Allardyce wants future at Everton beyond rescue mission

Sam Allardyce has claimed he did not come out of retirement for another short-term rescue mission with Everton but to build a team worthy of the club’s proposed new stadium in four years’ time. He signed an 18-month contract to succeed Ronald Koeman in November but admits he has not discussed any long-term plans with the club’s owner, Farhad Moshiri, who marks his two-year anniversary as major shareholder at Goodison Park next week.

Allardyce attributes the lack of long-term planning to the precarious league position Everton were in when he arrived, one that has since improved, rather than uncertainty over how long he will be at Goodison Park. And he feels he should be given time to construct the Everton team that plays at Bramley-Moore and not merely another survival act in what could be the 63-year-old’s final job in management.

“As long as I continue to improve the club going forward then it’s not a short-term fix for me,” the Everton manager said. “It is about fixing it first and then planning for the future, which has not been in the forefront of my mind for a while because it has all been about ‘Come and rescue us’.

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“Coming back out of retirement was not to come and rescue someone else again but to do bigger things in the future. A club this size, with this ambition, is a great opportunity for me to finish my career here hopefully.”

Everton have yet to secure funding, planning permission or unveil designs for the waterfront stadium that is scheduled to open in 2022-23. But Allardyce believes the club must also commence long-term planning for the team this summer, only 12 months after spending almost £150m on new talent under Koeman.

“Long-term planning is quite difficult in the Premier League today but it is something that this club, with the new stadium, has to do,” added Allardyce, who travels to Watford on Saturday. “It has to find out what direction it is heading not just next season but for the next two or three seasons going into the new stadium. The new stadium simply has to have a better team than there is now.”