Everton have not won at Anfield since 1999, but Allardyce, spurred on by memories of a previous meeting with Klopp, may be the man to change all thatTo put it into context, the last time Everton won at Anfield, We’re Going to Ibiza! by Vengaboys had spent a little over two weeks in the singles chart and Tony Blair a little over two years in Downing Street. In other words, it was a long time ago. Monday 27 September 1999 to be precise – a fiery encounter in which Kevin Campbell scored the only goal of the game and three players received a red card, one of whom was a 19-year-old midfielder called Steven Gerrard.Since then Everton have made 18...
Everton’s problems include the defence, having too many No10s and needing to find a goalscorer, so there is plenty of work to be done“We have been conceding goals for fun,” was David Unsworth’s assessment of his six weeks in charge and Sam Allardyce, based on his work at ailing clubs, should at least be able to introduce some rigidity to the backline and prevent Everton’s recent resemblance to a rugby team arranged on a diagonal. Whether he can do much to rescue Phil Jagielka’s career or put the suddenly vulnerable Ashley Williams back on track remains to be seen. The greatest worry is that Michael Keane appears to have been affected by the chaos around him and no longer looks...
The appointments of Allardyce, Pardew, Moyes et al have caught flak but foreign managers from Pep Guardiola to Marco Silva are shining and likewise Englishmen such as Sean Dyche and Eddie HoweIt is a little more than a month since Sam Allardyce appeared alongside Richard Keys and Andy Gray in their TV studio in Doha and moaned, without a hint of irony, about foreigners taking all the plum jobs. Well, more or less. What Allardyce claimed exactly was British managers are viewed as “second class” in their own country and have “nowhere to go” because the Premier League is a “foreign league in England”.Nonsense then and even more so in a week when Allardyce took charge at Everton and Alan...
Sam Allardyce said his days in club management were over when he left Crystal Palace, but the lure of a big job was always likely to be too much to resist Related: Everton v West Ham United: Premier League – live! ‘I have no ambitions to take another job,” read Sam Allardyce’s statement announcing his departure from Crystal Palace in May. “I simply want to be able to enjoy all the things you cannot really enjoy with the 24/7 demands of managing any football club, let alone one in the Premier League.” Continue reading...
There are those who talk about sport to avoid the weightier issues of the day, and then there are those who magically manage to combine the two without you even realising itThe nights draw in, November is upon us, and it is time to gather round for another episode in our occasional series What We Talk About When We Talk About Football.As anyone who has spent any time trying to avoid difficult conversations knows, football (and indeed all sport) is perhaps the greatest proxy subject ever created. It provides such helpful cover for a range of repressed upsets, inchoate resentments and subclinical neuroses that, as life goes on, many find it the subject which they feel safest and most comfortable...