Sam Allardyce certainly loves a good striker, having bought the likes of Nicolas Anelka and Youri Djourkaeff in the past, but had he managed to pull off the signing of Samuel Eto'o before Barcelona got their hands on him in 2004, he would surely have surpassed either of the aforementioned duo as the club's most widely recognised striker. It was the summer of 2001 when Allardyce tried to persuade his chairman to swoop for the Cameroonian hit-man, but remarkably the hierarchy felt that the £6.5 million fee was too steep for the on-loan Real Mallorca striker.
''He was at Mallorca and I had to try and convince the chairman at the time that £6.5 million was the best £6.5 million he'd ever spent and this player would be worth £20-25 million in the future. The thing was, we could have got him to come to England and at that particular time he would been a bit of a capture.'' - Sam Allardyce, September 2012.
Not to have a cynical view on the matter, and Allardyce may well have predicted that Eto'o would have one day become a £20 million-rated player, but even the Cameroonian's mother probably couldn't have predicted the sheer success that has come his way. A winner of four league titles, three Champions Leagues and two African Cup of Nations, and a stack of individual awards to his name, and having earned wage packets that would make the common man's eyes bleed, the four-time African Player of the Year has certainly had one hell of a career. One might say that Bolton missed a trick. And don't think for a second that Allardyce ever let his poor chairman forget it.
Recent Journalism & New Media graduate. Insatiable thirst for all things football, and hopes to break into the field of sports journalism in the near future.
Have made a significantly insignificant playing career out of receiving several slaps around the head for not passing the ball.
