While at Bolton Wanderers, the West Ham manager exploited the liberalization of the offside law by instructing "inactive" players to deliberately stand behind the defensive line.
Sam Allardyce doesn’t look much like a revolutionary. He seems to relish playing the role of gruff northerner (although he’s actually from Dudley in the West Midlands), dishing out bracing doses of common sense to the wealthy and the sophisticated.
No manager is ever quite so happy after a victory to explain just how his side outmaneuvered its opponent. And yet behind the bluff image, Allardyce is one of the most innovative managers the Premier League has known, never more so than in his attempts to manipulate new interpretations of the offside law.