It may have taken a while, but the much-vaunted “Sam Allardyce factor” has finally kicked in at Crystal Palace.
Given his previous track record of resuscitating flatlining teams and guiding them to safety, Palace supporters had begun to wonder whether the former England manager’s defibrillator was in need of new batteries before a recent run of five wins in six games brought them back to life.
While the South London club are not completely out of the woods yet, a six-point cushion above the relegation zone leaves them optimistic that two wins from their remaining seven games will guarantee Premier League survival.
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Allardyce’s dealings in the January transfer window while in charge of Sunderland last season kept the North-east club up. Midfielders Jan Kirchhoff, defender Lamine Kone and attacking midfielder Wahbi Khazri transformed the team, adding solidity and guile to compliment the goals of Jermain Defoe. How the Wearside club wish David Moyes, the man who replaced Allardyce, was as savvy with his acquisitions.
With Palace mired at the wrong end of the table, Allardyce sanctioned an outlay of around £35 million (Dh160m) to recruit Dutch defender Patrick van Aanholt, Ghanaian winger Jeffrey Schlupp, Serbian midfielder Luka Miliovjevic as well as the loan signing of Mamadou Sakho from Liverpool.
The latter two in particular have excelled, with Miliovjevic drawing comparisons with his compatriot Nemanja Matic at Chelsea and Sakho a bulwark in a previously porous defence. It begs the question why Jurgen Klopp, his manager at parent club Liverpool, was so unwilling to forgive Sakho for turning up late for team meetings on a pre-season tour, banishing him to the reserves, leaving him with Joel Matip, Dejan Lovren and Ragnar Klavan as his senior centre-backs, with Lucas Leiva, a holding midfielder by trade, as his only back-up. Surely buying the tardy Frenchman a more reliable timepiece would have solved the problem?
Liverpool’s loss has been Palace’s gain, with Sakho marshaling those around him to help record four clean sheets in their past six matches, a run that includes wins over league leaders Chelsea and a 3-0 victory over a toothless Arsenal last time out.
While the new arrivals are rightly credited with an upturn in Palace’s fortunes, it is a player who seems to excel after a winter of hibernation who could be instrumental in getting them over the finish line.
Andros Townsend has done little to endear himself to Palace fans since his switch to Selhurst Park last summer. The winger’s form in Newcastle United’s ultimately doomed relegation battle at the tailend of the 2015/16 season saw him earn a late call-up to the England squad for Euro 2016 before he lost out on final selection.
Seemingly unfancied or not trusted by former manager Alan Pardew, and even Allardyce to a lesser extent, Townsend’s performance against Arsenal summed up the team’s new found energy: first to every ball and emerging with it from practically every one-on-one, Townsend opened the scoring and won the penalty that Milivojevic dispatched to seal a deserved three points.
With his slumber behind him, Townsend’s trickery on one wing coupled with Wilfried Zaha’s on the other could help Palace finish with a flourish.
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