Crystal Palace’s players probably regard homework as a safely distant schoolday memory or, if they have children, something to assist with sporadically. For Scott Dann and company though, change is almost certainly in the south London air.
One of the first things Sam Allardyce did on taking charge at Sunderland was to begin firing off frequent emails to every player. Packed with video clips, the accompanying attachments both deconstructed their own strengths and weaknesses and provided detailed briefings on future opponents.
When they came into training the next day, recipients were not only expected to be fully conversant with the party pieces and vulnerabilities of rivals included in these mini dossiers but able to demonstrate enhanced understanding of their own games.
“If a player digests his own statistical information in his own time, on his own laptop, tablet or whatever, without a coach standing over him, it makes it easier for him,” said Allardyce. “It helps with the pressure. There’s a fear factor but spending time at home analysing things can help control it.”
He will expect such “empowerment” to produce sufficiently improved results to enable Palace to take a break in the Gulf – most likely Dubai or Doha – in February. A big believer in the benefits of Vitamin D derived direct from strong sunshine, he implored Ellis Short, Sunderland’s owner, to fund a squad trip to the United Arab Emirates last season and credited it as a big reason why, against all odds, the club avoided relegation.
“Historically almost every team I’ve managed has returned from even just a five-day break with improved physical output,” said Allardyce. “Bolton, Blackburn, West Ham, Sunderland; Dubai had a big impact on them. The players are knackered after Christmas but we get them relaxed.”
He is equally keen on exposure to extreme cold. Cryotherapy is probably not unknown to his latest charges but Allardyce is so convinced of the merits of near daily post-training visits to a minus-135-degree ice chamber that he installed a state-of-the-art machine at Sunderland in an effort to accelerate muscle recovery. Jermain Defoe – who previously hired a mobile cryotherapy unit for £1,000 per two-minute visit – swore by it, though certain team-mates were less enthusiastic.
A blend of old school and the surprisingly progressive, the 62-year-old retains personal perspective by performing transcendental meditation most days. On Wearside Allardyce felt encouraging his players to follow suit might be a field too far but he did encourage them to visit the then newly recruited club psychologist. Meanwhile he harboured no compunction about boring his backline to tears courtesy of training sessions devoted to the ABC of rudimentary defending.
Sometimes manhandling senior professionals while working on body shape and positioning in assorted situations, he prompted a radical improvement in, among others, Patrick van Aanholt, Sunderland’s left-back, but admitted: “We’ve gone so far back to basics, I’m boring myself.”
That sentiment was shared by DeAndre Yedlin, the right-back then on loan from Tottenham Hotspur but now at Newcastle. “Every Thursday at Sunderland every defender would do strict defensive drills, with no attacking at all,” he recalled. “We hated it because it was not the most fun thing to do but it worked. And Sam made something click in my head. He made me think like a defender.”
Given the five goals Palace recently conceded at Swansea followed by a further three at Hull, Dann and friends should brace themselves for similar treatment.
Once Defoe convinced Allardyce to stop accepting received wisdoms and deploy him as a lone forward, Sunderland settled into a 4-1-4-1 formation with certain gifted players – most notably Defoe and Wahbi Khazri – granted creative licence while some were asked to sacrifice their talent for the team. Selhurst Park regulars can expect Andros Townsend to be offered Khazri-style freedoms by a man who has long coveted the England winger but it may be different for others.
Fabio Borini morphed from flamboyant striker into no-frills wide midfielder last season, with tracking back his new speciality. “I call my job a blind role because people don’t notice you, sometimes it’s more about going backwards than forwards,” said Sunderland’s Italian forward last spring. “But it makes others’ roles easier.”
Not that Borini disliked Allardyce. “Sam’s a very straight guy,” he said. “You know what he’s thinking and, even if you don’t, he’s going to tell you.”
Indeed Dick Advocaat’s successor was largely popular among his old Wearside squad who seemed to relish the amalgam of sometimes unreconstructed blokeishness with an unexpectedly subtle understanding of their assorted religions and cultures.
Younès Kaboul, disillusioned with Advocaat, looked reborn under Allardyce, swiftly appearing a different player while also agreeing to serve as a de facto minder for his fellow the French speakers, Khazri, Lamine Koné and Yann M’Vila.
“Sam knows the Premier League better than his own family,” said Kaboul, now at Watford, last spring. “He knows how to upset teams, stay in games and win them. I don’t think he needed much time to understand us as footballers or people. One week of training was enough.”
Behind the sometimes uncomfortably brash exterior lurks sufficient emotional intelligence for Allardyce to be acutely alive to dressing room ecosystems and, endeavouring to improve Sunderland’s chemistry, he duly offloaded Costel Pantilimon and Steven Fletcher last January before signing Koné, Khazri and Jan Kirchhoff.
On his watch the squad remained astonishingly injury free, with his use of sports science to tailor individual regimes keeping even the notoriously frail Kirchhoff on the pitch.
This fascination with data dictates that Allardyce, unlike Alan Pardew, will be comfortable debating analytics and its potential transfer market deployment alongside Palace’s American backers. Indeed he adores discussing algorithms, Moneyball and his field trip to meet Billy Beane, the famous, analytics pioneering, general manager of Oakland Athletics baseball club.
The “Allardyce Algorithm” is a little different from Beane’s but, when it comes to survival, appears unrivalled.
