"I think you can accept it a lot more if you can come to terms with the fact that a good percentage of it was your fault - but that doesn't apply to me at Newcastle."
And Allardyce went on to claim that suggestions he was not up to the task of rebuilding a club famously starved of silverware in recent times were wide of the mark.
"The usual rubbish that goes when someone like me is sacked from a club like Newcastle is that that job was too big for me. That's just not true.
"If I'm honest the reverse is probably true. Newcastle probably wasn't big enough for me - it didn't live up to my ambitions in the short time that I was there. And because it didn't do that the club missed a chance to realise its own ambitions.
"The more I analyse it, the more I come to the conclusion that it was never about me or results.
"It was about things they wanted to put in place."
