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Post by Zamoraaaah on Oct 15, 2010 12:20:18 GMT
Former Palace and City manager Shirley? Not to mention the countless other clubs he managed. Former Manchester City boss Malcolm Allison diesAllison managed a total of 12 clubs both home and abroad in his career Malcolm Allison, the coach who helped inspire Manchester City to great success in the late 1960s, has died at the age of 83. Allison arrived at City in 1965 as assistant manager to Joe Mercer. City went on to win the Second Division crown in 1966, the League title in 1968, FA Cup in 1969 and European Cup-Winners Cup and League Cup in 1970. Allison managed 11 clubs at home and abroad, leading Sporting Lisbon to the Portuguese League and Cup in 1982. He took charge of Crystal Palace on two separate occasions, and also had spells as manager of Bath, Plymouth, Galatasaray, Toronto City, Middlesbrough and Bristol Rovers. During his playing days, Allison made more than 250 appearances at centre half for West Ham, before losing a lung as the result of tuberculosis in 1958. "Big Mal" - as he was known - always had an eye for publicity, and was famed for the "Lucky Fedora" he wore during one of Crystal Palace's Cup runs and his love of cigars - but his later years were dogged by ill health. 606: DEBATE Your tributes to Allison A statement on the Manchester City website read: "Flamboyant, brilliant and larger than life, Malcolm will be sorely missed by everyone at the Club and beyond." City plan to pay tribute to Malcolm at the forthcoming game against Arsenal, and have also pledged "an appropriate commemoration to his life and work in the memorial garden at the City of Manchester Stadium". Mike Summerbee told BBC Radio Manchester that Allison was "the greatest coach this country ever had. And still is, without a shadow of a doubt". He added: "Joe Mercer was the figurehead but Malcom Allison was the key to the door, really. He brought fitness levels to football that are still there now. He was the forerunner of fitness and tactics way beyond his time. "We were doing things in 1965 on running machines at Salford University with massage based fitness, we trained in Wythenshawe Park with Derek Ibbotson and some of the Salford rugby league lads - that's how hard it was and how good it was. MALCOLM ALLISON QUOTES "A lot of hard work went into this defeat" "You're not a real manager unless you've been sacked." "John Bond has blackened my name with his insinuations about the private lives of football managers. Both my wives are upset." "A lot of people in football don't have much time for the press; they say they're amateurs." "He was just quite an amazing man. A great personality and a well read man as well, a very intelligent person. He was a character. "His life was full, every day he lived his life and his enjoyment was a pleasure for us as well. We worked hard together and we enjoyed ourselves together and he was a great personality and gave you the confidence to believe in yourself as a footballer. "It was the same when Joe Mercer died - when you lose someone of the calibre of Malcolm Allison as a coach, then it's very difficult to take, even though he's been ill for quite a time. "My wife always says that 'you love Malcolm Allison more than you love me.' That's how you epitomised Malcolm Allison." City life president and former general secretary Bernard Halford, who knew Malcolm for over 40 years, told the club's website: "We will never see the likes of him ever again, and he did so much for the club. "The signing of [captain] Tony Book was a masterstroke, but he enhanced the careers of so many other players and they worshipped him. "You knew he was in a room with you, not many people have that kind of presence but Malcolm did, and he transferred the confidence he had in himself to the team. He felt we could beat anybody and he wanted the players to think that way, too."
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 15, 2010 12:23:37 GMT
Wow: A real. real giant. RIP
You can argue over some things he did, but truly great coach.
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Post by Zamoraaaah on Oct 15, 2010 12:24:51 GMT
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 15, 2010 12:28:00 GMT
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Post by cpr on Oct 15, 2010 13:26:15 GMT
R I P big man.
Sadly, I thought he'd already gone so that 's a bit of a surprise.
One of the game's true characters.
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Post by klr on Oct 15, 2010 13:28:32 GMT
RIP
Not one of my Generation, but even I know that he was one of footballs true characters.
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Post by haqpr1963 on Oct 15, 2010 15:16:18 GMT
R I P big man. Sadly, I thought he'd already gone so that 's a bit of a surprise. One of the game's true characters. With you on that CPR, thought he died years ago..... RIP.....
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Post by Hogan on Oct 15, 2010 15:23:13 GMT
RIP. What a character Big Mal was.
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 15, 2010 16:10:42 GMT
Years after, Allison talking of his signing of Rodney Marsh
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 15, 2010 16:14:30 GMT
And the 1970 World Cup Panel
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Post by Lonegunmen on Oct 15, 2010 22:12:04 GMT
A true charactor of which is sadly missing from the game these days. What he did for Palace that first time was excellent. He certainly was a colourful charactor and makes todays "Big Name" EPL Managers seem boring.
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 16, 2010 6:40:16 GMT
Brian Glanville/The GuardianMalcolm Allison obituaryFlamboyant football manager and coach, a hero and villain at Manchester City (8) The footballing managerial and coaching career of Malcolm Allison, who has died aged 83, is in some sense a cautionary tale. Flamboyance was of the essence: champagne, bunny girls, hyperbolic statements, a rackety domestic life. It led, alas, to ultimate penury – to 20 hours in a police cell, at the age of 72, and a dingy room in an obscure Middlesbrough hotel, a town where he managed, in the early 1980s, one of the many professional clubs that followed his time as a player for West Ham United. The worst thing that ever happened to him was what, at the time, appeared the best – when, in 1971, he was made manager of Manchester City, after he had been there for six years. With Allison as assistant manager and coach, under the benign aegis of Joe Mercer as manager, City had flourished, winning the Second Division Championship in 1966, the League title in 1968, the FA Cup in 1969, and in 1970 both the European Cup-Winners Cup and the League Cup. Once a star at Everton and Arsenal, and an England wing-half, Mercer was never a great coach – Allison's speciality – nor a major tactician, but he did keep the rain off Allison. Moreover, he was able to restrain Allison in any possible excesses. But a leading group of City supporters, alarmed at the possibility that Allison might leave were he not made manager, connived to ensure that he stayed. This they achieved by encouraging a director, Frank Johnson, to sell his shares at a colossal profit. The group took over the club and reduced Mercer to general manager, making Allison the man in charge. It was disastrous. Allison signed the Queens Park Rangers centre-forward Rodney Marsh, like himself a talented maverick from London. Of Marsh's ability there was no doubt, but teams had to be built around him, and City already had a fine, solid one. Acquiring Marsh meant that Allison had to rebuild it, which led to the dropping of the tough, locally born wing-half and captain, Mike Doyle. Marsh proved, if through no fault of his own, a disruptive influence. Smoking cigars, drinking champagne, predicting, erroneously, that City "would frighten the cowards of Europe" in the European Cup, Allison saw City slip lower and lower. In 1973 he left them for London, his spiritual and temporal home, to spend three years as manager of Crystal Palace. He returned to Maine Road as manager in the 1979-80 season, but the glamour had gone. Allison blamed his failure on the second occasion to the fact that too many of the players were sated with success. Others felt he got rid of experienced players too quickly. The team was humiliated when, in January 1980, they were knocked out in the third round of the FA Cup by Halifax Town of the Fourth Division. They just avoided relegation, but Allison lost his job the following season. He had begun to don his famous fedora while at Crystal Palace, deciding to keep it, he said, when the team played a Cup tie at Scarborough in January 1976. Going past the dressing-room, he heard the home players lamenting the fact that just as they thought they had some publicity, Allison and his hat had filched it from them. Palace, as a Third Division team, had a glorious FA Cup run that season, losing a semi-final to Southampton after beating Leeds, Chelsea and Sunderland away. Allison returned to Palace, too, in 1980-81, but as with Manchester City, this was a dire anticlimax. In earlier years, his resilience was exceptional. Born in Dartford, Kent, he was a bright schoolboy, and as the son of an electrical engineer, it seemed plain that he would go to grammar school. But, as was so often the case in those days, the local grammar played not soccer – then seen as unfashionable – but rugby. Allison deliberately failed the entrance examination so that he could attend a secondary modern where soccer was played. After spells as a grocery boy and a Fleet Street runner, he joined the minor club Charlton Rovers, and then Charlton Athletic as a centre-half. There, the writing was on the wall after a brush with the club's manager, Jimmy Seed, which demonstrated Allison's ability to stand up for himself. He was training alone at The Valley, Charlton's stadium, when Seed came past with a visitor, to whom he presented the young Allison. But Allison would have none of it, roundly upbraiding Seed for having never said a word to him in the past. Thus it was scarcely surprising that in 1951 he moved a few miles north to West Ham, where he found things more congenial, winning a regular place at centre-half. At Upton Park, he met professionals such as the Irish international left-back Noel Cantwell, who were eager to talk tactics with him. So began his interest in coaching, while his elevation to club captain pointed to his single-mindedness. When he was 29, however, Allison contracted tuberculosis and his playing career was over, with 10 goals in 238 appearances for West Ham. An ensuing operation cost him half a lung. His first wife, Beth, whom he married at 20, believed that "while he was recovering, he decided to prove himself. I think he came to the conclusion that he had one life and he was going to live it to the full." This, for better or for worse, he did, steadily climbing the ladder as a coach, starting with Bath City in 1963, Toronto City in 1964, and then Plymouth Argyle, till he went to Manchester in 1965. He was back at Plymouth in 1978-79 after a couple of seasons managing the Turkish team Galatasaray, and found success abroad with Sporting Lisbon in 1981-82, guiding them to one of their rare championships, and taking the Portuguese cup as well. After managing Middlesbrough (1982-84), he went to Kuwait, and then to the Portuguese team Vitoria Setubal (1986-88). His time in Portugal came to an end in 1989, when in three months with Farense, he won just one game and was dismissed. On the last day of 1992, he took over at Bristol Rovers, but the following year he was out of work again. He had four children by Beth, and the marriage lasted 22 years. In 1979 he married Sally-Ann Highley from the Playboy Club, later describing it as "the mistake of my life". He proposed immediately after they had been in a car crash. From this union was born a daughter, Alexis. They split up officially in 1983. Next, for 17 years, came his long-term partner Lynn Salton, with whom he had a daughter, Gina, but by 2000 that relationship too was on the rocks, with Allison trying to smash down the door of her house. Alcoholism and depression took their toll, to the point where he observed: "I don't remember the days any more." • Malcolm Allison, football manager, born 5 September 1927; died 15 October 2010 www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/15/malcolm-allison-obituary
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 16, 2010 6:42:56 GMT
David Lacey/The GuardianBig Mal's larger than life outlook was sprinkled with stardust Malcolm Allison's eccentric brand of managerial genius was a facet of a life that never lacked for flamboyance (4) Malcolm Allison, who died yesterday at the age of 83, was a big man of football with big ideas – some profound, some impractical and a few … well, just ideas. Ron Greenwood believed that the biggest asset a player could have was imagination, and this Allison had in abundance. His playing career at West Ham was cut short by TB and the loss of a lung. As a coach he refused to believe that footballers should be stereotyped and used in rigid systems which restricted their natural talents, a common fault in the English game before the Hungarians brought a new learning in the 50s. More than 40 years ago Allison published Soccer For Thinkers, an exposition of the way he thought the game should be played and taught, and what he said then is just as relevant today. "The player," he wrote, "appreciates there are others around him he must use. He must look and see where they are before he gives a pass. His one chance of getting into the game is by finding a clear position. The game becomes open only when players appreciate the value of this basic positional play." Passing and movement, elementary now but not always recognised then. "The coach appreciates which of the players sees situations quickest and best. He sees who the workers are. He sees sometimes that the player with all the skill in the world at his command has no idea of how to become a useful part of a unit." Allison practised what he preached and never more so than when, as Joe Mercer's assistant at Maine Road, he played an essential role when Manchester City won the league in 1968, the FA Cup in 1969 as well as the League Cup and Cup Winners' Cup in 1970. It was a partnership of opposites and perhaps that is why it worked so well. As Allison explained: "No one in football could live with us. Between us we had it all. I charged into situations like a bull, full of aggressive ambition and contempt for anyone who might be standing in my way. And Joe came behind me, picking up the pieces, soothing the wounded and the offended with that vast charm." As manager on his own at City, Allison was less successful and after he had returned to Maine Road for a brief spell in 1979 the then chairman, Peter Swales, admitted that "I got him back at the wrong time, 10 years after his peak. He'd lived a bit of life in between. The ideas were there, but the physical ability …" Living a bit of life was putting it mildly. Whatever Allison lost it was not his flamboyance. He was among the first of the personality managers whose larger-than-life presence on touchlines, whether by accident or design, coincided with the spread of colour television in the early 70s. He smoked large cigars, wore sheepskin coats bigger than sheep and during his time at Crystal Palace, who became known as the Eagles rather than the Glaziers, sported a lucky fedora which became part of the fans' wardrobe when Palace reached the FA Cup semi-finals as a Third Division side. It was during his first spell at Selhurst Park that Allison was charged by the Football Association with bringing the game into disrepute after a Sunday newspaper pictured him cavorting in the team bath with the actress Fiona Richmond. The press dubbed Allison 'Big Mal' but privately reporters called him 'Big Fry' because of his resemblance to the man in a chocolate commercial, George Lazenby, who went on to star in a James Bond film. For Allison, 007 would have sounded like a clever ploy at free-kicks. He was full of tactical wheezes, some wonderful, some weird. Mercer knew how to deal with his more outlandish suggestions – 'Great idea, Mal, we'll try it out in training next week' – and that was the last he heard of it. When Manchester City blew the chance of another title in 1972, after Allison had signed Rodney Marsh, critics blamed him for upsetting the balance of the team in order to accommodate Marsh's eccentric skills. But Allison remained unapologetic. "I believed in Rodney's touch of theatre," he said later. "If you asked Manchester City fans today whether I did the right thing in signing Marsh they would answer a firm 'yes'. They have learned to live with his extravagances, his inconsistencies. It is, after all, the price you pay for the promise of magic." A bit like Big Mal himself, when you come to think of it. www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/oct/15/malcolm-allison-manchester-city-life
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 16, 2010 6:45:14 GMT
IndependentHats off to Big Mal, the visionary coach who was ahead of the game Flamboyant figure who lit up the blue half of Manchester had a gift for inspiring players
By James Lawton, Chief Sports WriterThe best of Big Mal some time ago drifted off into a half-world that was the most poignant mockery of all the wit and vibrancy and sheer, madcap courage that made him the most brilliant football coach of his times. Even now, though, when the assault of his last years is over, there is one great certainty for all those who admired and loved him. It is that few men, in or out of the boundaries of the game he made so thrilling, will ever be more easily conjured. Bobby Moore's devotion was as strong on the day he died as when, as a young contender at West Ham who one day would take his place in the team and surpass every football dream of a young Englishman, he trailed after him like a faithful spaniel, weighing every word – and laughing at every joke. "Malcolm saw something in me that others didn't. Yes, I loved him," said Moore. Not all aspects of Malcolm Allison were admirable, he was always the first to admit. Family life was an anarchic nightmare for the women who cared for him and bore his children and for every pound he earned at the pinnacle of his career in the late Sixties and early Seventies he spent at least two. He wore the constraints of normal life like a tight-fitting coat bursting at the seams but for some years at least, before the disappointment that came with his failure to extend the luminous creativity of his coaching career into more than fleeting success as a manager, there was a pulsating redemption. It was his ability to animate almost every footballer who came into his care, and one of the most successful of them, Mike Summerbee, yesterday, spoke for all those touched by the force of his understanding of what a professional footballer needed in order to give of his best. "Malcolm Allison was years ahead of his time," said Summerbee. That is true enough but it was only part of the genius. It seemed that his talent not only carried him into the future but also the past; his head, which remained almost ridiculously handsome deep into old age, was a storehouse of lessons from yesterday and the most exciting possibilities for tomorrow. Now, when the campaign for a native-born coach of the England team is at full bore despite the absence of the ghost of a credible candidate, it is more than ever inconceivable that he was never recognised as a serious candidate by the Football Association. The FA's reservation, though, was almost entirely to do with the resentment caused by Allison's near total failure to conceal his contempt for so much of the football establishment. Serially, he fell foul of the FA's disciplinary committee – and nor did he earn much applause from some of his fiercest rivals. Bill Shankly once declared that Allison was mad, clinically. Don Revie of Leeds United said that he was a "disgrace to the game", and Sir Matt Busby was severely miffed when the new man in town said that Manchester United's easy superiority was about to go up in blue smoke. But no one could question the quality of the football Allison made – or his ability to go to the heart of the sport's deepest problems. In the early Seventies he announced that Fifa had to face up to a deepening malaise in the way the game was being played. Fifa had to banish the back-pass directly to the goalkeeper. It had become the prop of lazy, cowardly defenders and coaches. Games were being destroyed by the formula of passing back to the keeper at the first hint of pressure – and then having the ball hoofed downfield. Derision greeted Allison's call. It was nearly 20 years later when the world authority, appalled by the football of the World Cup of Italy in 1990 and facing the prospect of selling the game in America four years later, finally acted on Allison's proposal. Of course Allison will hardly be remembered for such tactical prescience or his understanding that modern science had to be applied. No, the unbreakable image is of the fedora and the panache and the bunny girls and the outrage piled upon outrage, not least when he posed in the Selhurst Park baths with the soft porn star Fiona Richmond. Such shocking memories may be inevitable, but they should never be mistaken for the whole and essential story. The great football man Joe Mercer, who had suffered a nervous breakdown while manager of Aston Villa, reached for the phone to call Allison in his first official act as the new manager of Second Division Manchester City. Later, their relationship foundered on Allison's ambition to manage the club but for a few years it constituted football heaven, a mature voice from the highest level of the game, softening the impact of a brilliant but turbulent young football man. Allison never made any secret of his driving force as a coach. He saw himself as a failed player, first with Charlton Athletic, then West Ham (despite more than 200 appearances) and he wept with grief when young Moore was selected ahead of him – and there came the hammer blow of tuberculosis and the removal of a lung. He was lost for a little while, partnering his friend and former Arsenal full-back Arthur Shaw as a professional gambler for two years and running a drinking club in Soho's Tin Pan Alley. But then his vision of how football should be played, how English football had to break out of a stranglehold of stale tradition, was never quite lost. His passion for innovation was born in 1948, when as a national serviceman in Vienna, he slipped into the Soviet zone and watched the Red Army team training in the Prater woods. "The Russians were training in big army boots," he reported, "but they had a lovely touch and they worked with the ball so much; it was a revelation and when I returned to Charlton I told the manager Jimmy Seed that what we were doing was just crap." When he went to coach at Cambridge University his urge to teach football was reignited and his progress was meteoric: Bath City, Plymouth Argyle, and then the call from Mercer. The rise of City is one of the landmarks of England football history. It was brief but stunning: promotion to the First Division, the title two years later, then the FA Cup, and, at the end of a three-year cycle, the League Cup and the Cup-Winners' Cup. He returned to Vienna for that triumph, a superb performance against the then formidable Polish team Gornik Zabrze. Rain streamed down his face as he sat beside Mercer in the Prater Stadium but he was the picture of exhilaration and on the balcony of his hotel room he greeted the dawn with a glass of champagne, a fine Havana cigar and the declaration, "This morning I feel like Napoleon." This was two years after his personal Waterloo – ejection from the first round of the European Cup in Istanbul. After winning the First Division in a brilliant finish, Allison, always a newspaperman's delight, announced, "Next stop Mars." He had sounder prospects in Turin, where Umberto Agnelli, head of Fiat and president of Juventus, offered him a then princely £20,000 a year – and a chartered plane to fly in his friends from England after every home match. The offer survived newspaper pictures of Allison walking a nightclub dancer – and her poodle – in the Italian dawn. Later, he confided, "I've often wondered what would have happened if I'd gone to Italy, but I also know that I loved my City team, it was so hard to break away." He stayed and was, largely invaded by anti-climax. You saw him in outposts like Istanbul and Setubal in later years, after the erosion of City's glory, the miscalculated signing of Rodney Marsh and the parting with Mercer and you wondered how such strength and charisma and talent could drain away. Of course there were moments, the defeat of Leeds United in the FA Cup in partnership with Terry Venables at Crystal Palace on the way to a semi-final, a snatched Portuguese title with Sporting Lisbon, and when you saw him, in a dugout in Brussels or Lisbon or a nightclub in London or Barcelona, there was, until he finally gave up while in charge of Bristol Rovers in the early 1990s, always a resolution that the good days would come again. Good days – and good nights. Like the one in Coimbra in Portugal scouting a coming tie for City and getting joyously drunk when things were still good between him and Mercer, and Allison explaining to the older man that when you are laying on your bed in a room spinning around your head, there is an easy solution. You simply put one foot on the floor. It was sound but ironic advice from a huge man who, for all his gifts, could never quite master that particular art www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/hats-off-to-big-mal-the-visionary-coach-who-was-ahead-of-the-game-2108091.html
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 16, 2010 6:48:14 GMT
And on WSC a repost: ... When Saturday Comes (WSC)
Big Mal - The Hard Life and High Times of Malcolm Allison by David TossellMainstream, £16.99 Reviewed by Harry Pearson From WSC 262 December 2008 I once met Malcolm Allison in a pub in County Durham. The thing that struck me about Big Mal was that he was really quite small. Admittedly he was by that stage an elderly man, but the fact is that in football “bigness” has always been about more than mere physical stature. It emerges during the course of David Tossell’s excellent, thoughtful biography that Big Mal, with his cigars, his hats, his loud mouth, his Dom Perignon and his dolly birds, was to some extent a creation, a boorish Seventies Mr Hyde to Malcolm Allison’s cerebral Dr Jekyll. How the brash Big Mal came to overpower the questing, insightful young coach who dreamt of sparking an English football revolution, with the wasted promise that resulted, is one of the author’s central themes. Though Tossell is never mawkish, and Big Mal rarely remorseful, the book is overhung with regret. Allison, after all, is a man who won his final trophy in England when he had barely turned 40 and then watched as Big Mal, the personality made famous on the ITV football panel, gradually eroded the reputation for innovation and brilliance he had built at Plymouth and Manchester City over two downwardly spiralling decades. They were years characterised by lavish spending – on everything from leather coats to Steve Daley – that would destroy his professional standing and his financial security with equal grim finality. Despite the trauma of having his playing career cut short by TB, Allison’s early years are full of promise. Tossell captures the breathless excitement of young British players awakened to a brave new world by Ferenc Puskas’s Hungary – a team that were to football what Elvis would be to popular music. The youthful Allison, whether he’s talking tactics in Cassetari’s Cafe with Frank O’Farrell, John Bond and Noel Cantwell, coaching Cambridge University, or introducing the sweeper system to Bath City, is the very epitome of an earnest young radical. He is brimming over with ideas. He wants the players to eat properly, to attain high fitness levels, to switch formations at the click of his fingers. He is fascinated by continental methods, willing to embrace techniques from the coaches of other sports. He brings all his thoughts together in a cerebral, serious book, Soccer for Thinkers, which is hailed as visionary. Bill Shankly comes to seek his opinion. The sky, it appears, is the limit. Then, after the success at Maine Road, came the 1970 World Cup and a seat behind a desk in ITV’s studios next to Derek Dougan, Paddy Crerand and Bob McNab. “Having won four major trophies in three years, Allison did not win a single thing in English football after the birth of Big Mal,” Tossell writes. “It seems to be more than coincidence.” In many ways Allison’s career mimics that of Brian Clough. Clough’s playing days ended suddenly, too. He became famous as a coach and then as an outspoken TV personality, and, like Allison, had a problematic relationship with alcohol. The difference was that after Leeds United Clough consciously stepped out of the limelight and went back to focus on football. Big Mal never did. A fly-on-the-wall documentary team even captured his departure from Maine Road after his disastrous second spell at City. From Cup-Winners Cup triumph to a Teesside bed-sit via Christine Keeler and Peter Swales, however melancholy it is quite a story and Tossell tells it well from beginning to sad end. www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/2824/28/
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 16, 2010 6:50:02 GMT
TelegraphFormer Manchester City manager Malcolm Allison dies aged 83 The paradox of Malcolm Allison is that, in being remembered by Mike Summerbee as “the greatest coach this country has ever had”, his determination to make the grade as a manager would always be judged against his innovative and hugely successful career as Joe Mercer’s assistant at Manchester City. By Mark Ogden Published: 1:07PM BST 15 Oct 2010 One of a kind: Manchester City and the wider football world are mourning the loss of former City manager Malcolm Allison Allison, who died in a Sale nursing home on Thursday at the age of 83, combined the glamour and confidence of Jose Mourinho with the training ground expertise of Terry Venables, who would later credit his playing days under ‘Big Mal’ at Crystal Palace as carving his own path towards management. Yet despite a managerial career spanning 16 appointments, twice with City and Palace, Allison the coach rather than Allison the manager is the figure who will ultimately be inducted into English football’s hall of fame. Having been recruited by Mercer to become his assistant at Maine Road in 1965, following brief spells as manager of Bath City, Toronto City and Plymouth Argyle, Allison provided the tactical inspiration on the training pitch as City embarked on the most successful period in the club’s history. During seven-years as Mercer’s ambitious No 2, Allison introduced new ideas and training methods as Francis Lee, Colin Bell and Summerbee led City to the league title, FA Cup, League Cup and the European Cup-Winners’ Cup. And although Allison would later claim the manager’s job that he craved at City, his greatest achievements were rooted in his partnership with Mercer. Summerbee said: “Malcolm is the greatest coach this country ever had, without a shadow of a doubt. Joe Mercer was the figurehead, but Malcolm was the key to the door, really. He brought fitness levels to football that are still there now. He was the forerunner of fitness and tactics way beyond his time. “We were doing things in 1965 on running machines at Salford University with massage-based fitness. We trained in Wythenshawe Park with some of the Salford rugby league lads. That’s how hard it was and how good it was. “My wife always says that, ‘You love Malcolm Allison more than you love me’. That’s how you epitomised Malcolm. He was just quite an amazing man.” Having made almost 250 appearances for West Ham as a centre-half, Allison’s playing career was cut short when he lost a lung after contracting tuberculosis in 1958. Allison then started coaching at the club, where he mentored a young Bobby Moore before moving into management with Bath at 36. But while his success under Mercer ensured his place in City’s history books, Allison’s appetite to become his own man saw him oust Mercer in 1972, when he believed the older man had reneged on a promise to step down in return for Allison rejecting an offer to manage Juventus. Yet as manager, the glory days proved to be behind both Allison and City. His decision to spend £200,000 on Queens Park Rangers forward Rodney Marsh in March 1972 is remembered not for providing a decisive addition to a squad who were four points clear at the top of table, but for prompting a slide which resulted in City finishing fourth two months later. Allison resigned as City manager in March 1973, prior to a turbulent three-year reign at Palace, before returning to Manchester in 1979. Once again, the top job at Maine Road proved a poisoned chalice, with decisions to sell crowd favourites Gary Owen and Peter Barnes, while replacing them with expensive failures such as Steve Daley, leading to his departure just 15 months later. Following a double-winning season in charge of Sporting Lisbon in 1981-82, Allison’s career went into decline. His 1970s flamboyance proved outdated as English football witnessed the rise of the direct play of Watford and Wimbledon, whose styles were anathema to Allison. Yet while management and Allison did not mix, his coaching will always be regarded as ground-breaking and peerless, as Moore once remarked. “Malcolm had taught me everything I know. When he was coaching schoolboys he took a liking to me when I don’t think anyone else at West Ham saw anything special in me. I looked up to the man. It’s not too strong to say I loved him.” Allison the innovator Exercise bikes: Allison introduced the stationary bikes to Manchester City when he arrived in the mid-1960s. They were credited with boosting his players’ endurance. Double sessions: Roberto Mancini has been criticised by City players for introducing double sessions, but Allison encouraged morning and afternoon training 40 years ago. Rugby: City’s players would often train alongside Salford rugby league players in Wythenshawe Park. Allison believed the move toughened up his players. Weight training: Allison was one of the first coaches to introduce weights to improve the physical strength of his squad. ... and the playboy Malcolm Allison was a colourful and controversial figure off the pitch. Bird in the bath: As Crystal Palace manager, Allison received a disrepute charge from the FA in 1976 after being pictured in the team bath with glamour girl Fiona Richmond. Bad language: Allison made his name as an outspoken pundit during the 1970 World Cup, but he was sacked by Teesside radio station TFM in the mid-1990s for an on-air four-letter outburst. Over confidence: Prior to Manchester City’s European Cup debut against Fenerbahce in 1968, Allison declared the team would ‘conquer Europe.’ City were eliminated by the Turkish champions. Roll of honour As coach: Manchester City: League championship (1968), Second Division championship (1966), FA Cup (1969), League Cup (1970), European Cup-Winners’ Cup (1970), Charity Shield (1968). As manager: Manchester City: Charity Shield (1972) Sporting Lisbon: League championship (1982), Portuguese Cup (1982), Portuguese Super Cup (1982). www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/manchester-city/8066309/Former-Manchester-City-manager-Malcolm-Allison-dies-aged-83.html
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 16, 2010 6:51:20 GMT
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Post by saphilip on Oct 16, 2010 6:57:09 GMT
I wait for the day for Brian Glanville to write anything positive about anytrhing - the guy is a first class misery, always looking for negatives in anything. Bloody miserable git.
I must admit I thought MA had died years ago - and let's face it even in the 70's he stood out. And he wasn't that bad a manager - he managed to win titles & cups for European based teams. And that in itself a rarity, as Europe has proved to be a graveyard for all but a handful of British coaches.
And when have we heard this before - City lose the title, so who do the "experts" blame? Rod Marsh & MA for disrupting the squad. Funny how it suddenly isn't a team sport anymore.
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 16, 2010 7:03:06 GMT
Put it this way: I admired Malcolm Allison but he wasnt someone I ever actually WANTED/Wished to be QPR manager...
After his first stint at Manchester City and a nice cup run with Palace, he didn't really achieve anything - Even promotions...
Took Palace straight down from 1st to Third....Famous for promising to terrorise Europe with Man City - and they went out in the first round, I think to some Turkish club...
But still what a guy!
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