Sam Allardyce has admitted he has “no sympathy” for Adam Johnson, the former Sunderland player, who is facing a prison sentence after being found guilty of sexually touching a 15-year-old girl.
Allardyce, the Sunderland manager, expressed his sense of betrayal and horror after Johnson changed his plea to guilty during his trial at Bradford Crown Court after previously claiming his innocence of grooming and kissing the young female fan.
Johnson, who has 12 caps for England, continued to represent the Barclays Premier League club while he awaited trial, playing 28 games in all competitions since his original arrest in March last year, but Allardyce, who was appointed in October, confirmed that he would not have selected the 28-year-old if he had been aware of the facts.
“I’m hugely disappointed in Adam Johnson and what has happened,” he said. “But my sympathies don’t lie with him, they lie with the victim and the family. As far as I know, Adam was pleading not guilty all the way through from the day I arrived. Obviously this incident had happened well before I got here.
“The information to me was that he was pleading not guilty to all charges and that was why we continued to let him train and play for us. We were all at the football club stunned and shocked the day before the trial started when we heard a guilty plea come out. I was sat at home when it came on the news and I was just gobsmacked because as far as we were concerned, it was going to be not guilty on all charges.
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“He’s gone through the process, and the process has proven that he’s guilty. Now he has to serve his sentence, and there’s not a lot of sympathy here for Adam Johnson. There’s no doubt about that.”
Allardyce, whose team are locked in a relegation battle, has spoken about the matter with the remainder of Sunderland’s players and warned them to be legally cautious in any discussion of it.
“I think everybody is well aware of the position it has left the club and his team-mates in,” he said. “I think they’re all as disappointed as we are as a football club and they’re all going to have to make sure they put that behind them.
“That has been addressed very briefly from me and obviously for no one to get involved in anybody asking any questions on it. You need to be very factual on this and we wouldn’t want any of the players to say the wrong thing because it could be jumped on by just saying the wrong sentence, or the wrong word here or there. I’ve told them to be very careful about saying anything to anybody.”