It is rarer than it used to be, but there are occasions when the volcano still blows and Tuesday night was one of them. If there was relief at Fabio Borini’s 90th-minute equaliser that earned Sunderland a point against Crystal Palace, it was far from obvious in the home dressing room, where Sam Allardyce let rip at the carelessness of his players.
The air was blue and when Allardyce bustled out, there was a look of utter fury on his face. The moment passed. “Reverse psychology,” the manager called it; if his players had been anticipating congratulations on their powers of perseverance, they were disavowed in brutal circumstances.
This is the kind of pressure that exists at the bottom and this is the kind of man who Allardyce is, even if age and experience — he has suffered from heart trouble — have taught him to ration his emotions. “Do I look angry?” he said. “I was very angry, but you’ve got to control yourself in your more mature years than you would do in your younger ones.”
That said, a frisson of shock went through his squad. “They might think it’s pretty vicious now but they didn’t see me in my younger days,” Allardyce said. “I can’t hold back sometimes. Sometimes I have to let it go and I have to tell them how I feel. I think it’s a build-up of frustration, but it doesn’t happen very often now, I’m glad to say.
“Then, obviously, in the cold light of day we all review it and get on with it. I say to the players, ‘I don’t bear any grudges as a manager — you don’t have to like me, I don’t have to like you, but we have to have a mutual respect for each other, work together, do the right things and get out of trouble.’ ”
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Sunderland, who travel to face Southampton today, are out of the relegation places on goal difference but the margins are fine and their habit of conceding is driving Allardyce to distraction; they have not recorded a clean sheet over their past 15 matches in all competitions.
“Our fight becomes ever greater by us continuing to throw points away on good performances,” he said. “We’ve got the talent to get out of trouble, but I think it’s going right to the wire. We are all getting ready to bite our nails again.”