Big Sam Interview: Is He Throwing Shade at Bolton Wanderers Chairman Ken Anderson?

Ex-Bolton Wanderers player and manager Sam Allardyce has been doing the media rounds again.

This usually means the odd line about Wanderers and the odd bit about players that we might well have signed over the years, you know, Didier Drogba, Rivaldo, Grandpa Pig - the usual.

Anyway, in this interview, printed in the BEN, there was one line that caught my attention and made me stroke my chin in wonder.

“Would I ever go back to Bolton? No, not as a manager,” he said.

“Maybe one day, if they needed help, and they wanted to properly move forward, get back into the Premier League and re-invent themselves then I’d come on in some capacity.”

The distracting bit is the first line. Of course, we’d all chop off our right arms to have Sam back as manager - anyone who says they wouldn’t is just being contrary - but the second part really made me wonder.

“if they needed help, and they wanted to properly move forward”

Is that a slam against Kenny? Does Sam think that we are not intending to move forward? What does ‘move forward properly’ mean?

It does beg the question that if Ken’s sale demands were different, would he be up for some sort of involvement in the club? Either way, to think of Allardyce involved within the higher-ups does give me a nostalgic pang, and I love nostalgic pangs.

So, am I on to something, or is it just too early to be reading between lines?