Big Sam sounds like a man who wants the Ireland job

Sam Allardyce has been out of work since May.

He's switched from the sideline to the studio in the mean-time but now it looks like the 63-year-old Dudley native wants to get back into the big time. He's had enough of analysing games on Talksport and now he wants to get back into the thick of it. Well that's what it looks like from the outside looking in anyway. And if 'Big Sam' is in the hunt for a job, he's doing a fairly decent job of angling himself right into contention for the Ireland one. He's just putting his head in the shop window, that's all. Declan Rice's 'deliberation' over his international future has been the talk of the town since the Republic of Ireland squad was released for next month's clashes against Wales and Poland without his name. The London born defender has been getting it from angles off Republic of Ireland diehards ever since to the extent that he's been forced to put his Twitter account on private. In fairness, Rice didn't help himself by kissing the Irish badge and declaring his love for our national anthem during the three appearances he has made for this country but in his defence, the man is only 19 years of age for God's sake. Not one of us can claim not to have made a mistake in our lives and Jesus you'd definitely be lying too if you said you didn't get carried away when you were as Declan Rice is now, only a kid. Yes, it certainly wasn't the wisest thing in the world to go kissing crests and talking up Amhrán Na bhFiann but hindsight is 20:20 vision and there you'd actually be even more worried more about the West Ham youngster if he turned England's calls down straight away. First of all, it's his country of birth and secondly, whether we like it or not, the 2018 World Cup semi-finalists are few steps ahead of us on the international football ladder. Rice's exploits in a West Ham jersey have caught the attention of the Three Lions you can hardly blaming him for peeking out the door when they came knocking. Sam Allardyce does though. Speaking on TalkSport on Tuesday afternoon, he warned Rice that he could be making a 'terrible mistake' by choosing England over Ireland.

“Is it better playing for England and it ends up being less than ten matches, or is it better playing for Ireland and playing 60 matches at international level," asked big Sam.

Sam knows more than most about having your England career cut short, given his management tenure only lasted one game, but who's to say Declan would be as unsuccessful as Sam across the water?

“That’s the choice he has to make and it’s a very difficult choice at 19, because he still doesn’t really know how good he’s going to be.

He doesn't know how good he's going to be, no, but he's more than likely going to be aiming to be fairly good anyway, and if he feels he's going to be good enough to make it into an England team, it'd be harsh to blame him for weighing up his options at this stage.

“But it’s a terrible mistake if he chooses England and then doesn’t play," continued Sam.

There's no doubting that it would be upsetting for Rice if he never played for England after declaring for them, but if he felt it was the right thing to do, we doubt he'd have too many regrets about the whole thing.   All of these comments from Big Sam sound so one-sided and so blinkered that there's no other possible explanation for them other than the fact that he's on a charm offensive about Ireland, and that after all, he wants Martin O'Neill's job. What would we all think of that?