Sam Allardyce, for all his years as a manager in the Premier, has never won a major honour.
To be fair to the man who presided over the shortest permanent reign as England manager in 2016, he’s never had a job as suited to the pursuit of silverware as he has now.
Prior to taking over at Everton, Newcastle United is probably the biggest job Allardyce has had, but even when managing both the Magpies and West Ham United in the Premier League, it was when both clubs were in something of a low ebb. Right now, despite Everton’s poor start to the season, this is still a club with fairly lofty ambitions.
Some new investment coupled with a high-profile sale in the summer allowed Ronald Koeman to spend lots of money, seemingly without much regard for squad balance. And you’d imagine that Allardyce will now have the biggest budget he’s ever been handed both this January and in the summer. His task will be balancing a squad by adding pace and goals up front as well as building on the work he has done so far sorting out the leaky defence.
When Allardyce was appointed, Everton were 17th, just two points above the relegation zone. And whilst that may be a little bit of a red herring (the Toffees started an unbeaten run with a 4-0 win over West Ham in the first game after Big Sam’s appointment, though David Unsworth was still in charge and it’s debatable how much of an impact the announcement itself really made) it’s still true that Everton have risen to a respectable ninth place in the Premier League table, which is approaching the position they’ll have been expecting to reach when the season started. Seventh place – an ambitious but not unmanageable seven points away – now looks a realistic aim.
And yet, Allardyce’s Everton have now suffered a run of four games without a win, having scored just one goal in that time. Worryingly, they’ve conceded two in each of their last two games. The former England manager’s style of football has been criticised, as it always has, but it was necessary to focus on the Toffees’ defence at the expense of the attack for the first few months, but it’s still a little worrying that they’re conceding goals now.
There are a myriad of possible explanations, of course, but one of them is a tantalising thought – is Allardyce attempting to salvage Everton’s season not just by bringing them up to a reasonable position in the Premier League table, but by attempting an FA Cup run. That’s something which would surely be more exciting for all concerned than the alternative, a brave crusade towards seventh place.
Everton haven’t won silverware since the 1995 edition of the FA Cup, but have been in the final of the competition under David Moyes, and reached a Wembley semi-final two seasons ago under Roberto Martinez – a feat which was, in itself, a bright spot in a poor season which ended up costing the Spaniard his job, and was the first time that David Unsworth had to step in to act as caretaker manager.
Premier League safety isn’t secured, but with nine points the gap between the Toffees and 18th-placed West Ham you get the feeling that the Toffees will spend the rest of the season looking up rather than down, and that should give the manager scope to prioritise the next rounds of the FA Cup where possible.
The problem, of course, comes in the form of the draw.
When a third round trip to Liverpool was announced in early December, Allardyce must have been licking his lips at the prospect of getting one over Jurgen Klopp at Anfield – something he vaguely managed when the two sides met just a few days later in the Premier League fixture. By now, though, coming out of the gruelling festive period winless in four, it looks daunting again.
Defeat would leave Everton simply playing out the rest of the season in an attempt to come seventh and hope that the domestic cups are won by teams already in Europe. That would mean a place in next season’s Europa League again.
Victory, however, would actually mean more than just beating Liverpool: it would mean a chance at turning arguably the worst season in many years into one which could take them to Wembley again. That’s the magic of the cup.
Allardyce is a scheming manager – he is meticulous and hard-working, and so always has a plan. Over the last few games, surely his attention has been on Liverpool in the Cup rather than the league fixtures, where he has suffered his first two defeats as Everton manager. And in resting Idrissa Gueye and Gylfi Sigurdsson fully for the visit of Manchester United – usually a fixture which would require a full-strength team – perhaps that’s the clearest indication we could have that the FA Cup is the aim.
On Friday night, under the lights at Anfield, maybe we’ll be presented with the evidence of that, and see Everton give the game a bigger go than they did last time they faced their Merseyside rivals.