Sam Allardyce sacked as Everton manager after six months in charge as they ‘immediately’ begin search for new boss with Marco Silva in frame
Sam Allardyce has been sacked as Everton manager after just six months in charge at Goodison Park.
There had been growing discontent among supporters at the negative style of play under Allardyce and he has been removed from his post with a year left on his contract.
Having replaced Ronald Koeman in November with the club in 13th under caretaker manager David Unsworth, the 63-year-old steered the Toffees to an eighth-place finish.
Sam Allardyce has been sacked as Everton manager after just six months in charge
Everton fans had been unhappy with the style of football on display despite finishing eighth
ALLARDYCE’S TENURE IN NUMBERS
7 – Everton were the seventh different Premier League club to be managed by Allardyce.
26 – The number of games he was in charge for.
10 – Match victories with Toffees.
5 – The number of places Everton climbed under Allardyce.
2 – Draws in the Merseyside derby.
31 – The number of goals scored by Everton under Allardyce.
4 – The number of full games Wayne Rooney played under Allardyce.
61 – Premier League minutes under Allardyce played by £26m Davy Klaassen.
0 – Wins against the ‘big six’.
1 – Apology to Allardyce from the club after a fan survey included a question about their confidence in the manager.
Assistant manager Sammy Lee, coach Craig Shakespeare and goalkeeping coach Martyn Margetson have all left Everton too.
Allardyce met with Farhad Moshiri at 8:30am on Wednesday morning. The result of their conversation was the termination of his contract.
He is expected to receive a £6million pay-out after signing a contract with no break clause. The veteran manager will have made around £9m for six months’ work.
The former England boss endured a fractious relationship with the club’s hierarchy in recent weeks and was fuming after a restructure of the boardroom staff.
There were sweeping changes without consulting Allardyce or his backroom staff and the manager had said he was ‘disgusted’ at the failure to consult him in the decision .
‘I’m shocked, disappointed and disgusted that the football club didn’t have the decency to tell me, my director of football and my staff about the changes,’ he had said.
‘They must have been in the pipeline for a considerable time but no-one thought to tell me and my staff. I’m pretty disgusted.
The 63-year-old struggled to win over supporters despite an eighth-place finish
‘I came into the football club with the team struggling and we have finished eighth in the table. I’m more than happy with what myself, my staff and the players have achieved from when I came in.’
The final game of his tenure was a 3-1 defeat by West Ham as the season ended on a sour note.
Former Hull and Watford boss Marco Silva is the favourite to take over at Goodison Park. The Portuguese was sacked by the Hornets after an approach from Everton last season led to disunity in the squad.
The Everton players were a much tighter unit under Allardyce but failed to set pulses racing
Allardyce made a promising start to life on Merseyside, unbeaten in the first six matches including Everton’s only Europa League win.
But in March he was booed by travelling supporters who had watched the team suffer a 2-1 defeat by Burnley at Turf Moor.
The football was heavily criticised as uninspiring and there was another kick in the teeth for Allardyce when the club sent out a survey to fans asking to rank the manager’s performance from 1-10.
Professor Denise Barrett-Baxendale, the soon to be Everton chief executive, released a statement: ‘On behalf of the Chairman, Board of Directors and Mr Moshiri, I’d like to thank Sam for the job he has done at Everton over the last seven months.
The Toffees will be looking to strengthen this summer and compete for Europe next term
‘Sam was brought in at a challenging time last season to provide us with some stability and we are grateful to him for doing that.
‘However, we have made the decision that, as part of our longer-term plan, we will be appointing a new manager this summer and will be commencing this process immediately.
‘Again, we’d like to place on record our sincere thanks to Sam for his work with us over the last few months and wish him well for the future.’
WHO WILL REPLACE ALLARDYCE?
MARCO SILVA
The Portuguese, currently without a club, appears the front-runner. Everton had overtures for Silva rejected by Watford before appointing Allardyce – the Hornets subsequently said when axing the 40-year-old as boss in January that ‘the unwarranted approach by a Premier League rival’ had been ‘the catalyst’ for their decision, with the board believing it was something that had seen a ‘significant deterioration in both focus and results’.