Sam Allardyce believes that Tim Sherwood has the "crazy" characteristics required to become a football manager after agreeing to take temporary charge of Tottenham Hotspur.
The 44-year-old was made caretaker boss at White Hart Lane on Monday following the sacking of Andre Villas-Boas, and his first game comes at home to London rivals West Ham United in the Capital One Cup on Wednesday night.
"Tim is 44 years old and not been a manager, and I thought he would have challenged himself a lot sooner in management terms. Obviously for him the right position hasn't come up," Allardyce said in a press conference. "For ex-players like him and someone involved with Tottenham for quite a while, he has got a desire to be it, but the opportunity never arose where he was comfortable taking it.
"If you are in a good job, why leave it to be a manager? That has a bit of a crazy line in it: 'you must be crazy leaving this job to go and be a manager because you could be one of the 50 or 60 out of 92 managers who end up with the sack'. That is what happens every year now, so you have to be pretty good to last and man-management skills are one of the key elements.
"Sometimes you can sit in the chair and think 'why the hell am I doing this?', but if you are in it, then it is because it is what you do best. What else are you going to do? You can do (punditry), that is okay for a while and those who get comfortable in that life are rarely going to step out of that and come into the crazy world of management - but once you have been in it and it gets in your blood, you pine for it. If you lose it, you pine to get back in it and do all the thing is you do on a day to day basis. I enjoy challenging myself. I wouldn't be still here if I had not taken those challenges by the scruff of the neck and improved every football club I have ever been at."
West Ham travel to Spurs in the Capital One Cup quarter-finals tonight.
Matt Cotton
