I would have posted this in the Everton thread (which is locked) but it actually works quite well here as a bump for the continuing Sam Allardyce chronicles.
The next time Allardyce wonders why the true giants of English and, indeed, world club football have never recognised his greatness or beat a path to his door (and at 63, they're unlikely to at this point), he need only look at the tape of Sunday's game for his answer. 21% possession. 3 shots, 1 of them from the penalty spot. "The object of the exercise was to frustrate the opposition," he said afterwards. "Clear-cut chances for Liverpool were very few and far between for such a talented team."
Fair enough. However, this is a man who once stated the following: "I'm not suited to Bolton or Blackburn, I would be more suited to Internazionale or Real Madrid. It wouldn't be a problem to me to go and manage those clubs because I would win the Double or the league every time. Give me Manchester United or Chelsea and I would do the same, it wouldn't be a problem. It's not where I'm suited to, it's just where I've been for most of the time. It's not a problem to take me into the higher reaches of the Champions League or Premier League and would make my job a lot easier in winning it."
Some would no doubt argue that his tongue was planted firmly in his cheek when he said that, but I honestly don't think so. As recently as a few weeks ago he was lamenting the plight of British coaches, claiming that "I think you are almost deemed as second class because it is your country. It is a real shame that we are highly-educated, highly-talented coaches now with nowhere to go. The Premier League is the foreign league in England now." Yet in recent months we've seen Alan Pardew getting the West Brom job, David Moyes arriving at West Ham, Roy Hodgson at Crystal Palace. And here's Allardyce with the Everton job.
You have to read between the lines to see what he really means. It goes back to this idea of "where I'm suited to" and is very reminiscent of Ryan Giggs' attitude earlier in the year where he echoed Allardyce's sentiments about foreign coaches and stated that “if you don't get the chance, you don’t get the chance to prove what you can do and see what you can do with a talented team.”
A talented team. A quick calculation of mine at the time, armed with nothing more than an internet search engine and a cup of tea, revealed that 71 of the 92 Premier/Football League clubs in English football had either a British or Irish manager (and another from Gibraltar, a British territory). What Giggs was saying, the same as Allardyce a few weeks back, was that he wanted to manage a big club, not just any club, and certainly not the kind who tend to struggle or yo-yo between the top divisions.
The thing is, the very biggest and best clubs don't conduct themselves on the pitch the way Allardyce's team did on Sunday, the way Bolton, Blackburn, West Ham, Sunderland, Crystal Palace, etc., regularly did when he was in charge. Clubs that genuinely see themselves as "big" may often take a cautious approach or prioritise building strong defensive foundations, but they'll rarely eschew any form of attacking endeavour to quite the same extent or assume such a submissive position as Everton did yesterday afternoon, regardless of the opposition. That's why managers of a similar ilk, like Hodgson and Moyes, lasted 6 months and just under a year at Anfield and Old Trafford respectively, and why the latter has such a poor record away at the top clubs.
Even as Manchester United achieved 25% possession of the ball against Arsenal a few weeks back, conceding 16 shots on target in the process and depending on their goalkeeper to save them on several occasions, they still managed to score 3 goals and destroy their hosts with lethal counter-attacks. Within that defensive shell was the intent to attack if the opportunity arose (notwithstanding the brutally negative approach Mourinho typically takes on visits to Anfield, and it remains to be seen how a fanbase raised on the swagger of Alex Ferguson's sides reacts to that in the longer term). And some of the worst Premier League teams in recent memory (including Moyes' Sunderland last season and Tim Sherwood's Aston Villa the year before) were able to come to Anfield and create something without being on the end of a thrashing (0-2 and 2-3 respectively).
That Allardyce now finds himself managing a club which sits fourth on the all-time English League Championship roll of honour (3 ahead of Chelsea, 5 ahead of Manchester City, 7 ahead of Tottenham) and which, historically, is undoubtedly a "big" one speaks more towards how far that club has fallen than it does for the talents of a man whose major managerial honours continue to comprise the League of Ireland First Division title in 1992 and the English Third Division title in 1998.
Back in 2007, then-Liverpool boss Rafa Benítez (of whom Allardyce once said "would be very lucky to be in a job if he hadn't got to two Champions League finals, because they have had some very, very poor finishes in the Premier League") was mis-quoted, gleefully I would say, as saying that Everton were a small club. What he actually said was: "Small teams come here and play deep, narrow and compact, with nine men behind the ball...One team wanted to win here, and the other just didn’t want to lose. Maybe I would be happy with the same result in Barcelona later this month, but at least we try to create chances when we play away, rather than wait for mistakes from the opposition." His side would, of course, win that fixture in the home of the European champions a few weeks later.
Aside from the Barcelona reference, those comments from more than a decade ago remain eerily relevant in the context of Sunday's game. Benítez may as well have called Everton a small club, not only because he was accused of doing so anyway (naturally a similar level of criticism was not forthcoming for Ferguson a couple of years later when he did explicitly call Manchester City "a small club with a small mentality") but because, in terms of how they carry themselves, it would have been an accurate statement then and remains the case today, perhaps even more so (at least in 2007 they actually created the best chance of the game, with Andy Johnson shooting straight at Pepe Reina).
A geuinely big club will never appoint Sam Allardyce as their manager, and if one did briefly take leave of its senses, it would likely be a temporary state of affairs and take a lot more than an undeserved 1-1 draw in a single derby match to sate its supporters. See Hodgson's time at Anfield for proof, a man whose infamous statement that "to get a result here would have been Utopia" after a Merseyside derby defeat had supporters of a Red pursuasion foaming at the mouth, at the statement itself more than a 0-2 defeat which continues to represent Everton's last victory over their neighbours, 8 years, 15 games and 4 Liverpool managers ago. Conversely, Evertonians gave every impression of being in heaven after Sunday's result.
With the most expensive player on the pitch in their starting line-up (Gylfi Sigurðsson) and the third-most expensive goalkeeper of all-time between the sticks (Jordan Pickford), and against a home side missing several key players either out of choice (Coutinho, Firmino) or necessity (Lallana, Matip, Sturridge), Everton created nothing beyond one hit-and-hope punt that resulted in the award of a fortunate penalty from a referee who had been conned by a believable dive.
Any ensuing triumphalism from Evertonians (treating an undeserved point like it's their first victory at Anfield this century) and Allardyce (spinning it as further proof of his ability) only serves to suggest that, notwithstanding the supposed hand-wringing and misgivings amongst Evertonians upon his appointment, the relationship between them is likely to be a perfectly symbiotic one while it lasts. Having cost himself the England job, Everton now represents the best that Allardyce will ever do, and as long as he keeps delivering derby day points at Anfield he'll do just fine for a fanbase whose ambition to win trophies has long ago been surpassed by their desire to get under their neighbours' skin. Manager and club are already well "suited" to each other.