Everton have made a fresh approach to Sam Allardyce with the intent of appointing him as manager. This is a bold move, but is it the right one?
Everton are a club with serious ambition. Their enormous transfer outlay in the summer, including £30m on Jordan Pickford and £45m on Gylfi Sigurdsson, shows that they have deep desires to get into the top 6.
This has spectacularly failed. Everton sit 16th in the Premier League table, having won just 3 games all season long, drawing 3 and losing 7. They’ve conceded a whopping 28 goals, more than anyone else in the league.
They have an excellent youth academy and have (briefly) tried to let the youngsters pull the club out of its tailspin, with David Unsworth at the helm That didn’t work, and Everton have lost 3 of the last 5 games across all competitions, conceding 16 goals in the process.
Yes, they have great ambition, but right now they have a greater need and that is survival. With the way they’re playing now, allowing things to go unchecked could see them sucked into relegation. Remember when Newcastle went down? It can happen to any club if they’re not careful!
Hence approaching Big Sam, a man whose middle name might as well be careful. Allardyce is so good at avoiding relegation because he tailors his teams specifically in order to stop each opponent and aim for the bare minimum: a clean sheet.
Allardyce’s philosophy revolves around not conceding and scoring the first goal, As he has reasoned in the past “only one goal to win [you a] game” so why not keep it simple and aim for literally that? If not conceding is your first priority, then at the least you’ll pick up a draw and 1 point. If things go your way, maybe more.
It’s the little things: Allardyce’s insistence on always playing forward passes, for instance, or using long-balls to bypass midfield where more talented sides would have their best players. And of course, set-pieces.
These make him an easy target for derision, but his methods are effective. He gets it done. Allardyce has managed 6 clubs for 488 games in the Premier League. None of them have been anything like elite sides and he’s never had a huge budget to work with.
Yet no team he has been manager of has been relegated. In fact of those 488 games he’s taken charge of, 165 (that’s 34%) have been wins.
Put another way, Allardyce has lost just 39% of his games, meaning that 61% of the time he manages to avoid defeat. And for a club like Everton, haemorrhaging defeats like a prize fighter does blood, that is priceless.
Everton should not forget their ambition, not at all. But what they need right now is realism, not idealism. Save the idealism for the summer. For now, just focus on surviving.
Missing out on Marco Silva may end up being a blessing in the short-term. For all the praise of how the Portuguese coach transformed Hull last season, he couldn’t stop them from being relegated.
Sam Allardyce can do that. He can keep Everton alive until the summer. He’ll organise their defence, minimise the risk that they’re exposing themselves to. His long-ball style will negate the issues with their lack of genuine wingers and creative central midfielders. Moreover, his emphasis on set-pieces will allow Gylfi Sigurdsson to make use of one of his greatest skills.
Sam Allardyce is the not the hero Everton deserve, but he’s the one they need right now.
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