REDEEMING FEATURES ?

I`ve tried over many years now, to adopt an attitude towards other people that looks for the good in them - slow to chide and quick to bless, trying always to be tolerant and understanding - and most times it is possible, even on some `testing` occasions, to discover that if one looks hard enough then maybe the odd redeeming feature will emerge. 

For example, my former obsession with `Sir` Alex Ferguson reached perhaps startling proportions, given his persona of belligerence, wilful disdain and assumption that he could ignore the rules which most other football managers were compelled to observe.  He has long gone, of course and is well in to a comfortable retirement and it may be me becoming a little more `mellow` or even desperately trying to find something in him with which I have no issues.   And, of course, his one redeeming feature was that he was a winner - he won things even if the managerial practices by which he became successful were questionable.

But, try as I might, I have found it impossible to detect one single redeeming feature in `Big` Sam Allardyce, currently plying his managerial trade at Crystal Palace, having stopped off at the shortest reign of any manager of the England national side.  I`m afraid he comes across as lacking in any form of `charm,` and like Ferguson he somehow displays that natural belligerence and wilful disdain that marks him out as one who might keep Palace in the Premier League, as he did with Sunderland, but who does little for the public persona of the club which employs him.

I`ll keep looking for some chink of light in the darkness but I suspect it will, for me, be yet another in a long line of failed attempts.   Just don`t get me started on Diane Abbott