Despite turning things around at Everton after Ronald Koeman’s catastrophic start to the 2017-18 season, Sam Allardyce was replaced by Marco Silva in the summer.
While everything from the outside appeared to be going relatively well, with results going their way and the club climbing up the table, what happened behind the scenes, as revealed by Kevin Mirallas, left a lot to be desired, especially for certain players.
Speaking to Sport/Foot in Belgium, the Everton loanee, currently at Fiorentina, lifted the lid on how the former Sunderland manager went about his business, which included shunning a group of six first-team players (Ademola Lookman, Morgan Schneiderlin, Mohamed Besic, Davy Klaassen, Aaron Lennon, Nikola Vlasic and himself).
He said: “For his first training session, he spends five minutes looking at the guys who didn’t play the game the day before. Then, he basically only plays English players. A few times, he picks me for the first-team before sending me to the stands on game day, which almost never happens in England.
“Sometimes, I found myself playing left-back in training. In December, Allardyce calls the six players to the U18s and tells us that we would all go to Cyprus to play the final Europa League game, which counted for nothing. Seriously? Six pros with U18s for an official game?”
Sam Allardyce didn’t even travel for the fixture, where the team still won 3-0.
His reply when they got back? “Well done on the win”, before moving onto the next game straight away, not bothering to go over anything with the players.
Eventually having enough, Mirallas asked Allardyce if he could leave, to which the manager simply replied “OK”.
He continued: “Now, when someone asks me how things were with Sam Allardyce, I reply: ‘We never spoke'”.
With the transfer market just around the corner, the forward asked the Toffees’ director of football to continue with negotiations, only to be told he would only be sold to an English club so that Everton could recoup a lot of money.
That, as we now all know, never happened, as Mirallas ended up heading off to Greece with Olympiakos, despite strong interest from Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga.
During his time in Piraeus, the Everton loanee scored two goals and picked up two assists in 15 appearances, struggling to find any form after spending six months in and out of the Everton team.
