Extremely embarrassing for Everton supporters.
Bus conductor and occasional football manager Big Sam Allardyce has just about topped his own considerably hefty back-catalogue of nonsense after today’s comments, which were about last week’s 0-0 draw against Liverpool in the Merseyside derby.
Liverpool fielded a significantly weakened team for the game as they were midway through dumping Manchester City out of the Champions League, with several squad players starting. Human supernova Mo Salah was completely rested as he had a knock and the likes of Oxlade-Chamerlain and Roberto Firmino only featuring for the last 20 minutes. Ragnar Klavan played at left-back. That’s all you need to know, really.
Mr. Allardyce can be forgiven for being pleased with the result, if only because his current Everton team are the most joyless interpretation of the beautiful game since Tony Pulis and his ‘as many centre-backs as possible’ West Brom side that just outright refused to win matches.
Whilst Liverpool are actually quite good and do things like score goals. You know. Stuff that usually leads to some Ws rather than L after L after L after X.
Anyway, this is what he said:
Allardyce; "We did a job on Liverpool by nullifying that outstanding attack even though they changed the team around."
— paul joyce (@_pauljoyce) April 13, 2018
That outstanding attack, by the way, was Danny Ings and Dominic Solanke.
Danny Ings.
And Dominic Solanke.
Danny Ings.
And Dominic Solanke.
Danny Ings.
And you get the idea.
They are reasonable players, don’t get me wrong, but calling them an “outstanding attack” is like describing Michael Keane, Ashley Williams and Phil Jagielka as world-beaters. It’s like saying that if you squint your eyes a bit it actually looks a bit like prime Nesta, Madlini and Stam stomping about and falling over and missing tackles out there on the Goodison Park turf.
Ings and Solanke have 2 Premier League goals for Liverpool between them; Salah scored twice as many goals as that in one game against Watford.
Maybe that explains Big Sam’s angle here, he needs to build the confidence of the three sacks of potatoes he has masquerading as Premier League centre-halves. Describing Everton’s historic rivals’ two backup strikers as outstanding, when they wouldn’t be starting for Burnley, is not the way to go about it.
Just give them an overly firm pat on the back, chew some gum loudly, and play a back five exclusively of centre-halves with an offside trap on the edge of your own area. That’s the way to do it. That’s the Pulis way.
