442 - The Football (soccer) Forum

"Sampson only got his job in the first place after the FA's disgraceful treatment of Hope Powell left the job vacant after a poor showing in the 2013 European Championships with a fading team which needed rebuilding. She wasn’t given the opportunity."
Utter BS

Powell was sacked simply because all managers are ultimately judged by their record. In the last women's European Championships ENGLAND FINISHED BOTTOM OF ALL NATIONS, despite having entered the tournament at an all-time high in the world rankings. It was also clear that she had lost at least some of the locker room with players complaining about her ruthless, autocratic rule.

Her man management skills were sorely lacking as she fell out with a number of players. Lianne Sanderson for example retired from international football at the age of just 22, blaming irreconcilable differences with Powell: "As long as Hope Powell is in charge I don't see myself going back and I don't think she would want me there."

Another player, Becky Easton, tweeted "If you questioned, disagreed or in anyway upset her...you would be banished for life." Everton's Jody Handley also had her say and wrote: "Only good thing to come from the tournament and media exposure is that finally people are speaking up!"

Leading up to, during and immediately after the disastrous women's Euros people questioned Powel's decision making. They wondered for example why Natasha Dowie, the WSL's leading scorer at the time, wasn't selected. They questioned Powel's lack of time spent watching players from outside of her established squad. And, as England desperately scrambled for survival in Sweden, questions were asked as to why Powell had insisted on selecting six injured players for her squad and sticking with them instead of selecting players like Jordan Nobbs.

Powel had more control over all aspects relating to her national team than any manager of the men's team in the modern era, and in the end she was held accountable for her teams performance. In Sweden England lost to Spain and then failed to defeat Russia, the lowest ranked team in the competition. Against France England were completely outclassed losing 3-0. Nearly an hour into the game and the French had had 11 shots on goal. England had had none!

No male manager would survive such as disastrous Euros performance as England's womens team endured under Powel, and yet you seem to think that because she wasnt given special treatment after the Euros that this amounts to evidence of sexism! Turn it up.

Let's compare Powel's exit as England manager to that of Hodgson. England under the latter qualified having won all ten of its matches. In their first match at the Euros England conceded a 92nd min equaliser against Russia. Hope's team lost to Spain. In their second game Hodgson's team scored a 92nd min winner against Cymru. Powel's team failed to beat the lowest rank team in the competition. In his third group stage match Hodgeson's team drew 0-0 whilst Powel's team lost 3-0 (could easily have been much worse). The wash up is that Powel's team finished last at the Euros whilst Hodgeson's team qualified for the knockout stages. Powel was sacked and Hodgeson stood down. Both were held responsible for the performances of teams that were deemed to have under performed. This is the reality of being a manager. It's a results driven business and yet you seem to think that Powel should have been exempt from this reality as she is a woman! By the way, I wonder how you would have reacted had she been savaged in the media like Hodgeson was. Reckon you would have burst an artery.

" Pep Guardiola has come in with some very continental ideas which might work well in Spain or Germany where there are perhaps only two or three good teams in the league and the rest can be trundled over without too much difficulty, but the EPL is a completely different animal."

Pep's "very continental ideas" are the same now as they were when he arrived at City. His ideas haven't changed but the personnel have. Those "very continental ideas" are so far working very nicely in the EPL.

The same efficient, well organised...excellently coached team that didnt simply finish bottom of their group but actually finished last out of all of the teams that took part in that years Euros!!!

She was given bloody 15 years and record funding!!!

The simple fact is that a lot of money had been poured into women's football and the expectations for the team going into the 2013 Euros were pretty high. At the Euros however Hope's team finished winless and on the bottom of their group having conceded 7 goals in just 3 matches. Many managers of England's national (mens) team have been sacked with a far better track record. Take Hodgson. England won all ten of their matches in qualifying for the Euros and were unbeaten in the group stages. One loss to Iceland however was enough to force him to fall on his sword. Getting back to Powell. In a tournament without a great deal of depth in it you can't finish bottom as manager and expect to keep your job. Not even if you are a lesbian!

Note, that under Powell England's women failed to qualify for two world cups. In the two they did qualify for they won a total of 3 matches in 8 attempts. Her replacement won 5 games in his first world cup.

Whilst Sampson clearly had the support of his players it is interesting to recall the number of current players at the time who spoke out against Powell in social media. This clearly was evidence that she had lost at least part of the dressing room.

Simply put after 15 years at the helm things were starting to fall apart. The team failed dismally at the Euros and ultimately she was held responsible...as are all managers in such circumstances. End of. Look at the 'special one' as an example. He had won the title with Chelski in May but was gone by December.

It's delusional to believe that after the woeful performance at the Euros, and with clear signs of locker room disharmony, that the FA should have entrusted her with rebuilding the side. You seem to think that no matter how badly the team might be performing that she should have never been sacked because she was a woman!

So with bugger all to actually go on you sound like it's a fact that Sampson is 'guilty'. Wouldnt actually want to wait for the courts to hear the allegations and weigh up the facts first would we.

You must really hate women. Talk about being in denial.


OK.... so,let's look at things as they are now emerging, shall we..? Not that you'll accept a single word of it, but I can only chronicle events as they arise.



According to Martin Glenn, of the FA, Mark Sampson was “calm but angry” as he found out that his luck had finally run out.

The formalities didn’t last long once he realised that a scandal had caught up with him – just not the scandal that most people thought would be his downfall.

That doesn’t make the other allegations any less serious and the fact the FA has found another reason to move him out doesn’t change the fact that a second crisis is running concurrently – a story featuring racism allegations, hush money and yet more evidence of systematic failure. What all this needs is a proper investigation and conclusion rather than more FA spin, denial and closing of ranks.

The Eni Aluko affair is gathering pace now that yet another investigation is under way and the culture, media and sport select committee is summoning the relevant people to explain what are now emerging as gaping holes in the previous two inquiries.

A second player, Drew Spence, will meet barrister Katharine Newton on Friday for an interview that should have taken place the best part of a year ago. As if Sampson doesn’t already have enough on his plate, Spence intends to support Aluko’s version of events by saying she, too, was the recipient of an allegedly racial remark.

Ultimately, though, Sampson has been sacked for something entirely different, involving dubious behaviour from his time at Bristol Academy where there are first-hand reports that some of the club’s away trips were more like a sex and booze fuelled joining up of stag and hen parties.

No doubt more will emerge over the coming weeks and months but it’s not going to be pretty when it involves a football manager, his backroom staff, female footballers and a culture where, according to reliable evidence, some of the more sensible players who didn’t want to get involved were seriously alarmed about what was going on.

Stories about Bristol Academy which have been the subject of in-jokes around the English footballing world now appear to be true. It looks as if now the dots are beginning to get joined up. No laws were broken but it looks more and more like during his time at Bristol, Mark Sampson overstepped the professional boundaries between player and coach.

There will undoubtedly be some who will find this all a tad convenient. The FA find themselves in the midst of what could escalate into an appalling race controversy and all of a sudden, they find an entirely separate reason to get rid of the alleged offender for something that happened in his previous employment.

Whatever Sampson has done to warrant the sack, the men in power at the FA are falling over each other to absolve themselves of any responsibility. Greg Clarke, the chairman. Dan Ashworth, the technical director (who, incidentally, was the person who appointed Sampson, championed him and was one of those central to the dismissal of Hope Powell, and Executive Martin Glenn. Surely they could have stopped this? No, it seems. All of the FA’s top three executives are, apparently, not in any way to blame. Honest, guv.

The fault, according to Glenn, lay further down the organisation and with a number of other people who just conveniently happen not to work for the FA any more. “Mark joined the FA at the end of 2013. A couple of months into his employment, the FA received allegations about his conduct at Bristol Academy. The FA safeguarding system clicked into gear and those safeguarding officers spent quite a bit of time, almost a year, investigating a range of issues that had been raised. They presented that to a safeguarding review panel in early 2015 and in March 2015 the panel reached a decision that, if he was given some training and mentoring, he wasn’t a safeguarding risk.”

“The reason we have parted company with him was that, while the safeguarding team did their job on their specific narrow front, nobody else within the FA was alerted that what he had done was not something you would be comfortable with for an FA employee. In his (Sampson’s) eyes, he felt he had been cleared of the issue. And he had been from a safeguarding perspective. Our problem was the grown-ups in the organisation hadn’t seen the report and the full detail to make the point about employability.”

Glenn appears to hold the previous regime responsible, when Greg Dyke, Adrian Bevington, Sir Trevor Brooking and Alex Horne were running the FA. Yet the bottom line here is that the FA has been employing an England manager since 2013 and in the past two and half years has been sitting on a report that has now persuaded the people who have been sitting on it that Sampson has to go.

And the most cynical thing of all is that the report that has been gathering dust on a shelf at the FA since March 2015 probably still would be had it not been for Aluko refusing to stand for being given the brush off.

Why, also, did the FA decide to wait until after the match against Russia on Tuesday before deciding Sampson’s position was “untenable”. Why, when all the evidence was available to them for so long, did they wait until Wednesday to give him the sack?

The sports minister, Tracey Crouch, was guilty of a massive understatement when she described it as a “mess” but, if nothing else, perhaps it might now be easier for the relevant players from the China Cup in 2015 to give evidence about the race allegations now Sampson has gone.

Drew Spence’s allegation is that Sampson asked her, a mixed-race player on her first England call-up, how many times she had been arrested. Three other players – Jill Scott, Izzy Christiansen and Jo Potter – were in the room at the same time and can corroborate this.

Before they can officially corroborate anything though, they have to be asked and that really is one of the more bewildering and depressing parts of this story. Even now, the FA is steadfastly refusing to confirm that the new investigation will involve Scott, Christiansen and Potter.

The FA isn’t even admitting it is a new investigation, as if it means losing even more face when the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) has already described inquiry No1 as “Not a genuine search for the truth” and “a sham which was not designed to establish the truth but intended to protect Mark Sampson” .

Inquiry No2 was called "a farce” by Aluko and has led to calls from Kick it Out and the PFA for the process to start again, with a new barrister in place.

The Newton Enquiry began on 15 December 2016 last year and when she (Newton) interviewed Sampson he denied all the allegations. The inquiry finished on 2 March and Sampson was completely exonerated, even though Newton said she did not dispute “the player in question (Spence) was upset about something she thought had been said”.

When the newspapers started asking questions about why Spence wasn’t interviewed, the FA said that it didn't know her identity and that Aluko should take the blame for that one, having “refused” to pass on who she meant. Except, of course, that was another half-truth at best.

Aluko had told them it was a mixed-raced player, raised in South London, who played for Chelsea and was on her first camp. Newton knew that Spence was the only mixed-race player from South London who played for Chelsea and was on her first camp in that group.

Aluko and Spence both deserve a proper investigation and while we’re about it, how do those players who ran to Sampson in a choreographed goal celebration for the first goal against Russia on Tuesday and didn’t spare a second thought about how their former team-mates – not to mention Lianne Sanderson and Anita Asante (don't get me started on that one) – might feel about that..? Utter disgrace and shame on all of them.

Aluko alleges Sampson told her to be careful her Nigerian relatives did not bring the Ebola virus to Wembley and her 11-year 102-cap England career was ended – a coincidence, the FA says – immediately after she voiced her concerns.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.






And none of this happened on Hope Powell's watch. Perhaps the "Locker Room disharmony" you speak of may have been due to her running a tight ship.

But we can deal with that as another topic. Something I explained before in previous messages on that subject but you've conveniently chosen to completely forget.

When it comes to Powell's much deserved sacking you are like someone constantly insisting that cigarettes are good for your health!

Yes you are.

From what i read of your post on the antics of Lions players back in the day i thought you would have been all in favour of such alleged behaviour.

So far Sampson is undergoing a trial by media which you are gleefully playing along with. There is a system in place to deal with issues pertaining to his behaviour. My point is people should wait until the relevant bodies have had a chance to listen to all involved, until they have gathered and weighed all of the relevant evidence. At this point everything you are getting your knickers in a knot over is merely rumour and speculation being presented by you as fact.

The time to comment on Sampson's behaviour is surely AFTER the relevant inquiries have concluded and their findings have been published...

Hmmmm... you fail to draw the distinction between the activities of amateurs
who weren't bound by professional contracts and whose behaviours took place in a different era which was less tightly monitored by the press and occurred when such things were more liberally tolerated.

Today's modern sportsmen and women are very highly paid professionals and have duties and obligations far beyond those of pre-war social constraints.

If you read the post that I think you're referring to right the way through, you will see that I mentioned this factor towards the end. Where players on Lions tours now find themselves in a monotonous grind of training.... cryo... ..sleep... training... cryo.... sleep......

I drew the distinction that you don't seem either able or willing to comprehend.

Your intense desire to dismiss out of hand anything that I say is beginning to look like desperation.

Comments ARE being made AFTER the first two "investigations" were riddled with inconsistencies, lack of probity and have been described by the Sports, Media and Culture Secretary as "A mess".... and that was being kind..!!

How many more botched or even possibly corrupt, investigations do you want before anybody is allowed to comment..?

And what I actually said was:

it doesn’t make the other allegations any less serious and the fact the FA has found another reason to move him out doesn’t change the fact that a second crisis is running concurrently – a story featuring racism allegations, hush money and yet more evidence of systematic failure. What all this needs is a proper investigation and conclusion rather than more FA spin, denial and closing of ranks.

I think you'll notice that I've used the word "allegations" which is perfectly acceptable when discussing a topic where an individual is subject to investigation into their conduct.

I didn't say any of the stories emerging ARE true. What I actually said was:

Stories about Bristol Academy which have been the subject of in-jokes around the English footballing world now appear to be true

I don't think I've ever yet said that Sampson is actually guilty of the things that are being said. I've been quite consistent in saying that guilt is yet to be proven.

In the final analysis, what I actually said was: Aluko and Spence both deserve a proper investigation

I presented known facts to support that last statement. Or are you suggesting that the 2013 report into Sampson is a lie..? Are you suggesting that Sampson wasn't investigated..? Are you suggesting that the document doesn't exist...? Are you suggesting that the FA didn't know of his documented conduct at Bristol Academy..?


Despite the hearsay you present on another post as hard fact.... none of which was ever made the subject of an official complaint and therefore doesn't count for squat..... the only thing that can be said against Hope Powell is that she ran a tight ship where she didn't tolerate players who wanted to take men to their rooms when on England trips, or allow them to stay up in the bar late into the evening before matches. No, she told them to get some sleep the night before an important match.



Mark Sampson isn't some poor lamb being hung out to dry. He's a public figure who is subject to the same scrutiny that you gleefully apply to Hope Powell, a woman whose decency, integrity and propriety have never been called into question by any sort of investigation official or otherwise.

The media are right to search for and publish facts that emerge about this unsatisfactory affair, and if that exposes a culture of "mateship", dishonesty, cover up and racism at the FA then in my opinion that does the game a favour.

It's quite clear that you'd be happy with an all-boys-in-it-together drinking and shagging club where the Sheilas are only there for your entertainment and gratification.

Keep women in their place eh..? Especially if they're black.