Big Sam Allardyce has a pop at time-wasting Arsene Wenger

The Arsene Wenger/Thierry Henry/Paul Jewell/Phil Dowd/Chris Kirkland/Mad Jens saga continues to run. Big Sam Allardyce (seen here with a couple of members of the Bolton coaching staff) has hit back at Wenger's time-wasting jibes by claiming Arsenal are just as good at playing the clock as any team.

Read Sam's provocative comments after the jumpy thing…

'Arsene has been very clever in choosing to make a little psychological profile of the time-wasting issue,' said Allardyce. 'It is as though the opposition always do it against them and they never do it… But it doesn't fool us and it doesn't fool most of the other managers either because we know they are just as good at doing it as anyone else when they are winning in the final minutes of matches.

'He criticised us heavily for time-wasting when we nearly beat Arsenal last season, so hopefully he will be moaning about us again tomorrow.'

The 'tomorrow' Sam refers to is now today [Wednesday 14th Feb], the date of Arsenal's FA Cup replay against Bolton at the Reebok Stadium. Nothing like stirring the pot, is there Sam?

Essentially, Sam is right, in as much as every professional team time wastes these days, so it's pointless to pick out one team as more guilty than any other. Bolton do it, Arsenal do it, Chelsea do it, Wigan do it, Man Yoo do it etc etc.

And until refs really clamp down on time-wasting (red cards?), all teams will continue to do it.