Thirty-five minutes into his return to management, Sam Allardyce must have started wondering about the wisdom of abandoning a life of leisure.
The 66-year-old had said he accepted West Brom’s appeal for help on Wednesday partly because he grew bored of an existence in which the toughest decision he had to make concerned his lunch menu, but he certainly did not relish the pickle in which his new team found themselves here when their captain, Jake Livermore, was sent before half-time with his team already trailing 1-0 to an early goal by Anwar El Ghazi.
