Merry Christmas! And welcome back to the fifth season of our festive Football Manager experiment. This festive special sees us spend bagloads of money for an entertaining Christmas Day treat!
Big Sam Allardyce enjoyed a positive fourth season of his Bottom At Christmas challenge, leading an underachieving Köln side to comfortable Bundesliga survival. And that made it 2 survivals, 2 relegations and 1 sacking. But, despite growing fond of the German club and the Köln board wanting him to stay, he wasted no time in taking 7 months out of the game and holidaying ahead to Christmas 2027.
Coming into his 5th season, the options available to Big Sam were:
- Premier League: Wolverhampton Wanderers, 6 points, 9 points from safety
- LaLiga: Real Betis, 11 points, 5 points from safety
- Serie A: Salernitana, 11 points, 4 points from safety
- Bundesliga: Bochum, 14 points, 1 point from safety
- France: Metz, 11 points, 7 points from safety
- Eredivisie: Roda JC, 11 points, 6 points from safety
- Liga Portugal: Santa Clara, 11 points, 1 point from safety
- cinch Premiership: Partick Thistle, 13 points, 5 points from safety
Looking at those options, only one really stood out. So he headed back to England for a second attempt at staying in the Premier League.
Bottom At Christmas: Season 5
After 17 games, Wolves looked doomed to relegation with just 6 points and 2 wins, trailing 17th-place Ipswich by 9 points. The club, which was promoted through the playoffs last season, had lost 7 in a row since a 1-0 win at West Ham, prior to which it had also lost 7 in a row going back to a 2-0 win at Hull in mid-August.
Looking at the squad, it was pretty easy to see why, largely thanks to an appalling summer transfer window. Joao Gomes remains at the club as the best player, along with centre back Bastien Meupiyou, winger Mayckel Lahdo, midfielders Tommaso Pobega and Flynn Downes and centre back Mark McGuinness. However, only 8 players were considered to have Premier League quality.
The good news was that Big Sam started with an £85m transfer kitty. He wasted no time flogging a mass of deadwood, bringing in £64m for 22 players, including terrible strikers Robert Bozenik and Sasa Kalajdzic to Betis and Besiktas for £15m and £3.2m, goalkeeper Bartlomiej Dragowski to Almería for £9.5m and winger Benjamin Garré to Leeds for £16.5m. He also freed up wages by shipping awful summer signings like Jota Silva, Lewis Hall and Ishé Samuels-Smith out on loan.
Big Sam’s first 2 moves were to loan midfielders Assan Ouédraogo from Leipzig and Lewis Miley from Köln. But his biggest move was a much-needed goalkeeper as England’s number 1 Aaron Ramsdale arrived for up to £46.5m from Southampton. He also brought in right back Matty Cash for £2m from Villa, striker Vladyslav Vanat for £9m from Kyiv and potential superstar winger Nenad Manic for £10m from Crvena Zvezda, and loaned winger Luís Guilherme from West Ham and midfielder Kendry Páez from Chelsea. With that big upheaval completed, Big Sam went with a fairly standard 4-3-3 approach.
December to January 2028: A Critical First Month
Big Sam’s Wolves debut was a huge Boxing Day game at home to 12th-place Norwich, which was arguably the worst match of all time and ended 0-0. Three days later, they got absolutely dominated at Arsenal but saw them off 25 shots to earn a 1-1 through Pobega’s long-range strike just after halftime. Another huge game followed on New Year’s Day as Wolves entertained 18th-place Hull. They started well as Guedes’ cross rebounded for Pobega to slam home before Gomes picked out Lahdo for, ridiculously, his 1st goal of the season. Pobega got himself completely unnecessarily sent off but Ouédraogo swiftly announced himself with a wonderful debut goal. It should have been 4-0 straight after halftime as useless striker Kalajdzic missed from 6 yards. Hull got a goal back but Ouédraogo teed up McGuinness to score an excellent 4th, and they missed a late penalty. But this was a pretty strong performance to seal a 3rd win of the season.
Despite that big win, Wolves remained 8 points from safety as Ipswich beat Fulham and drew with Spurs. Wolves were a little unlucky to lose 1-0 at Newcastle before Ouédraogo’s brilliant curled effort earned a 1-1 at Brighton. Vanat scored 11 minutes into his debut at home to Palace, before Ouédraogo scored again and Guilherme set up McGuinness to seal a 3-1 win on his debut to lift Wolves above Palace and off the foot of the table for the first time all season. Two solid defensive efforts earned a 0-0 at Villa before Ouédraogo was the hero again with the only goal at home to Leicester, which earned the midfielder player of the month in his first month at the club.
February to March 2028: New Manager Bounce Continues
Big Sam had certainly stopped the rot in his first month, only conceding 5 goals in his opening 8 league games at Wolves. As a result, they were suddenly only 2 points behind 17th-place Leicester.
Manic made an instant impression with a debut goal earning a point at Bournemouth, who only scored with a dodgy penalty decision. Wolves had a really tricky run-in, so Big Sam earmarked a Monday night home game against Everton as must-win. Furthermore, despite dropping to the bottom of the table over the weekend, the teams above Wolves lost so they could go 16th with a win. Wolves had Ramsdale to thank for several big saves in the first half before Vanat missed 3 absolute sitters. But the game turned on that Ouédraogo sprinkling his magic dust with a 30-yard wondergoal that nestled into the top corner off the underside of the bar. And that dragged Wolves out of the relegation zone for the first time.
A much tougher test followed at Man UFC. But Ouédraogo delivered again, latching onto Vanat’s through-ball to open the scoring on 26 minutes before MOTM Páez played Vanat through to seal a famous 2-0 victory. That was followed by 2 big home games against mid-table sides. And the new manager bounce continued as the impressive Páez laid on goals for Lahdo and Downes to down West Ham 2-0 before earning a 1-1 with Brentford. That took them 7 points clear of 18th-place Fulham with 8 games remaining. But the good run ended with a 2-0 defeat at Liverpool then 2-1 at home to runaway leaders City, who only won through a very dubious Haaland penalty.
April to May 2028: Relegation Fight Heats Up
Those expected defeats reduced the gap to the relegation zone to 4 points ahead of a huge trip to Fulham. Wolves edged a pretty poor game that seemed destined for 0-0 until Downes found Gomes to spin and fire into the corner from the penalty spot. That should have been the winner but, in the 5th of 4 injury-time minutes, Fulham nicked an undeserved draw.
Wolves remained 4 points clear of the drop, with 7 teams now potentially at risk of relegation going into the final 5 games. But 3 of Wolves’ 5 remaining games were against teams in the top 5, so they were arguably favourites to go down with Fulham, who had to play City and Liverpool away.
Game 1 – Ipswich (12th, home): That made Wolves’ first game of the run-in absolutely massive. But you wouldn’t have known as it as the hosts didn’t even have a shot in the first half and absolutely nothing happened in a dreadful 0-0. Palace lost 3-2 at home to Hull to keep the gap at 4 points.
Game 2 – Spurs (3rd, away): An unsurprising defeats followed as Spurs only won 1-0 through Endrick’s goal. Fulham then won their game in hand against Brentford before losing at Liverpool and Man City, while Leicester battered Hull 7-0 after Hull had lost at home to Villa, and Palace lost 5-1 at Brighton then 1-0 at West Ham before Wolves’ next match.
Game 3 – Chelsea (5th, home): If Wolves could get anything from this game, it would be massive. Big Sam switched to 2 holding midfielders, which frustrated Chelsea for the first half, but they eventually scored through Caicedo on 63 minutes. Cash idiotically got himself sent off and Sancho nicked another as Big Sam chased an equaliser.
Game 4 – Norwich (13th, away): That made it 8 games without a win and just 2 points above the dropzone heading into the final 2 games, starting with a trip to Norfolk. And a very unlikely win could see Wolves survive. But they started well as Vanat picked up the loose ball from a corner and volleyed into the top corner from 20 yards. Norwich absolutely dominated but a combination of dreadful finishing and Ramsdale having a blinder kept them out. And Wolves earned a massive 1-0 victory.
Elsewhere, Hull lost 3-1 at home to Bournemouth to go down along with Palace. Fulham beat West Ham 1-0, then Leicester lost 3-1 at Brighton in the late kick off. And that meant Wolves had pulled off the great escape! With the pressure off, Wolves pulled off a shock 2-1 win at home to Arsenal through wingers Lahdo and Odobert, with Ramsdale again MOTM against his former club.
As a result, Wolves finished in an impressive 15th place with 38 points, after 10 wins, 8 draws and 20 defeats, scoring 37 and conceding 50. But in Big Sam’s 21 games, they won 8, drew 8 and only lost 5, which was bordering on European qualification form.
Survival 3-2 Relegation
This latest survival saw Big Sam’s successes outweigh his failures for the first time in this challenge. Ouédraogo top-scored with 6 in 20 followed by Vanat with 5 in 17, both of which were pretty pathetic tallies. But the key reason behind their survival was undoubtedly the arrival of the excellent Ramsdale, who kept 7 clean sheets with a 7.00 average rating behind a pretty useless defence.
With Wolves’ survival complete, Big Sam was eager for a new challenge – ideally in a new country. But where will he end up next time? Join us on Friday to find out!
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