Everton finishing in eighth place is a damning indictment of the ‘best of the rest’.
Looking at the league table alone, Sam Allardyce clearly feels he has a case to keep his job at Everton.
He took over with the club in free fall, and re-directed them to secure a eighth placed finish.
Yet fans are not happy and want a replacement quickly appointed for the former England boss, having quickly grown tired of the dull football on display.
Everton won just 13 games out of a possible 38, and it is a damning indictment of the 12 teams who finished below them that they were able to secure a top eight finish.
Dour football at Goodison has often been mixed with heavy defeats, with the Toffees ripped apart by Tottenham, Manchester City and Arsenal.
Allardyce had no answer.
And while there is no shame in Everton getting whacked by better teams, it showed Allardyce is not the solution to helping them crack the group of top teams, which is what they aspire to.
This season Everton’s inconsistency has merited low reward, and if they had finished in 14th place it would have been no surprise.
Instead it is an embarrassment to the rest of the teams in the division that the standard has been so poor that Everton finished as high as eighth.
Burnley deserve credit for their seventh placed finish, but below that it is a real mix of teams with sub-standard campaigns.
Allardyce can be pleased at the outcome, but he has had help from the ineptitude and low standard of rival Premier League teams this season.
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