Sam Allardyce does not know quite what to expect when his Sunderland side visit Chelsea as they adapt to life after José Mourinho on Saturday. “I’m not sure whether it’ll make my job harder or not to be honest,” he said. “Everybody expects a reaction when a manager gets sacked, and sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t.
“I always think it’s quite a sad state of affairs when a team actually plays better when their manager has been sacked. I find that quite sad. I find it irresponsible from a players’ point of view, especially when they come out after the game and say: ‘We’ve done that for the old manager’.”
Allardyce expects an improvement from Chelsea but will be intrigued to monitor the fans’ response. “I think there will be a reaction from their players but I also think what happens with the crowd could be interesting,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of good support from the fans for José in this difficult period. The fans hadn’t turned against him.”
A glance at the table suggests Saturday’s game is a classic relegation “six pointer” and Sunderland’s manager – whose team are 19th, three points behind their 16th placed hosts – did not disagree. “It’s fair to say that if we were to win, it would put a huge amount of pressure on Chelsea because we’d end up on 15 points, the same as they are,” he said. “That would take them further down the league, and it would be a huge success for us.
“In our fight against relegation at the moment, we have to take points wherever we can. We’ve got to look for points against the so-called big boys because, at this moment in time, it’s the big boys who are slipping up more than anybody else. Newcastle have beaten Liverpool and Tottenham, and Bournemouth have beaten Chelsea and Man United. Manchester City were beaten quite easily by Stoke, so if it’s the right time and your team is playing the right way, you can beat the big boys more than ever before in the Premier League.”
Allardyce feels that whether Mourinho, Guus Hiddink or someone else occupies the Stamford Bridge dug-out Chelsea’s biggest problem is arguably their squad’s lack of experience of life at the bottom.
“Their players haven’t seen this before,” he said. “They have had huge pressure at the top but the pressure down here is different. When you manage down here you have to be able to pick your players up and make sure the pressure of being near the bottom doesn’t get to them. For Chelsea this is the first time ever it’s happened to those players. So how are they dealing with it. What have they been doing to try and put it right? You’ve got to grow the confidence and diminish the fear so they can go out and express themselves again. At the moment Chelsea have, like us, stopped scoring. When you stop scoring you can’t win football matches.”
