'He Will Not Be Coming Back' - Sam Allardyce Reflects on Selling Harambee Stars Coach Benni McCarthy to West Ham

Former West Ham United manager Sam Allardyce has shed light on his decisions to sell Scott Parker and Benni McCarthy to the club years before he took the helm at Upton Park.

Sam Allardyce, who managed the Hammers for four years, guided them back to the Premier League in his first season and later secured a top-10 finish.

However, his history with West Ham extends further back, having sanctioned the sales of two notable players to the East London club while managing Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers.

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Speaking on the ‘No Tippy Tappy Football’ podcast, Sam Allardyce recalled the circumstances surrounding the departures of Parker and Benni McCarthy, two players who would go on to have vastly different careers in claret and blue.

Three years later, in 2010, Allardyce was managing Blackburn Rovers when he approved Benni McCarthy's £3.5 million move to West Ham.

Unlike the Scott Parker situation, Sam Allardyce seemed more willing to let the South African striker go. He described how the situation escalated quickly.

"His agent rang up the (Blackburn) chairman and said, ‘He’s out of the country and he won’t be coming back’," Allardyce recalled.

Faced with a player refusing to return, Allardyce made a pragmatic decision. "So, I said, ‘The best thing to do is to sell if we have the right price. I think we can cope without him'.

"We’re on a difficult run at Blackburn to try and stay up, but yeah, we can cope with the centre-forwards we’ve got because we can play Chris Samba up front in the end, anyway."

Benni McCarthy's time at West Ham was a stark contrast to Parker's. The striker, who remains Blackburn's third-highest Premier League goalscorer, failed to find the net in 14 appearances for the Hammers and his contract was eventually terminated.

In July 2007, just days after Allardyce was appointed Newcastle manager, Scott Parker secured a £7 million transfer to West Ham. Allardyce explained that the midfielder was determined to leave St James' Park.

"Scott did it when I was at Newcastle," Allardyce stated. "It was a straightforward 'I need to leave and you need to get rid of me as quickly as you possibly can' situation. I had only been in the job, I don’t know, two days?"

Allardyce cited two main reasons for Parker's desire to move. "I understood the first reason. He felt the Newcastle fans didn’t like him," he explained. "And the Newcastle fans, if they don’t like what they see, they show their disapproval."

The second factor was West Ham's pre-existing interest. While Allardyce admitted he would have preferred to keep the midfielder, the transfer fee ultimately proved beneficial for his team-building plans.

"Because we got the right money, I think it benefited me because there wasn’t as much money as I expected to build the team," he added. "I would have preferred to have kept Scott Parker, don’t get me wrong."

Scott Parker went on to enjoy the most successful spell of his career at Upton Park, culminating in him being named the Football Writers' Association Player of the Year in 2011, despite the club's relegation that season, the event that led to Allardyce's appointment.