SAM ALLARDYCE will not walk out on his West Brom battlers if they are finally relegated this week.
And he has promised supporters: “The only way to get me out of here is to SACK me!”
Big Sam, 66, is on the brink of being relegated from the top flight for the first time in 30 years as a manager.
He knows it would take one of football’s great miracles for the second-bottom Baggies to stay up.
Yet the great survivor has come out fighting ahead of Monday's must-win Black Country showdown with Wolves and insists he wants to stay, regardless of what division they are in.
Big Sam has turned survival into an art form – somehow managing to keep up all eight top-flight clubs he has managed, including Bolton, Newcastle and West Ham.
And English football’s most famous firefighter said: “I will see it out to the very end, no matter what.
“The only way to get me out of here is to sack me. It would be a sad end if it comes to that – I just want us to get to the last game and still have a chance.
“We have some difficult games but we beat Chelsea and we’ve drawn with Manchester United and Liverpool, so let’s do the double over Wolves, go and beat Arsenal and see what happens.”
Allardyce’s contract runs until the end of the season when the veteran boss and West Brom both have a mutual option to terminate their relationship.
He continued: “Do I stay? That is not a discussion we can have until our final fate is decided.
“Hopefully I am staying. I am absolutely, certainly staying, if we can pull off this miracle and stay in the Premier League.”
Allardyce reckons it will not take long to thrash out his future and wants to lead the Baggies back to the Premier League at the first attempt, if they are sent down.
But he wants boardroom backing and accepts star players such as Matheus Pereira, Okay Yokuslu and Mbaye Diagne are unlikely to stay.
Allardyce admitted: “It all depends on if we can agree on what we need to get back to the Premier League at the first time of asking. The meeting we had to say I was coming in didn’t need an awful lot of negotiations.
“It was a few questions, yes, no. Most of them were agreed on and I was through the door in a shot.
“I don’t think there will be any hesitation from both of us in sitting down for a couple of hours and ripping right through where we are and what we need to do.
“That is a discussion that can only be done when our fate is sealed one way or another.
“The criteria has to be met by both sides – me and the club – to agree that, ‘This is the way forward’.
“They might say, ‘Look, Sam, we’re going to go for somebody different, thank you very much’.
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“And I’ll say, ‘That’s fine by me if that’s what you think. I apologise for not keeping you up. I’ve done all I possibly could’.
“Let’s just hope we’re not talking like that – but we’re in a very difficult position.”
WEST BROM (likely): Johnstone, Furlong, Ajayi, Bartley, Townsend, Yokuslu, Pereira, Gallagher, Maitland-Niles, Robinson, Diagne.
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