it. But all I’m thinking is, ‘Another season in the wilderness, more players sold, less money to pay players and staff, we have to turn this round.’ We played with two up front, 4-4-2, they were playing 5-3-2 and their system was battering ours.

“So I said to Brownie, ‘Take Dean Holdsworth off.’ He said, ‘What? He’s our leading goalscorer.’

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