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Bolton chairman Phil Gartside has voiced his incredulity at the prospect of Sam Allardyce leaving Bolton Wanderers to take over as Sunderland manager and can’t quite see the logic being offered for anyone to take such a move.

“It is nonsense to suggest Sam would even consider leaving Bolton to go to Sunderland. How could anybody even think that?”

“Why would he consider leaving a club - one of only five clubs to finish in the top 10 of the Premiership for the last three years - to go to a club that has just been relegated and where there is no money?”

I have to say I agree with gartside. I thought this was just another nonsense summer rumour when I first read it (like the papers claiming that Marcello Lippi is the new Spurs manager!) but it seems like Niall Quinn and his consortium were very serious about appointing Allardyce and for their part, I can see why. Sam isn’t England manager material, despite what he himself may think, but at smaller clubs with limited transfer budgets he certanily knows how to get the maximum potential out of a squad and weave homegrown talent with some ageing experience from abroad.

What he would want to go to the yo-yoing Sunderland for is another matter. As Gartside says, no money and in the Championship after a dismal Premiership campaign. Hardly a “must have” job for a respected, seasoned Premiership manager who has established his club in the top part of that mid table scrum.

The Newcastle job would have been as high as Sam Allardyce could have gone in English football in my opinion and with it going to Glenn Roeder and Steve McLaren taking the England job, maybe Sam would look elsewhere for a new challenge. Personally I think he’d be mad to even consider the Sunderland job but each to their own. Maybe it’s one for Alex McLeish to consider if he decided to come down south to manage?

Along with most of the English footballing supporting public, Bolton Wanderers manager Sam Allardyce has questioned the level of influence held in the FA by the Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein.

While similar questions have been asked by fans and the press over the past couple of years, it is the first time a high profile Premiership manager has come out with the question and surely now there has to be some level of inquiry into how one of the top men at one of the top clubs in the country can sit on decision making panels that have repercussions for all of the other clubs in the league.

Sam Allardyce’s main problem was that, through his position with the FA, David Dein could steer the committee responsible for replacing Sven Goran Eriksson away from Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger so as not to upset that particular club.

“I don’t know how much power David Dein has but he obviously has a great influence within the FA and on what they do,” Allardyce told the News of the World. “One minute he had nothing to do with it and then he was sitting on the top table interviewing candidates for the England job. You would have to ask them how that came about. We do know one thing, he wouldn’t want the rest of the committee to go for Arsene Wenger so I am sure he would have batted that back with as much vigour as possible.”

The spectre of improper agent conduct has raised it’s ugly head at Bolton Wanderers with the proposed purchase of midfielder Idan Tal from Maccabi Haifa. Manager Sam Allardyce’s son Craig, a football agent, has been implicated by agent Ronen Katsav who has plans to sue Tal for reneging on a previous agreement that he had secured for him.

Craig Allardyce is reputedly devastated at bringing his father’s name into disrepute while he is being touted as one of the number one contenders to replace Sven Goran Eriksson as England manager and both father and son have strenuously denied any wrongdoing in the transfer.

Craig has now decided to not have any part in transfer dealings concerning Bolton while his father remains manager in an effort to put some distance between the two and avoid any potential embarassing situations like this in the future.