Allardyce frustrated, says both goals avoidable

It has appeared more than once that the Everton defence has been living a charmed life ever since Sam Allardyce took over. That run of luck finally came to a grinding halt yesterday at AFC Bournemouth as the hosts scored twice from chances that in the past magically seemed to work out in the Blues’ favour.

Speaking after the game, Allardyce lamented that both goals conceded were avoidable.

“It is a frustrating way for the unbeaten run to end because we should have avoided both goals, that is the bottom line.

“You cannot go away from home and gift them two goals like we did today. We put ourselves in a good position to come back from 1-0 down and had good possession in the opposition half.

“But we just gave it away and they went down the other end without anyone really shutting them down. They got a shot off, and a bit of luck, but we should never have let it get to that position."

“Common sense says if you are in possession of the ball, use your abilities and intelligence to keep it off a side that is desperate to win a game.

“That may give you an opportunity to win it, which we probably did have just before they scored, with the ball Gylfi Sigurdsson got in the box. It was a very good challenge [by Ake].

“[We paid for] That lack of ability to keep the ball moving and in their half to create an opportunity for us to score. We fell down in that department and they hit us on the quick counter attack. We did not recover from that and a deflected shot went in.

“You can say that is unlucky. Yes it is. But we should not have let them get in that position in the first place, at that stage of the game when we were in good possession of the ball.

“You look at the goals today and they could both easily have been avoided – the first one particularly, which was a sloppy pass. That will happen. But we should have defended that better from then on, rather than the man [Fraser] being in our box free to score.”

He continued, completely ignoring the fact that he started the game with three defensive midfielders against mediocre opponents at best who needed a dubious late equalizer to avoid losing at home to West Ham United just days ago.

“It was very disappointing to lose our unbeaten run against a side that has been struggling this season.

“We could see that [Bournemouth had been struggling], because once we did move the ball quickly and in the right way, and got through the lines, we did create some chances.

“I thought we would get at least a draw when we scored in the second half because we were looking a lot better as an attacking force. But the way we lost the two goals was a big disappointment.”