Allardyce gets his swagger back as Palace pick up momentum
managers, but for Allardyce, a man who pins his very reputation on results, results and results, the contrast is especially marked. In defeat he is often sullen, withdrawn, even cantankerous. In victory he feels invincible. He sees the pie, he wants the pie, and by Jove he is going to make the pie his.
Allardyce is a man who is used to getting what he wants, but it has taken some time for him to attain this current state of bumptious swagger. More than two months into the Crystal Palace job, he was yet to engineer a league victory at home. A catastrophic 4-0 defeat by his old club Sunderland seemed genuinely to shock him. Two clear weeks in the schedule felt like a last chance for renewal.
As he picked over the 1-0 win over Middlesbrough, then, mixed in with the relish was a certain relief, which came thanks to a Patrick van Aanholt goal, a speculative 20yard effort that found its way through a mass of bodies. Out of the bottom three, yes, but more important was the resilience and the fight, the sense of a corner being turned.
“If we’d have lost,” he admitted, “it would have made life extremely difficult. It brings a lot of pleasure, seeing the lads applying themselves like they did.”
Momentum is so valuable in a relegation fight, which is why Middlesbrough’s plight is causing so much concern at the club. They barely managed to lay a glove on Palace’s brittle defence in the first hour, a familiar problem this season. Two goals from their past seven league games is relegation form, and they know it. Fixing it, on the other hand, is a different matter.
Defender Ben Gibson described the mood in the dressing room after the game. “Bad,” he said. “But that’s how I want it to be. I don’t want it to be good after a massive game like that. We know we’ve got to win the games against teams around us. This was very damaging.”
Aitor Karanka, the manager, has made Middlesbrough tough to beat, but perhaps it has come at the expense of expression. Middlesbrough now approach games tentatively, as if they expect to be bullied. In possession they are neither creative nor decisive enough. Nobody seems to want to try the killer ball or take the speculative shot.
“It’s deeper than just blaming people for not scoring goals,” Gibson insisted. “We have to find a way to get more out of everyone as individuals. We’re fighting for our lives. We’ve worked too hard to throw this position away. I do believe we’ll go on a run and we’ll survive. But we’ve won four games in the league this season. That’s not good enough.”
Middlesbrough’s run-in is horrendous. They need points now. Next come Stoke, then an FA Cup quarter-final, then Manchester United at home, then crucial trips to Swansea and Hull.
“The table doesn’t lie,” Gibson admitted. “It’s very worrying. But we can’t cry over spilt milk. We have to get ready to survive. It’s not over, but we have to take a long, hard look at ourselves, because what we’re doing at the minute isn’t good enough. We have to be more honest with ourselves, more demanding from ourselves. And it has to start now. Because we can’t wait any longer.”
Middlesbrough are not doomed. The squad still look united enough, organised enough, determined enough. They have been relatively fortunate with injuries. They are making more tackles than any team in the division. But until they turn all that into a win, the long slide towards relegation can quickly seem inexorable. Pie or no pie, Allardyce knows that better than anyone.