DAVID Moyes might not have fancied the challenge of keeping Sunderland up – but my old mate Big Sam can’t wait to get stuck in!

I understand that former Manchester United boss Moyes turned down the chance to manage the Black Cats preferring to concentrate on his current job at Real Sociedad.

I do think Moyesy has got some unfinished business in the Premier League but perhaps that’s a story for another day.

Right now it’s Sam’s time to shine and you just know that he is the right character to go in at the Stadium of Light, kick some backsides, and keep the club up.

When I first heard he was in for it I thought ‘oh no Sam, what are you thinking?’

He’d been out of work for a couple of months, spent some quality time with the family, and done a bit of media work here in the UK and over in Doha. Sounds like the perfect life to me.

Did he really need to get his hands dirty again and put himself under all that strain? Sunderland is the kind of club where fans demand to win every game. There’s no give with the Mackems but if you can get them onside, it’s a terrific club to be associated with.

Did he really need to go through all that again? The answer is, of course he did. Sam doesn’t care whether his blood pressure goes through the roof or people call him a few names – he’ll get in there and sort the club out because at the moment it looks like it’s in a mess.

Come January he will be very busy in the transfer market, you can guarantee that. And I’d imagine as soon as Sam got a sniff of the job at Sunderland a certain Kevin Nolan got a call. Nobby would be the perfect man to get that dressing room going again and I can see him heading to the North East very soon in some capacity.

Sam has got a book coming out in the next couple of weeks and we’re all looking forward to seeing what he has got to say. I’ll certainly be buying a copy.

You just know he’ll make a success of the job and keep Sunderland up, though, because regardless of what people think about him, he knows how to make clubs win football games. He proved it at Bolton Wanderers; he proved it at West Ham, Newcastle, and Blackburn – and anywhere else you can mention.

Sam doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone but I’d love to see him get some success at Sunderland and keep the club up, just so he can prove the doubters wrong again.

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THE idea of holding a post-match kangaroo court with referees is ridiculous but that’s what’s happening in Australia’s A League right now.

Straight after the final whistle referees are being put in front of the microphones and cameras to explain decisions in a new trial, which does not sit very well with me at all.

I’m all for more transparency. I’ve got myself in trouble a couple of times speaking with people to explain why I did what I did on the field of play. But straight after the game is wrong.

Just as managers struggle sometimes to keep their emotions in check after the final whistle, it’s important to step away and make sure you are in possession of all the facts before speaking with the media.

You can make a decision that you believe is 100 per cent right but then see it on a replay a few hours later and realise you were wrong.

These days in the Premier League you have delegates whose job is to make sure everything runs smoothly on the day, act as a go-between with referees and managers etc. They are usually someone who has been involved in football, either as a player or manager, or in a technical role. Wouldn’t it be a good idea if they were to sit down with a referee and look through some of their key match decisions, get a sense of why certain choices were made, and then sit down in a press conference 45-60 minutes after the final whistle?

You would get an explanation of why decisions were made, whether the referee felt he was right or wrong, but it would not feel like a witch hunt.

People should scrutinise what referees do on the pitch but it’s important to do so in a balanced way with all the facts at hand. Dragging someone in front of the cameras before they’ve had chance to digest the whole game is not a good idea.

We have the technology available to make those key match decisions available immediately after a game and so why not give the match delegate a chance to act as a liaison with the press too?

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FOOTBALL needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and wouldn’t you know it’s the Americans who seem to be leading the way?

We’ve all seen what a mess FIFA have made of things recently. I’m all for being innocent until being proven guilty but it’s turning into a soap opera; maybe The Only Way is Ethics?

It was the Americans who blew the lid off the world governing body's alleged wrong-doings and I hope it will pave the way for a more ethical governing body in the future.

My friend Pete Walton, who is over in the US, is also leading the way with the use of video technology too. MLS are trialling the use of video replays to aid officials in non-competitive games, continuing what happened in the Netherlands earlier this year.

Our referees’ body, the PGMOL, visited Holland to see how that trial went on and after initially seeming in favour have since backed off.

Perhaps if the American league can show everyone that it can work, FIFA and all the other people in the higher echelons can finally agree that it is the way forward because, let me tell you, the referees want it to happen as quickly as possible.

Football is more a business than a sport. We are seeing too many wrong decisions which can cost millions and millions of pounds. How much longer can we bury our heads in the past?

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SECOND assistant referees – the ones who patrol the goal-lines in European games – are being asked to use hand signals to aid referees on penalty decisions and to decide whether the ball has crossed the line.

In the past assistants were restricted to verbal communication but UEFA have altered the rules slightly to allow them an extra say in decisions around the penalty area.

I think it’s high time they were made more culpable. Too often it is the referee who is hung out to dry when a decision goes wrong – as we saw with Mark Clattenburg a few weeks ago in the Tottenham v Manchester City game.

This weekend he’s taking charge of Crystal Palace v West Ham when much bigger games are going on in the Premier League.

There’s a saying among officials that “one of the four should have seen it” and it’s important that the officials are seen as a team. You all take responsibility for what is going on and there should be as much communication as possible.

In Europe if an assistant makes an error then the powers that be clamp down quickly but here in England the blame too often falls on the referee. It’s about time that responsibility was equally shared.