Reece lets Sam have his cake and eat it!

Sport

Sam Allardyce presumably kept a straight face as he discussed the emergence of Reece Burke on the official website today.

Last week he was telling us how tough it was for him to play the youngsters but what a difference today after the 18 year performed so well against Queens Park Rangers.

Here’s a reminder of what Allardyce told London 24.com before the game: “If you put a youngster in and lose, you get criticised, the youngster might get criticised, so it is difficult.

“Or play all your youngsters in the FA Cup and get slaughtered for it. You say ‘we don’t give youngsters a chance’ but you give them a chance, lose, and get slaughtered for it.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it.”

Today, however, that is exactly what he appears to be trying to do as he declares: “When everyone says no one plays a young player any more the bottom line is if you are safe and you say ‘We are going to play a lot of the young players now and we are going to play a lot of players who are on the fringe and whose contracts are up’.

“We want to put them into games at this level and see if they can stand up and get experience.

“It is really encouraging to see young players coming through. We want to put them into games at this level and see if they can stand up and get experience.”

“Burke has come through because of injuries to Winston Reid and James Tomkins and to be fair he would have been more involved if he had not been injured earlier in the season.” REALLY – that doesn’t quite compute Sam!

Back to last week and some more thoughts from the manager as he moaned: “It is always difficult for me. If we were in a better position with our results it would have been a good thing to look at the odd player.

“But the pressure with us at the moment to get results means it would be difficult for me to do.”

Difficult? Maybe! WRONG? Most definitely!

In the meantime giv e me some more of that cake and let me eat it.