SAM ALLARDYCE is now the strong 4-1 favourite to be appointed as the next England manager, yet to many people, certainly away from Wearside, talk of him succeeding Roy Hodgson is met with a mixture of incredulity and disgust. In the language of the sports marketing sector, the Sunderland boss is in need of a ‘brand makeover’.

‘Too old school’, ‘too unattractive when it comes to his style of football’, ‘not cut out for the very highest level’ – the criticisms levelled at Allardyce are well-established now, and almost certainly played a key role in the Football Association’s decision to overlook him in 2004 when they made the disastrous appointment of Steve McClaren.

Some of the reservations about Allardyce’s suitability for the England job are justified, but then the same could be said of anyone on the likely shortlist. Jurgen Klinsmann? Glenn Hoddle? Alan Pardew? It is not as though the FA will be choosing from a list of flawless, world-class candidates.

Sunderland fans might not like to hear it, given their justified concerns about the possible departure of a manager who has finally got to grips with many of the deep-rooted problems at the Stadium of Light, but Allardyce deserves a chance as England boss. Rather than being ill-suited to the post, he actually possesses many of the characteristics that are required to succeed.

The ‘old-school’ label is the most misleading, and is a stick that has been unfairly used to beat the 61-year-old for too long now.

Roy Hodgson was an ‘old-school boss’ and I vividly remember listening to him in the press room in the bowels of Wembley in the wake of England’s final warm-up game ahead of Euro 2016. “I’m not a great believer in statistical analysis,” he said. “I’ve been around the game long enough to prefer trusting my own instincts.” Well, those instincts weren’t particularly sound when it came to repeatedly selecting Raheem Sterling, insisting Harry Kane took corners or giving Marcus Rashford three minutes in which to turn around England’s 2-1 defeat to Iceland.

Allardyce, on the other hand, has always been a staunch advocate of the latest technological advances. He was one of the first managers to embrace Pro Zone technology, is a firm believer in the values of carefully-managed nutrition, recovery techniques and medical analysis, and has always been willing to look beyond the traditional confines of a football dressing room for support and ideas.

He is far more tactically astute than he is given credit for, and as last season proved, he is adept at working from the back in order to organise a team and make them hard to break down. It is hard to remember the last time that could be said of an England line-up.

Since his appointment at Sunderland, Allardyce has held weekly defensive sessions in which he has taken his defenders through a series of pain-staking drills, ramming home the importance of good positioning and working together as a unit. “My biggest concern,” he said at one stage last season, “is that we do it so often, I’ll bore them to death.”

Clearly, however, it works. Sunderland lost just one of their last 11 matches last season, having previously looked capable of conceding a goal whenever the opposition attacked. For all that England lacked a cutting edge against Iceland, their main problems over the last decade or so have been defensive. Allardyce is the ideal man to sort that out.

‘Ah,’ I hear you say. ‘But his football is so boring’. Well, is it? There’s no doubt that he tightened Sunderland up, but that was an essential requirement if he was going to keep them in the top-flight. I don’t remember too many games when the Black Cats were banging aimless long balls upfield, particularly in the second half of the campaign when they were fielding the diminutive Jermain Defoe as a lone striker.

The reality is that Allardyce moulds his style to the players at his disposal, and isn’t afraid to go back to basics if he doesn’t feel he has the capability to do anything else. What he won’t do is put square pegs in round holes just because it’s fashionable to play a certain way or the fans are clamouring for a certain style of football.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that Hodgson felt pressurised into picking a host of young players in his squad for the Euros, and then tried to crowbar as many attackers into his starting line-up as he could. Inherently conservative in nature, he felt compelled to gamble in an attempt to keep his job, and the result was the tactical mess that saw England humiliated in France. Allardyce would have had a plan and stuck to it. It might not have worked, but at least it would have been possible to discern what he was trying to do and the players would all have felt comfortable in their positions.

Would he be capable of handling those players, with their rampant egos and damaging self-interest, and could he deal with the pressure of being England boss? Those are harder questions to answer because, like many of the candidates who could be up against him, he has never been in that position. He has never managed in the Champions League, or challenged for a major title.

However, he has more than two decades of managerial experience under his belt and is unlikely to be fazed by the challenge of knocking a Dele Alli or a Ross Barkley down a peg or two. Only last week, Defoe was raving about Allardyce’s man-management skills and identifying his ability to generate a strong team spirit as one of his biggest strengths.

Ultimately, that is what a lot of international management boils down to. Chris Coleman was managing in the Greek Second Division before he was offered the chance to take charge of Wales, but his personality and acumen enabled him to mould a team, both on and off the field, and he guided them to the semi-finals of the Euros.

Allardyce would organise England’s players, and get them believing again. He would create a bond that has been missing from the England set-up for quite a while now, and strip away much of the pampering that has caused such angst amongst fans. Having been desperate for the England job throughout his career, he would restore a sense of pride and emotion to the shirt.

That is why he gets my vote to be Hodgson’s successor. It’s just a shame he would have to leave Sunderland in the lurch to take over.