F365 Says: Everton just wanna have some fun

We are in phase one of Sam Allardyce’s employment strategy. The last time Big Sam was in a club job at the start of a season was 2014, his final campaign at West Ham. The first few weeks of the season are spent running a media marathon, appearing on a variety of outlets to re-establish his relevance after the summer break. A midweek guest slot on Channel 5 chat show The Wright Stuff this week, defending his behaviour as England manager, strayed dangerously close to Partridgean.

This is a calculated decision. Allardyce offers withering takes on other people’s work, sharply inhaling breath in the style of an untrustworthy plumber pricing up work. “Ooh, I can’t be having his defensive organisation” he says. “He’s recruited badly, I fear for them,” is added, with a shake of the head. “The way he sets the team up is all wrong; does he even know the league?”.

This is Allardyce playing the role of football management grim reaper, positioning himself on the shoulders of Premier League club owners and whispering warnings into their ears. “Oh, not impressed are you? Well, I do know a guy, but it’ll cost you.”

Just six days into the new season, Allardyce has lambasted Manuel Pellegrini for the way West Ham played at Anfield, told Unai Emery that he needs to change the way Arsenal play out from the back and claimed that he would have been criticised if England had played for him like they did under Gareth Southgate at the World Cup. talkSPORT is the natural home of this self-pity and self-promotion double-teaming, but Allardyce gets around.

Unsurprisingly, many of Big Sam’s words have been focused on previous employers Everton, who chose to part company with him and appoint Marco Silva in his stead. In the last week alone, Allardyce has claimed that most Everton fans didn’t want him out (they did), warned the club that they needed to buy a left-back to replace Leighton Baines (they already had) and said he was instrumental in signing Cenk Tosun from Olympiakos (it was Besiktas). But the most misplaced words of all came on the subject of Everton supporters themselves.

“What I would say to be careful about though is, if you say you are buying potential, Everton fans do not want potential,” Allardyce said. “They want the absolute first-class player now to play now and to beat and try and rival their big rivals down the road and try and get into Europe. If you’re buying Richarlison now as a future player, that’s not what Everton fans want to see at the moment. They want to see them fighting with the best and up there with the top four.”

Putting words into the mouths of an entire fanbase is dangerous, but accusing them of shared entitlement is normally plain wrong. Of course some Everton supporters want to be challenging for the top four and some will have unreasonable expectations, but this comes from a position of hope or desperation rather than privilege.

Allardyce also overlooks his own role in this process. During his six-month tenure at Goodison, he painted Everton beige. The defensive organisation and results did improve – on that there is no argument – but they became a club with no discernible identity. Matches were played to not lose rather than to win. Under Allardyce, football’s Ronseal, your club will never drown. But it might drift far out to sea.

One statistic from the opening weekend, tweeted by Sky Sports statistician Matt Cheetham, encapsulates the Allardyce problem. Everton had more shots on target in the 50 minutes they played against Wolves with 10 men than they managed in 40% of the full games played under Allardyce.

Silva is not necessarily the answer. The Portuguese has left both of his previous two Premier League assignments after fewer than 30 games in charge and without the lingering smell of sweet success. His record in continental Europe is prodigious and there is clearly a great deal of coaching aptitude, but he must answer questions on his defensive organisation and loyalty to a project.

But this is at least an attempt to try something new, to swim rather than tread water. With Marcel Brands installed as director of football having excelled at PSV Eindhoven and with a manager the club targeted for some time finally in place, Everton are looking forward again. Farhad Moshiri’s takeover and surge of investment has not yet had the desired effect, but get enough ducks in a row and it becomes a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’.

Broadly speaking, Everton are an enviable club in an unenviable position. They have ambitions of stardom but are still viewed as a well-meaning family side, a rose-tinted and romantic reminder of the past despite the new furniture. If the move to a new home threatens that reputation, this is about more than bricks and mortar. Everton is a friendly place; everyone you speak to says the same.

But this club also has a difficult balance to strike. They are expected to press themselves as close as possible to the glass ceiling, but that only brings into focus what could be, a look-but-don’t-touch tease. Everton’s last reported turnover was £171m, but Chelsea and Arsenal’s – who finished fifth and sixth – were £368m and £427m respectively and both spent double the amount of Everton on player wages. Even hanging onto the coattails of those clubs would constitute considerable overachievement.

So this is not about league position, but experience. The reason that Allardyce was so unpopular was not because the results were awful or because supporters were entirely ungrateful for his work, but because accepting him was to accept a predictability of mediocre experience. With Allardyce, what you see is not just what you get, but what you will always get.

Silva does not bring with him a skeleton key to the top-six safe, but he does provide a refreshing air of mystery and intrigue. Everton have broken their transfer record to sign a 21-year-old Brazilian and brought his countryman in on a free transfer. They have recruited three players from Barcelona and another from Chelsea. They have signed six first-team players and none is older than 25. For all Allardyce’s gripes, even he cannot pretend with a straight face that he would have done the same or even similar.

Everton supporters are not entitled. They do not have expectations of Champions League grandeur. But they do yearn to like their club, like its team, and have Saturday 3pm as the highlight of their week again. If you aren’t going to win things, you might as well have fun along the way. That’s not too much for any football lover to ask.

Daniel Storey