Allardyce believes ‘false lies’ cost him the Everton job

Joe Williams

Sam Allardyce believes his reputation has been tarnished by “false lies” that claim “he doesn’t play the right way”.

After a poor start to the 2017/18 season under Ronald Koeman, the Toffees replaced the Dutchman in November 2017 with Allardyce – who led the club from relegation trouble to an eighth-placed finish.

And the former England boss thinks the decision by Everton to sack him was “ludicrous” and that he could have made progress if the board had stuck with him.

Speaking to talkSPORT, Allardyce said: “Everybody walks around talking about Sam Allardyce’s style is not good enough, he doesn’t play the right way and so on and so forth and it is a massive problem for me. People believe it. You believe the false lies, the false implications. Football does that – it believes that lie sometimes.

“It is built up by fellow managers, journos who follow on with it and you are never going to get rid of it. The type of football I played at Everton, the fans said it wasn’t good enough and I would say the same – I knew it wasn’t good enough for Everton – but I knew I had to get them in the position where they were safe.

“Then let me build the team, let me spend the next £80m, £100 million on the players that will make Everton much much more fluid, much more creative and go forward and score more goals and hopefully finish better than eighth.

“They talk about my style of football, well Ronald [Koeman] went and they said he played the right style of football. Roberto [Martinez] went, everybody said he played the right style of football, and I went because I didn’t play the right style of football.

“It is about trying to entertain and win, that is the ultimate, but you have to keep winning first to change the things that need to change.

“If I got sacked because my results weren’t good enough at Everton, I accept it but getting sacked when they finish eighth, it is ridiculous. In fact it is ludicrous.”

They are a bastard those “false lies…”