Quotes from Sam Allardyce

I have always said that managers stay in a job when they win football matches.

If I got sacked because my results weren't good enough at Everton, I accept it, but getting sacked when they finish eighth, it is ridiculous. In fact, it is ludicrous.

As a manager, you look at who is going to get the fans on the edge of the seats.

It's not a very secure industry but it's one we all love and enjoy doing.

Ambition is important for any manager or coach, owner or director.

No matter what people say outside of football, we don't work for money, we work for the love of the game and the money is something that follows.

Now astronomical wages are making it very difficult to take somebody who might not even have a transfer fee attached to them, because of the net value that they want and the net value that they're worth.

Everybody walks around talking about, 'Sam Allardyce's style is not good enough, he doesn't play the right way' and so on and so forth and it is a massive problem for me. People believe it. You believe the false lies, the false implications. Football does that - it believes that lie sometimes.

Football today means players stay less now than ever before and you have to accept that. As a manager, a big part of your business is doing far too much business that you don't want to do really.

My dad would be down at the social club and my mum would be looking after us. Their time out together was limited to birthdays and, particularly being Scottish, to Hogmanay and Christmas.

Teams with limited budgets will always find times tough and results won't always go your way.

If a better player comes along, I will try to persuade the club to get him in. Sometimes, you can do your business and all of a sudden something appears that you never expected to appear.

It's great having the best league in the world, no doubt about that, but the downside of that is the national team will suffer.

I'm not suited to Bolton or Blackburn, I would be more suited to Inter or Real Madrid. It wouldn't be a problem to me to go and manage those clubs because I would win the double or the league every time. Give me Manchester United or Chelsea and I would do the same, it wouldn't be a problem.

My management skills are more suited to developing teams to be better than what they were before, and not just about avoiding relegation.

Football is to be enjoyed and I've enjoyed my life in football for many years, it's the pinnacle of my career and I want to enjoy it the most.

The only decisions I'm making at the moment are whether I have tea, coffee, toast or cornflakes in the morning.

The more goals you concede ultimately results in the bottom three, not the more goals you score.

When you hit that safe 40-point mark it's very easy for a player to think about his holidays and actually switch off.

To say we have to play a certain way, or try to, every game is great in theory, but depending what players you have got you have to play to their strengths and cover up their weaknesses.

If a player digests his own statistical information in his own time, on his own laptop, tablet or whatever, without a coach standing over him, it makes it easier for him. It helps with the pressure. There's a fear factor but spending time at home analysing things can help control it.

Arsene has most of the media in his pocket now and is almost - almost - affecting the officials so that you can't tackle an Arsenal player. That's something he's very clever at working on and it's almost working in his favour, you can see that.

People too often - because it's an easy, lazy tag - dwell on my style of football.

The satisfaction for me is that when you leave somewhere you look at what you are leaving and I know I left West Ham in great shape.