In an exclusive interview with The Daily Mail, former Everton manager Sam Allardyce has revealed that he never expected the club to target and then appoint him in November 2017.
What did he say?
Well, the ex-England boss was talking about his coaching career and of course one of his talking points was his short spell at Everton until the end of the 2017/18 season.
The now 65-year-old had come in following the sacking of Ronald Koeman and David Unsworth’s relatively unconvincing caretaker spell, leading the Merseyside outfit to an eighth-placed finish in the Premier League having been relegation candidates when the Dutchman was at the helm.
Speaking about his appointment in The Daily Mail, Allardyce said: “I thought that would be it, but Everton turned up and that’s why I came back. I never expected Everton to come for me. I thought that was my opportunity. I thought it was my first chance in a long time to try to build a club.
“They had the finances and Farhad Moshiri is very ambitious and wants to compete in Europe. Then it was whipped away very quickly. It wasn’t to be and that’s a shame.”
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The issues
The problem for Allardyce was even though he had relative success in terms of leading Everton to eighth come the end of the campaign, the style of football wasn’t too pleasing on the eye for what can be a demanding Goodison Park faithful.
Add to that the fact they won just six and lost eight of their final 20 league games in 2017/18, and it isn’t difficult to see why he was replaced.
That said and looking at it from his point of view, he wasn’t given a summer transfer window to build his own team, which perhaps could have made a difference.
Did he really play for us?! No Everton fan has managed to name all of these obscure Toffees players….
Marco Silva came in to replace him in the summer of 2018, and things looked better for a while before things tailed off and he was sacked and succeeded by Carlo Ancelotti in December 2019.
Majority shareholder Moshiri in particular will be hoping that this latest decision pays off for a club that under-achieves far too often.
In other Everton news, the Carlo Ancelotti revolution would be well underway if the Italian signs 32-year-old and 33-year-old aces…