Apology
Sam Allardyce has been told it’s far too late to offer any apology for mocking Roy Hodgson when he was caught in a sting on camera as England boss.
He mocked Hodgson’s speech impediment and called him ‘Woy’, something that many considered to be seriously distasteful at the time – and something that Hodgson expected an apology over.
However, since he’s never been offered one, the Crystal Palace boss claims it’s now too late, and that his relationship with Allardyce isn’t great, ahead of Everton’s meeting with his side.
Hodgson said: “Do you like being insulted? No, not particularly. Did it bother me? I didn’t lose any sleep over it.
“My relationship with him before, I always thought was good. Now I would expect it to be less good.
“Would I like him to apologise? No. It’s far too late. It has gone. It belongs to the distant past.
“In jobs like I am doing at the moment when you are the manager of a Premier League club, you live very much in the ultimate present and the future.
“I’m not interested. I’ve said what I’ve got to say.”
Points
Given how tight it is at the bottom of the table, the one thing all sides need to do is pick up points – especially from the teams around them, and while Everton are in better shape than they were pre-Allardyce, their shocking performance against Arsenal will certainly have knocked their confidence.
Not only that, but it seems that Allardyce may consider a change in players, and Hodgson will know they are there for the taking if he sets his team up right.
Of course, it was a huge blow to Palace to see Zaha added to the injury list that already includes Bakary Sako, Jeffrey Schlupp, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Martin Kelly, Scott Dann, Jason Puncheon, Connor Wickham and Julian Speroni – especially since they’ve not won a league game without him since September 2016.