On Oct. 27, Sam Allardyce sat down in a television studio in Doha, Qatar. It was two days after Everton had fired Ronald Koeman as its manager, and four since Leicester City had appointed Claude Puel, a Frenchman, to the same post.

Allardyce was in the Gulf to appear on the beIN Sports show hosted by Richard Keys and Andy Gray, the veteran British broadcasting duo drifting into a reluctant obsolescence after being ostracized for a workplace harassment scandal. He was there, in part, to discuss what Keys described as the “glass ceiling” faced by English managers.

This is, of course, Allardyce’s specialist subject. He has long championed the idea that British coaches are too readily overlooked by Premier League clubs in thrall to exotic imports. In 2010, he declared that he was better “suited” to managing Real Madrid or Manchester United than his then employers, Blackburn Rovers. Two years later, he decreed that he would have been a Champions League coach if only he had a more glamorous surname.

In Keys and Gray, Allardyce knew he had a sympathetic audience. Last December, he had appeared on the same show to claim that the Premier League’s top six were appointing “branded” foreign coaches because they held more global appeal. A couple of days before his October appearance, Keys had tweeted that Leicester’s appointment of Puel sounded a death knell for British coaching.