Big Sam to Everton is all but a done deal

If there’s one Everton fan in the world who really and truly wants Sam Allardyce to take over as manager... get that man home from the pub because he’s had too many already.

Paul Joyce of the Times suggests that by tomorrow evening, Big Sam will be signed on to take the Toffees through the rest of the year. This is both really good news and also completely disheartening.

It’s good news because Allardyce is the purest definition of a beat the drop expert. He is all but certain to keep Everton in the English Premier League. What is disheartening here is that signing on Big Sam means that all other options have dried up and things have gotten so bad under David Unsworth that we have no real other option.

This manager search started with fans clamoring for Carlo Ancellotti and Thomas Tuchel. It involved many of those same fans sneering and jeering at the notion of being coached by Marco Silva or Sean Dyche, and now it looks like we’ll end with Sam Allardyce. That’s a sobering reality check for a club who at season’s start thought it would be competing for top six.

As things now stand, the man who has saved Sunderland and Crystal Palace from drops in recent years (while winning 100% of his games as coach of the Three Lions in the meantime) now looks to repeat his trademark trick at Everton, who are arguably the biggest club he’s lead in his long coaching career.

Now look, no one needs to act like we want Sam coaching for the next five years, but if this thing goes through then the second he puts pen to paper on a contract every Toffee on earth needs to be completely behind this man. We’re officially in survival mode, trying to beat a drop that frankly to this point in the year would be deserved. Get all your anti-Sam venom out in the next 24 hours and be ready to support the new direction at least until the final whistle of this season.

When summer comes, and we’re still in the Premier League and we have the chance to spend big money again, then we can look for a long term solution. But for now, we’re stuck lying in the bed we made by not having a real plan to replace Ronald Koeman when we chose to fire him.