Doomed manager won’t play Klaassen for fear of losing his job

Sam Allardyce is getting fired this summer. I know it, you know it, the mouse that wears an extremely tiny Jose Baxter jersey and lives under the Kendall End knows it, but Sam apparently has no idea.

In his latest stumbling comments, Big Sam has declared that he’d love to play Davy Klaassen in the English Premier League but that he just can’t. This may seem odd to you, since Allardyce picks the team sheet (badly) every week, but according to Sam via the Echo, he just can’t afford to pick the Dutchman because:

I’ve got to win. So I don’t have the luxury of saying ‘go on, give it a go lad!’ because if we lose it’s me that gets the stick.

Listen, Sam, let me put your mind at ease: you’re getting the stick anyway. You could put Shani Tarashaj in goal for the rest of the season and it would have as much of an impact on your job status as a single leaf of kale has on my daily calorie intake.

It’s very possible that Sam doesn’t actually know what position his players play. He made the following comments about his midfield options:

We’re still playing Tom Davies at 19 and bringing Beni Baningime on at 19 years old, and we are without Gylfi Sigurdsson who can play there. Davy Klaassen is still an anomaly to me, as to will he or won’t he?

Okay, Sam, I think I may have found part of the issue. Beni, Tom, and Gylfi all play different positions. Yes, they are all midfielders, but seeing those three as interchangeable pieces really just indicates to me that your tactical instructions are no more complicated than just telling the midfield ‘hey, you three, stand in the middle and pass the ball’.

At any rate, for Sam, the only way Davy will get ahead of Tom or Beni for some minutes is if there is an injury or suspension problem that warrants it. Don’t get me wrong, I want the kids to play at this point in the season. We are nine points adrift of 7th and a chance at Europe and in no real threat of relegation.

I want Tom to get consistent playing time and I’d absolutely love to see Baningime play more than 11 minutes in a month because I think that kid has a wonderful future, but neither of these things should keep us from giving Davy a long enough run in the team for us to know what we have there.

Instead, it seems like 32-year-old ‘not an actual midfielder’ Wayne Rooney is undroppable for some reason, so Klaassen’s career will continue to stagnate while Sam pretends like he actually still has a chance of keeping his job.