Paul Parker: Big Sam Allardyce has been stupid, naive and ignorant. But he doesn't deserve the sack.

Big Sam has been stupid. Naïve. Ignorant, even.

But nothing that he said means he should be fired as England manager.

Apart from anything else, once you get behind the big headlines there's a lot what he said that's absolutely spot on.

Take the stuff about the national stadium. It was ludicrous to rebuild Wembley on the same site. If they'd built a new national stadium in the middle of the country with decent transport links, it would have been packed out for every single international match.

Instead they stuck it in Brent, a place that's a nightmare to get to even if you live in the London area, and which calls for unbelievable dedication to reach if you live elsewhere in England. I know a lot of people who go out of their way to avoid going to Wembley if they can help it. And for their trouble the FA landed themselves with a £900 million bill, a stadium they struggle to fill, and an annual interest bill that means crippling payments that suck up most of their revenue.

As for the stuff about Roy Hodgson and Gary Neville? Well, show me someone who doesn't have negative thoughts about that pair. Everyone down the Dog & Duck could talk for 20 minutes about how bad that managerial duo was for England at Euro 2016. It'll be embarrassing for Sam next time he sees both of them, but that'll be as far as it goes.

When he started getting into the third-party ownership stuff though… ouch. That's the sort of topic you normally try to avoid even when among friends, so I don't know what possessed him to start chatting to a bunch of strangers about it. One day in the future, if he wants to line his pockets by talking to people about getting around those rules, discussing where the boundaries are and so on, that's fine.

But not while he's England manager. He'll have made a lot of people very uncomfortable with what he did.

The irony is that the truth about third party ownership is very rarely discussed in any sensible manner. There are a lot of parts of the world – especially in South America – where it actually has a hugely beneficial effect. Players need to know they'll get their wages, clubs need to know they can count on their players, and communities need to know that the clubs on which they often depend can keep the lights on. Third party ownership effectively allows clubs to get players with minimal financial risk. The down-side is they don't reap the benefit further down the line – but they'd rather that than not get those players at all.

Nor is there a problem with Sam getting paid for work outside his England job. What he said and who he said it to looks very bad, but in principle I really don't see anything wrong at all with Allardyce taking the money for speaking engagements either. He has plenty of down-time between internationals when he can't be watching football, so why shouldn't he enjoy the rewards of being at the top of the game? That's really no different to players getting boot contracts or endorsing everything from chocolate bars to underpants. I've got no problem with that at all.

But Allardyce did appear to come perilously close to crossing the line, however, seemingly discussing agents sharing cuts of transfer fees and wages. As Big Sam said, it goes on all the time, mostly without anyone ever hearing about it. And it'll make the FA very uncomfortable for him to be talking about it.

Is it grounds to sack him, though? I just don't think so. The FA has been through this sort of thing before – they knew what they were doing with the disgraceful way they treated Terry Venables over his court cases, and that probably made sure he walked away after Euro '96. Then they fired Glenn Hoddle a few years later for his infamous comments. Both times the actual England team looked like it had genuine promise, which then fell apart.

They seemed to learn from that, though, sticking with Sven-Goran Eriksson even though he was the most embarrassing of the lot. He got away with absolute murder, things that no other FA would have put up with. Then there was Fabio Capello who had question marks over him, but got handed a big new contract. If they treat an Englishman differently to how they treated those two, that will be very bad.

Ultimately, though, there's a bigger issue: if you did sack Allardyce, who would you get to replace him? It's a funny job, because qualifying for the World Cup should be easy – realistically, it is for all the big nations now.

Anyone could get them through the qualifiers - the only question is how well the team then does at the tournament, and there just isn't anyone out there who is in the frame and who you could credibly say would do a better job than Sam.

On top of that, can the FA even afford to get rid of him? He'd need a pay-off of millions, and whichever club they poach his successor from – whether it's Bournemouth, Crystal Palace or whoever – will be rubbing their hands, since they know that they'll be able to ask for millions in compensation. And would the manager who comes in to takes his place accept less than the £3m-a-year he's on? Of course not.

Firing Allardyce would cost millions and get England nowhere. But then again, when have you ever known the FA to miss an opportunity to cut off its nose to spite its face?

Hopefully, they'll see sense because in Sam Allardyce they've got a man who is a real battler, and who deserves a chance to say sorry, take his punishment, and get another chance.

He's a man who fought his way through a playing career in the lower leagues, and didn't come out a wealthy man like players today would. He then went into coaching – again, not in glamorous jobs – and after decades of hard graft got himself into a position where he is at the top of his profession as England manager. So let's give him a chance, give him a rap on the knuckles and let him have a proper go at doing that job.

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