It doesn’t need a survey to prove that Big Sam’s reign is now untenable
IF Everton need a survey to discover whether or not their support hold Sam Allardyce in high esteem, it must be the most out-of-touch People’s Club in football history.
How come no-one has noticed Farhad Moshiri and Bill Kenwright turning up to matches with those outsized headphones on?
That can be the explanation for them not hearing the discontent, particularly at away games, that has characterised this miserable Everton season.
There is nothing wrong with canvassing the opinion of supporters, but the question about how highly they rate Allardyce is surely rhetorical.
Big Sam is an accomplished operator, falsely maligned and can be hugely proud of his career.
At the time, I thought his appointment to the Everton job was an excellent one.
But sometimes a manager and fans simply do not prove a good fit.
The decisive factors in Roy Hodgson’s short reign across Stanley Park were poor results and poor performances, but there was never going to be a great dynamic between him and Liverpool supporters. It was not long into only his tenure when Hodgson was asked if there was anything quite like the Anfield atmosphere.
“Well, San Siro and Old Trafford are excellent,” he replied.
Roy might as well have picked up his pay-off there and then.
From the moment Allardyce appointed former Liverpool star Sammy Lee, you could have guessed there was going to be no love-in between the manager and Evertonians. Of course he wanted his trusted lieutenant, who has served him so well, but it just felt provocative.
Unfairly, Allardyce had to swim against the tide of opinion from day one, supporters pretty much divided into two groups. There
SAUL ALVAREZ has been banned from boxing for six months after failing two drugs tests.
The suspension is backdated and he will be free to fight again in mid-august.
If there is one sport were those who did not want him and those who could see no other option and considered him a necessary evil.
That is a tough starting point. And the soundtrack to Sam’s efforts has been one of him talking about realism and inflated expectations, of survival being an achievement.
A rule of management-speak should be not to talk realism and certainly do not bring other clubs into the equation.
He later rowed back, but Allardyce compared expectations at Everton to those at Newcastle and West Ham. He spoke, erroneously as it happened, about how Everton had secured safety after being below West Brom when he arrived.
He suggested it was some sort of achievement to stop Liverpool’s second-string attack scoring in
where the implications of doping are particularly dangerous, it is surely boxing. Yet paltry punishments such as the one handed to Alvarez (left) shows the sport takes it nowhere seriously enough. the recent Merseyside derby. Don’t mention the reality if the reality hurts.
The football has been occasionally painful and the talk has twisted the knife.
Everton’s dismal campaign is the product of a cocktail of mismanagement.
From the heavily-funded but bizarrely scattergun transfer policy to the sacking of a manager without having a succession plan.
While Allardyce bears the brunt of criticism, the blame can also be laid at the doors of director of football Steve Walsh and the board.
But Allardyce is the front man and as front men go, he has never hit the right notes for Everton fans.
That dreaded reality he likes to talk about is that Allardyce has achieved the main, basic task given to him when he was appointed.
Everton will play Premier League football next season.
But unless the season is wrapped up with a few cavalier, goal-filled performances – and bear in mind, Everton average only three shots on target per game – the relationship between Allardyce and the fans has become untenable.
It does not need a survey to tell Moshiri and Kenwright that.
AFTER a charge of racially abusing Brighton’s Gaetan Bong was found to be not proven by the FA, Jay Rodriguez said: “I am always a great believer that the truth always comes out and it has.”
No, it has not.
Bong insists he did not mishear Rodriguez and that he was, indeed, racially abused.
The case was not proven because, presumably, there were no third parties to corroborate Bong’s version of events. What is proven is that West Brom’s Rodriguez held his nose and, sneeringly, made some comments towards Bong.
Those comments were only puerile, if you believe Rodriguez – or puerile and racist, if you believe Bong. And, no matter what Rodriguez says, that is where we are at. The truth has not come out.
From the moment Allardyce appointed Sammy Lee you could see there was going to be no love-in between the manager and Evertonians