Mason Holgate, Jonjoe Kenny and Dominic Calvert-Lewin all signed new contracts at Everton this week.
The latter part of Sam Allardyce’s career has been built on him being a quick-fix manager.
Either side of his ill-fated stint as England boss, the 63-year-old has kept Sunderland and Crystal Palace in the Premier League in successive years without staying at either club for a second season.
His appointment at Everton was in reponse to relegation fears prompted by the club’s poor start to the campaign, but already the Toffees have moved 10 points clear of danger under his stewardship.
According to The Guardian, Allardyce signed a contract until June 2019 at Goodison Park, which gives Everton the opportunity to go for the big-name manager that they really want after a period of stability.
But that one of Allardyce’s first acts of business on Merseyside was to sign promising youngsters Jonjoe Kenny, Mason Holgate and Dominic Calvert-Lewin to new contracts suggests that he is thinking long term.
Each of the trio have started all of Allardyce’s three Premier League games in charge, and his comments upon tying them down to at least 2022 were those of a man who has a vision for Everton’s future.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that they will play big roles at Everton for a long time to come,” Allardyce is quoted by BBC Sport as saying. “Mason, Jonjoe and Dominic epitomise what we are trying to accomplish with young players here at Everton”.
Upon stepping down from Crystal Palace, Allardyce said that he had “no ambition to take another job in football”, as Sky Sports reports. But perhaps this was when he had been pigeonholed as a survival specialst.
His escape job at Everton is almost complete already, and now it seems as though Allardyce wants to take on the kind of long-term project he did at the start of his career. Perhaps, to take him to the end of his career.
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