John Stones out, Phil Brown in: what if Sam Allardyce kept the England job

That newspaper sting did not happen and Allardyce was not sacked after 67 days. England still managed to reach the World Cup but it was a rather different – and more difficult – journey

“You hipsters in the media keep telling me we need to have defenders who can pass the ball out from the back,” Sam Allardyce said after announcing his squad for the friendlies against Brazil and Germany in November. “But as my good friend José says, there are a lot of poets and philosophers in football these days, and John Stones will not be part of my squad until the words ‘Get’, ‘Rid’, ‘Hit’ and ‘Andy’ become part of his vocabulary. We have a certain way we want to play and, unfortunately, John doesn’t fit into that at the moment. The door is always open for any player to fight their way back in but I haven’t seen anything this season that would make me want to pick him instead of Chris Smalling and Michael Keane. I couldn’t give a shite if Pep Guardiola thinks I’m wrong. You can bang on about him all you want but do you think I would have lost a Champions League semi-final to Roberto Di Matteo? Not bloody likely!”

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