Sam Allardyce is happy to be back in the Premier League despite waging war with 8ft cartoon mascot Harry the Hornet
IT was not quite the keynote speech Sam Allardyce had been hoping to deliver around this time of year.
A plea for the FA and Premier League to punish an 8ft cartoon wasp for ridiculing his star player with a comedy dive after the final whistle.
But despite a sense of injustice after Wilfried Zaha was harshly booked for diving and then mocked by Watford mascot Harry the Hornet, Allardyce pronounced himself excited to be back.
The former England manager watched Palace blow a richly deserved half-time lead, provided by Yohan Cabaye, when Damien Delaney dragged back Sebastian Prodl at a corner and Troy Deeney netted the equaliser from the penalty spot.
But for the most part, it was as if he has never been away.
Having ‘Trumpishly’ blundered his way into high office, then talked his way out of it, here was Allardyce back in his natural habitat, the lower reaches of the Premier League.
Here he was spewing invective at fourth official Kevin Friend, gesticulating wildly at referee Mark Clattenburg, drilling orders into a Palace back four which had not kept a clean sheet away from home since last Boxing Day, and all the while chewing gum like an industrial cement mixer.
The Watford fans called him a ‘fat greedy b*****d’, the PA announcer made a post-match gag about pints of wine and everyone enjoyed the Boxing Day bloodsport.
Allardyce’s 67-day stint as England manager had been cut short after he made a series of boasts to a group of fictitious businessmen about a string of lucrative speaking gigs which did not exist.
After delivering his keynote address, Big Sam had imagined himself mingling in the bar with Far Eastern business types, liberally sprinkling the smalltalk with anecdotes about Fergie and Brucie and Big Tone and the lads.
Alas it was not to be. For the England manager, it isn’t all supposed to be about the money.
But in the lower half of the richest league in the world, it is all about the cash and so Allardyce will always be in demand here.
This is not quite the Barcelona job he’d always reckoned himself capable of.
Yet, after Allardici had replaced Alan ‘Pardiola’ Pardew, the red and blue stripes looked familiar and Big Sam is working with a front six which includes former employees of Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham and Paris Saint-Germain.
There is a decent pedigree of player at Palace.
Allardyce will surely keep them up — and he will make a decent fist of ‘Glad All Over’ at the end-of-season karaoke too.
He will shake up a shoddy defence which has registered only one shut-out all season and then he has a decent collection of attacking resources with which to improve a record of six league wins in a calendar year.
But in truth, Allardyce is among the very last of an endangered species — ‘the old-school English football man’.
The Premier League of the future looks far more like Watford, an Italian-owned club with 11 foreign starters and a manager who doesn’t speak English.
And while he has never suffered relegation from the top flight, Allardyce is not a miracle worker.
He kept Sunderland up, but they scrape their way to safety under a different manager every year.
He re-established West Ham, too, and kept Blackburn afloat for a while, having carved out his reputation at Bolton.
But there have been no Houdini routines and he will surely not need one at Palace either.
“It’s exciting, really,” he said, “I don’t enjoy games very much as a manager, but it’s great to be back in the top league in the world, and competing against teams with outstanding players and managers.
“Exciting, nervous, but it’s nice to be back. Hopefully I can continue to do for Palace where I left off at Sunderland.”
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In the first half, Palace were so much better than a sluggish, lumpen Watford that it was almost embarrassing.
They led when Andros Townsend’s pass was slotted home by Cabaye but Christian Benteke failed to double the advantage before half-time when his lazy spot-kick was saved by Heurelho Gomes, who had conceded the penalty by tripping the former Liverpool striker.
Deeney, with his 100th goal for Watford, showed Benteke how to do the business from 12 yards.
And then it was all about Zaha, harshly booked for diving after a tangle with Miguel Britos, and good old Harry providing another sting in the tail for Allardyce, who has suffered one sting too many this season.
In theory, his former FA employers could still throw the book at him because of his comments about third-party ownership while he supped those fateful pints of plonk with undercover reporters.
In practice, they will not.
And, after pocketing more than £5million from the game last year, Allardyce will earn a similar amount again in 2017.
So while they chuckled at the cheeky mascot, Allardyce will always laugh last, and loudest.