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Sam Allardyce has been an outspoken critic of having to play Premier League matches on Deadline Day, no matter which transfer window. He had expressed his frustration during the pre-match press conference on Monday ahead of Everton’s clash last night with Leicester City.
Before the game, the Match of the Day reporter Conor McNamara reported that Allardyce had claimed that five of his matchday squad had been targets of loan bids.
Just spoke to Sam Allardyce in the tunnel at Goodison. He says five of his players have been approached by other clubs today, but none of them are going anywhere. #EFC #bbcfootball
— Conor McNamara (@ConorMcNamaraIE) January 31, 2018
After Everton held on late to win 2-1, the manager was in no mood for platitudes, and launched another scathing attack against the Premier League, especially over his concerns that those five players could have been destabilized by the transfer talk (via the Liverpool Echo).
“We were hit with that severe blow of the deadline and having to play tonight.
“I’ll tell you this, that five of our players in the squad today, their agents had called to see if they could go out on loan.
“So it was obvious the player knew as well as us dealing with it, which was never going to happen that we were going to let any of those go.
“But it is upsetting, it’s not right, it disturbs the players, it hasn’t disturbed us today, it’s not effected the result I’m glad to say but it could easily have done so.”
Allardyce was in no mood to let it go either.
“It’s up to our bosses to sort it out. Every boss at every football club should sit at the AGM and say: ‘Look, you’ve got to stop doing this to our managers and our football club’.
“Unless they sort that out at the AGM, which they clearly haven’t, they clearly let the Premier League go and they clearly vote for it, if they want us to give and deliver they can’t put us in a game on the final day.
“It happened to me last season at Crystal Palace, it’s happened again to me tonight and I’ve spent all day fending off people trying to upset my players and take my players away.
“Some we’ve let go, one we might bring in today and to have a game while that is going on... It’s alright for me, I don’t have to go and run around on the pitch but it’s not alright for the players when they get phone calls from their agents and we get agents saying: ‘Sam’s not playing him you’ve got to let him go’.
“It’s not their position to tell us what to do. We must change that situation. Why can’t we play a midweek game next week?”
The Blues’ opponents on the night Leicester suffered from exactly that, with Riyad Mahrez being a subject of three bids from Manchester City during the earlier part of the day, and going missing since yesterday, which angered his teammates.
“Is there not a better example than that? Is there not a better example for the Premier League to say, once and for all, we can’t have this situation arise again?
“We all know why they do it, I’ve explained myself before, and I think now is the time to...
“I shall have to tell my boss that when he goes to the AGM next week, get on the agenda that we’re not playing a game on the last day, or the last but one day (of the window).
“I’ll give you an example of what’s going to happen next summer. Do you know when the last day of the window is? The day before the season starts. How about that one? That’s going to be a difficult one. And what happens after that, all the other European clubs’ windows will be open.
“My job is hard enough without having to deal with those situations. You can feel my frustration, there is enough pressure on us all, we’re getting fired left, right and centre and things like this don’t help.”