BFS owns up to a huge Hammers mistake

It takes a bit of believing but Sam Allardyce has finally admitted making a mistake …and in the transfer market no less!

Sam’s not big on humility of course – not his thing so it’s a pleasant surprise to him owning up to something that is entirely of his own making.

The player under question is a certain Jamie Vardy -still at 32 years young scoring goals for fun with Leicester City – but it seems  BFS really wasn’t sure about him back in 2011 when he took over at the Hammers and could have bought him for a million pounds.

And that I suppose was in the days when £1 million was a lot of money. Sam obviously thought so and decided against buying a bloke who has scored 140 goals since after arriving from the non league with 34 to his name in his final season at that level.

The Hammers missed out on the Foxes goal machine for a second time later on when trying to land him before he agreed a new deal with the club.

Allardyce, who joined the Alan Brazil Sports Breakfast revealed he could have snapped the striker up long before the Foxes snared him.

He said: “When I was at West Ham and I needed some goals Mickey Mellon, who played for me, he’s a brilliant manager and he is at Tranmere now.

“But he rang me up and he said ‘We can’t sign Jamie Vardy; he won’t stay with us Sam. Give us a million quid and it will be the best signing you have ever made’.

“And that was quite a bit of money for a non-league player, I’m talking 2011, in my first season at West Ham.

“I just wondered if Jamie could jump out of the conference and come in for our first year of the Premier League.

“So I didn’t do it and I have been kicking myself ever since because he went to Leicester instead with Nigel [Pearson] and [Craig Shakespeare] Shakey.”