We recruited a lot of players who had been regarded by themselves and certainly the media as the best players in poor teams and ones who had been getting those teams punching above their weight so to speak.
Likes of Schneiderlin at Saints, Keane at Burnley, Willliams and Sigurdsson at Swansea, Pickford at Sunderland, Sandro at Malaga, Bolasie at Palace, none of them with the exceptions of Pickford and Sigurdsson have any fight in them, the word big time charlies comes to mind, all of those have shown themselves to be the type of fish thats ok in a small pond with other little fish they can laud it over, stick them in a bigger team with bigger names and they have melted and whats worse they keep spouting crap in the media about fight and constantly show none of it, Schneiderlin being the worst with williams a close second
It's obvious that Allardyce has tried to rotate to get people fighting to get in the team, and what he's failed to realise that some jsut cba, some he is picking not on merit week in week out which ultimately undermines that method of trying to motivate the others as they see whats happening, the young lads who seem a close unit, have seen a couple of them being lambasted in the media by him, which frankly makes me think none of them will want that boss now.
as for us writing off games to focus on others, 100% this, and the last manager who did that for me was Moyes with the Derby being sacrificed embarrassingly so to focus on the cup game, and from that point on he was done at this club for me anyway.
One of the biggest things about managing better teams is dealing with bigger name players, bigger egos and agents, and managing the squad, it's easy to motivate a group of 18 players with the 'we are in this together' etc, a lot harder when you're giving that speel to 30 - of which half may hardly feature and the others cba
