He gets appointed to those roles because it's known that Allardyce will succeed in the parameters of the club in question. Staying up isn't "narrowly avoiding complete failure" for those teams, it's a huge achievement for a club in serious trouble. His Bolton days are long behind him, now he's a hired gun to keep someone up, and he delivers that. With West Ham did he leave them in far better shape than when he arrived? Absolutely he did. Did he do what Everton wanted him to do last year? Yes he did.
Not every manager is there to emulate Guardiola, sometimes sights are set a lot lower than that. You hear often enough people say what would Guardiola do with Bolton, well this is the same thing the other way around - and precisely why each is appointed to the kind of clubs they are.
Neil Warnock isn't even close to doing what Allardyce does, but he's an interesting example to pick because his speciality is getting teams promoted. He does it superbly. Allardyce stabilises clubs and keeps them in the Premier League. It's nothing to sneer at, it's a skill. All the times we watched City tumble down the table and knowing exactly what was to come we'd have given our eye teeth to have someone like him come in, sort out the basics and stay up.
Allardyce buys clubs time. West Ham are a great case in point; in the period he was there he brought them up and established them in the top division while moving ground. That's pretty impressive. It doesn't mean that he's the answer to everything, but he at least put them in a position where they could look to develop further under someone else.
