London: With his brief and humiliating experience as coach of England’s national team behind him, Sam Allardyce is back on familiar ground in the Premier League and doing what he does best: Turning around the fortunes of a struggling team.
“Big Sam,” as he is known in football circles, is a master at keeping clubs in the Premier League, so it was no surprise that Crystal Palace turned to him late last year as the south London club plunged toward the relegation zone.
He made a slow start to life at Palace, but results over the last month have been typical of Allardyce: Three games, three gritty performances, three clean sheets and — most importantly — three wins.
Palace has pulled four points clear of the bottom three.
Another team saved by Allardyce? Not quite, but he certainly has Palace — the worst performing team in all four professional leagues of English football in 2016 — heading in the right direction.
The pragmatic, no-nonsense manager has done that by getting back to basics, starting at the back where Palace was extremely shaky under previous manager Alan Pardew.
Fortunately, Allardyce had a transfer window to shake up the squad and two signings are starting to prove their worth.
France centre back Mamadou Sakho was brought in on loan from Liverpool, where he was out of the team because of fitness issues and after getting a provisional ban for a failed doping test that was later dismissed by Uefa. Sakho has slotted into a newly formed five-man defence and Palace haven’t conceded a goal with him in the team.
Luka Milivojevic, a holding midfielder from Serbia, joined from Olympiakos and has been stationed in front of the defence for the wins over Middlesbrough (1-0), West Bromwich Albion (2-0) and Watford (1-0), offering great protection.
It hasn’t been pretty but Palace are grinding out crucial points.
The hard work might just be starting, though.
On Saturday, Palace play first-place Chelsea in the first game of a difficult 10-match run-in in the Premier League that includes trips to Southampton, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United as well as home games against Arsenal, Leicester and Tottenham.
That four-point cushion could come in very handy for Palace, 16th in the 20-team league.
Allardyce is looking to rebuild his reputation that was damaged by an ill-fated 67-day spell in charge of England, which ended in September when he was forced out because of unguarded comments he made to undercover reporters posing as businessmen.
His last firefighting role in the Premier League was at Sunderland, who he joined in October 2015 when the team were next-to-last in the league and preserved their place in the top flight. Having never been relegated from the Premier League as a manager, he has also established Bolton, Blackburn and West Ham as top-flight teams during his 26 years in management.
