Sam Allardyce has likened the situation he walked into at Leeds United’s training ground to ‘a prison’. Leeds were staring down the barrel of relegation when Allardyce was handed the Elland Road reins at the start of May, following the dismissal of Javi Gracia.
The club had gone five games without a win, conceding 18 goals in the process and with four tricky fixtures remaining, Allardyce knew he would have his work cut out if he was to save the Whites. However, the head coach claims he felt the need to immediately lighten the workload and the mood at Thorp Arch following his arrival after being informed that the squad had gone three and a half weeks without a day off.
Allardyce tried to take the stress out of the situation with downtime being accompanied by ex-player visits and even a change of scenery, with Leeds training at Elland Road for the final week of the season in the hope of finally getting over the line.. Ultimately, the damage was already done and Leeds were relegated on the final day of the season as they lost 4-1 to Tottenham Hotspur.
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The head coach is due to meet with the club this week to discuss how both parties wish to move forward and in the meantime he has opened up on the methods he used to try and bring the best out of Whites.
“We changed training grounds, we changed direction in terms of the last game, playing at Elland Road and training at Elland Road for three days,” he said on the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast. “We had some of the old players, iconic players, like Gordon Strachan, Eddie Gray, Gary McAllister come into the training ground and have a chat with the players about how much it means to them, what position they held in terms of when they played there. Gary was actually manager for a while.
“We sort of tried to relax the players, give them some time off. When we first got there, they hadn’t had a day off in 24-25 days, they’d been in every single [day]. Instead of a pleasant training ground, it becomes more like a prison, claustrophobic.
“So, we gave them some time off and we saw the benefit of that physically on the pitch because the levels of high intensity and speed went right up compared to what it was before we got there. But obviously from the mentality point of view and concentration point of view, we let ourselves down with the mistakes we made.”
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