Allardyce: Pathetic

Sam Allardyce has slammed his team following their 5-1 embarrassment at Arsenal.

The words pathetic, crap and poor were used to condemn a performance which saw Everton 3-0 down within 21 minutes and 4-0 down by 37.

Allardyce: “I was angry. I’m still angry. I think accepting an instruction is part of a player’s responsibility at the level required. We tried to give the most instruction in the time we had available. There were clear instructions today because there was a good performance against Swansea [City] against Arsenal that gave them a good [3-1] victory and we based our plan on that.

“Unfortunately, Swansea played at the top of their game and we played at the bottom of our game. If you play at the Emirates, you’ve got to play at your best and our 11 didn’t play anywhere near our best, that’s why we were tumbling goals in a pathetic performance.

“None of it was any good in the first half. Our attacking wasn’t any good and our defending was pathetic. Tom Davies was good when he came on and [goalscorer] Dominic [Calvert-Lewin] did well and showed.

“Theo [Walcott] wanted to put on a good show but the pathetic performance we gave didn’t give him the opportunity to do that,” Allardyce added of Walcott, who endured a frustrating return to Arsenal and was subbed off.

“I had to change the system but it could have been anybody coming off – apart from the goalie.”

Allardyce was asked whether Ademola Lookmancould have had an impact.

“No, we’ve got £20m Theo Walcott and £30m Yannick Bolasie and if you’d put him out there he wouldn’t have done any better than the rest because the whole team played crap”