‘Like a prison’ – Allardyce reveals claustrophobic Leeds United he discovered and games needed to save club

Speaking on William Hill’s ‘No Tippy Tappy Football’ podcast following Leeds' relegation, Allardyce returned to chair the show alongside presenter Natalie Pike and former Premier League manager Tim Sherwood.

Allardyce reflected on various topics regarding his Leeds United pit-stop including what the future holds and discussions which need to take place.

In addition, Big Sam was asked whether he had any regrets from his time at Elland Road, to which he described not having as much time to ‘investigate’ everything he would have wanted.

Allardyce was appointed at the beginning of May, faced with four fixtures to preserve Leeds’ Premier League status – none of which he was able to win – before bowing out at home to Tottenham Hotspur last weekend.

"I think realistically if I’d have got it when they chose to pick Gracia to take over, which would probably have given you about 14-16 games, that would have been enough,” Allardyce said.

"I don't think I could have worked and tried and investigated everything we possibly could have investigated to try and help the players overcome the position that they were in to try and stay in the Premier League.

"We changed training grounds, we changed direction in terms of the last game, training at Elland Road for three days.

"We had some of the old players, iconic players like Gordon Strachan, Eddie Gray, Gary McAllister come into the training ground and have a chat with the players and what it means to them, what status it [the club] is, what position they held in terms of when they played there.

"We tried to relax the players, give them some time off when we first got there, they hadn’t had a day off in 24-25 days, they’d been in every single [day]. Instead of a pleasant training ground, that becomes more like a prison, claustrophobic. So, we gave them some time off and we saw the benefit of that physically on the pitch because the levels of high intensity and speed went right up compared to what it was before we got there.

"But obviously from the mentality point of view and concentration point of view, we let ourselves down with the mistakes we made,” Allardyce added.

The 68-year-old is due to meet with members of the Leeds hierarchy before the end of this week in order to discuss a direction of travel for the new season and determine whether he will remain in position as Whites boss to lead the club’s charge for promotion back to the top flight.