"He's Like A Daddy" Says Dioufy

Last updated : 03 March 2006 By Matt Bottom

The controversial African has put most of his current success down to the way Allardyce treats his players whereas, at Liverpool, he believes that very few players had respect for the staff.

"Sam is like a father for everybody," Diouf told the Daily Mail. "Sam is a good manager, a good man. He's like a daddy!

"I like this man because he's very, very intelligent, he's a class act."

However, Diouf was not so complimentary about his former Liverpool bosses.

"Phil Thompson was a joke, nobody really gave him any respect," he continued.

"There was a lot of swearing in his direction during training.

"As for Gerard Houllier, my problems with him started after the African Nations Cup and never really ended.

"They wanted me to come back from Tunis, where I played with Senegal in the quarter finals, but we had already planned that the whole team would travel together to Dakar.

"That situation created a problem but I couldn't do anything about it."