Everton boss Allardyce: 'Tough game because of Tottenham's quality'

Sam Allardyce believes we’re a “big force” at Wembley as he prepares to bring his Everton side to the capital on Saturday.

Veteran boss Allardyce took over a Toffees side suffering from a poor run of form at the end of November and has lifted them to ninth in the standings ahead of the weekend’s action.

Looking ahead to Saturday’s 5.30pm kick-off at Wembley, where Allardyce won the Championship play-off final with West Ham against Blackpool in 2012, the Toffees boss said: “Because you are playing at the national stadium I think it’s special. Any opportunity to play there is one that you should really look forward to.

“We have a lot of players here who have played there a few times already but because of its iconic status, you should look forward to playing there.

“Tottenham look like they have overcome the problems they had in the early stages of playing there. They have got over those negative vibes that everybody seemed to have about it and are a big force there now.

“It will be a tough game to play because of the quality of their side, but you hope Wembley will bring the best out of our players because they have the chance to play in such an iconic stadium.”

Everton striker Cenk Tosun, a new signing from Besiktas, could make his debut on Saturday and his manager added: “He’s obviously very eager to make an impression and he will be in the squad for the Tottenham game.

“We have to hope that he can go and hit the ground running, but I don’t think we need to feed him too much information – just let him play his natural game. Hopefully that will be good enough to make an impression and make us better as a goalscoring threat.

“That will depend on the players around him delivering the service that he needs to be a threat. The service provided in the final third is one of our weaknesses, which is why we are not scoring enough goals. We don’t have enough natural goalscorers in the squad at the moment so we have to try and improve on that.”