Big Sam Up For New Season

Sam Allardyce is looking forward to the first game of the season, even though it is away against Manchester City.

Big Sam is determined that his side are to get off to a better start than last season when after nine games they only had three points, setting themselves up for a season of struggle which didn’t end until the penultimate game of the season.

In fairness to Allardyce, the club was struggling long before he came in to take over from Dick Advocaat, but it was Sam’s hard work that kept the side up.

But the boss would like to forget last term and look forward to showing what they can do this time around when Sam has finished his re-build.

He told the club’s official website: “We have a tough start, facing Manchester City in Pep Guardiola`s first game on the opening day of the season, but it`s definitely a fixture we`ll be looking forward to, you`ve got to relish these games.

“Meanwhile, Middlesbrough in the first home game is a great fixture.

“We know we need to start better than we did last season and everything we do in pre-season will be geared towards making that happen.

“There`s only a couple of weeks to go until the players return for training and then the hard work will begin.”