Everton Match Zone

Allardyce Looks For The Positives – Fans Running Out Of Patience

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Everton manager Sam Allardyce has looked for the positives and praised the sides ‘resilience and character’ as we took a point from Swansea City at the weekend.

Heading to the Liberty Stadium for the game with Everton’s season largely fizzling out, we travelled back with a 1-1 draw and Swansea actually scored both goals on the day with Allardyce’s side only registering three efforts on target.

The main difference between this one and the last one was the gaffer picked out Wayne Rooney for praise instead of berating him for his behaviour when he was substituted – other than that, well maybe that’s a personal judgement?

The telling stat from the game is in the fact that following December’s two clean sheets, we have now conceded in each of the last seven away matches in the Premier League and our away form continues to cost us.

Speaking to the Official Site as he met with the media following the game, the manager praised the return of a ‘big battling point’ but did talk about the chances we had to take the win.

“It’s a big battling point for us. We faced opponents who are the in-form team at home. They’ve beaten Arsenal, Liverpool, Burnley and West Ham in their past four home league games. We always knew this was going to be a difficult game and it was.”

Adding.

“One of the important things was the resilience of our team which was very good. Getting the first goal was very important as well just before half-time. Then there’s the backs-against-the-wall period for us in the second half and they managed to score in the end. But then we recovered from that where some of our chances came, particularly Seamus Coleman, who could have won it for us. But I’m pleased with the point.”

Allardyce did concede that it was far from a glowing performance, even in those periods where we were more on top in the game, but he did speak of his pleasure at seeing the reaction from the team to Swansea scoring as Seamus Coleman rattled the woodwork after Jordan Ayew had brought them level.

STATS: SWANSEA V EVERTON.

With no prospect of relegation, a good number believe that Allardyce has achieved the remit of the job he was handed following the departure of Ronald Koeman, but discontent with our style of play, our safety first basis and results themselves aren’t warming him to the crowd and the game saw possibly more of the vocal displeasure that has now become usual.

That spins off into social media these days and Evertonians aren’t happy.

Whether the numbers are enough to force the club into acting at the end of the season, or even prior to the final game as some fans want, remains to be seen. But it hardly takes an educated guess to imagine the atmosphere getting worse unless Big Sam is prepared to let the shackles off a little more and revert to the style of play that was actually pleasing on the eye all those year’s ago at Bolton Wanderers.

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