Former Everton manager Sam Allardyce continued his attempts to largely rewrite history from his time at the club this weekend.
Making an appearance on Sky Sports Goals on Sunday Allardyce admitted he did hold some bitterness about his dismissal from the club and he felt that ‘expectation’ levels at the club, as well as a false past reputation for being a long-ball merchant ultimately counted against him.
Allardyce hung true to the fact that our eighth-place finish in his season in charge was a success, especially as the squad wasn’t his following his appointment as Ronald Koeman’s successor and he completely disputed that the squad style was down to his instruction, he claimed it was down to the talents of the squad he inherited.
Which seems a very strange way of trying to defend himself because if it was down to the players and not him, then why is he trying to take credit for where we finished in the Premier League table that year?
“The expectation for Everton is so great now, with Liverpool down the road, and the money that’s been injected, the promises of the new stadium and the amount of money that’s been spent. The responsibility always falls, at the end of the day, with the manager. As you go in, as you look at the team, they’re not your players. If I have little bit of bitterness it’s about the fact that I worked with players that weren’t mine, that were somebody else’s. I thought that stabilising that club and finishing in eighth spot was a pretty good season. In terms of style of football, the style we played was to the capabilities of the player that were out there on the field. It wasn’t me saying ‘you’ve go to play this way’, but, of course that comes with my past reputation which is a falsehood – that’s actually a lie. I think we got them in a very good position to build and move forward.”
Allardyce does still have some supporters within the fanbase who felt he was treated harshly, but trying to deny he is defence minded and more of a long ball manager is too far of a stretch. Yes Bolton Wanderers played some decent football all those years ago, but Allardyce’s style of management and preferred style of play is obvious to anybody who watches the game.
He’s good at what he does in many ways, but he knows the game and he plays it, so quite why he’s only really begun trying to rewrite his history and playing the victim on the back of his spell at Goodison Park – well, some might think he’s a touch bitter because he knows we were his last shot at the big time.