Pardew found right words in awful situation
JAMES McCARTHY has suffered a horrendous injury after breaking his leg against West Brom and I wish him a speedy recovery. I also felt for Salomon Rondon, whose accidental challenge caused the injury. I thought Alan Pardew was superb in looking after his player in the aftermath of the incident. Rondon was understandably inconsolable and I know exactly how he was feeling. When I was 15 and in the youth team at Bournemouth, I remember making what seemed like an innocuous tackle in training which ended up breaking a team-mate’s leg. Even though it is not deliberate, you feel completely to blame for what has happened. It can be incredibly distressing to witness a fellow professional suffer such a graphic injury. On Saturday, Alan knew how distraught Rondon would be and immediately went over to comfort his player. It would have been easy to take him off the pitch but Alan was able to find the right words to reassure him. What he did was an admirable piece of management in an awful situation.
IT shouldn’t be like this. The booing, the anger and those growls of frustration: they all belonged to a different era.
Everton have spent £239million in the past 12 months. Modern football may be awash with money but that level of investment is still remarkable for a club whose previous ethos was to carefully balance the books and make sure every penny was spent wisely.
But as they laboured against West Brom, showing no wit and little zip, it was impossible to escape the feeling the vast expenditure has taken them backwards. Whatever honeymoon Sam Allardyce experienced eight weeks ago, it’s most certainly over.
Nothing feels right at present, from the uneasy relationship that supporters have with their manager to the lack of trust they feel in the team. There is a sense of short- termism and Marco Silva’s dismissal from Watford yesterday — he was Farhad Moshiri’s first choice to succeed Ronald Koeman — will only heighten speculation about Allardyce’s position in the summer.
‘We were very tentative in our actions, slow to respond to situations,’ Allardyce said. ‘We didn’t pass very well. When we did it was negative. It ended up being a real struggle. I’ve seen a huge drain of confidence in the players in the space of one and a half matches.’
He shouldn’t be surprised. It may seem contradictory to say about a team who have rescued 13 points from losing positions this season but the squad Allardyce has inherited, with the exception of a few individuals, is mentally brittle and horribly lacking balance.
How can £239m have been spent under the watch of Steve Walsh, the director of football, without a naturally left- sided player being recruited? Why were three No 10s signed in the summer, leaving Allardyce managing an increasingly problematic situation?
Allardyce went with Gylfi Sigurdsson, the club’s record signing, on Saturday, consigning Wayne Rooney to the bench. His reasoning was stark — there isn’t room in the team for two players who are not blessed with pace.
‘We need to be quicker,’ said Allardyce. ‘We have increased that with Theo Walcott and with Yannick Bolasie, when he gets back to fitness. Rooney and Gylfi are shrewd, talented players, but covering ground is not their strength.
‘So I have to make a big decision on who plays this one and who plays the next one. Gylfi has been trudging away outside on the left side, so I played him in the position he wants to play to see what he can do. But, in all honesty, the whole team didn’t play very well apart from the goalkeeper.’
It would be ridiculous to say Rooney is the player of old, but his introduction for the stricken James McCarthy made the difference: his vision and precision of delivery picked out Walcott, who teed up another substitute, Oumar Niasse, to cancel out Jay Rodriguez’s seventh-minute opener.
Rooney and Sigurdsson have suffered but they’ve only been played out of position because the right players have not been signed. It means the rest of the season will be a grind until safety is secured. ‘We have gone from top six to bottom four in terms of points collected in two runs of six games,’ said Allardyce, who conceded McCarthy will miss much of 2018 due to the horrific double leg fracture he sustained. ‘The last six games equate to relegation form. It is about me putting it right.’
Everton, ultimately, will get the points they need to stay away from that dreaded drop zone and the feeling persists West Brom will do the same. Alan Pardew needs wins but they will come if they perform with this determination and retain their key players this January.
They did not look like a team fearing relegation, with Salomon Rondon and Grzegorz Krychowiak particularly impressive. Pardew said: ‘We are on the edge but there