Sam Allardyce has a stock phrase or two that he likes to use when it comes to this time of year. He talks of sleepless nights, tired eyes and dilated pupils, the telltale signs of a manager feeling the strain. Considering that he is in charge of Blackburn Rovers, a club faced with the threat of relegation and all the nightmares that would come with it, he seems immune to what he would call the perennial perils and pressures of spring.

Sitting at a table at a League Managers Association dinner this week, Allardyce seemed remarkably relaxed: about Blackburn’s prospects, about his future, which he admits will be unclear if the Lancashire club lose their battle against relegation, and, above all, in himself. Perhaps it helps that he will be taking his wife, Lynn, to Dubai for a short break tomorrow, after his team take on West Ham United at Ewood Park this afternoon, but above all there is a sense of assurance that comes with experience and with the feeling that all is well with his team.

Allardyce can come across as positively New Age at times, which is why things such as “vibes” tend to matter to him. He is asked to contrast the vibes in the dressing-room at Blackburn (“a nice club, well run, it’s got a nice feel to it and the players are very responsive, I do like the players”) to those that seem to be coming out of Newcastle United, where he had a brief, unhappy spell in charge last season. His look suggests that we are straying into dangerous territory — a legacy, perhaps, of the confidentiality agreement he signed as part of his lucrative payoff from Newcastle — but he cannot help offering his former employers one piece of advice.

“My brief comment on Newcastle is that they need a manager,” he says. “You need your manager in this situation. If Joe Kinnear hasn’t fully recovered [from his heart problems], which I sincerely hope he does, then at this stage of the season, and in this position, your manager is crucial. The players need to know who’s in charge. That’s nothing against Chris Hughton or Colin Calderwood [the stand-in management team], but all the players know that they’re not the manager.

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“The manager goes a long way towards deciding whether you stay up or get relegated, by his plan of action, by his selection process, by his substitutes, by his motivating and by what he draws on to try to get his players through that particular scenario. You need a leader.”

In Allardyce, Blackburn have a leader, albeit one who was never appreciated, either in the dressing-room or on the terraces, at St James’ Park. Working for Newcastle was an experience, he says, that “had a very negative impact on my career, much more than it should have done, but unfortunately that’s what you have to live with. I just want to keep Blackburn Rovers up — and maybe even do a little better — and that would be a major achievement, having taken over when we were second-bottom.

“Our points per game over the past 12 games is equal to what you would need over the course of the season for a top-ten finish. We’ll suffer defeats here and there, but the positive side is that we’re on track, whereas other teams around us are still on a downward spiral, such as Middlesbrough. They had that wonderful win against Liverpool, but where you expected them to build on that and the confidence it brings, they haven’t.”

Irrespective of whether others regain momentum, if Blackburn can maintain their form, a 4-0 defeat away to Arsenal last Saturday apart, they will survive what their manager calls “the tightest relegation battle I’ve known in the past nine or ten years”. If not, discussions at the end of the season will determine whether Allardyce, who signed a 2½-year contract, will stay at Ewood Park on what probably would be a reduced wage.

“I think it depends on whether they want me, but I don’t think it will come to that,” Allardyce says. “If we have to go to the last game of the season or whenever, we’ll talk then. I’m just planning on the basis that we are still in the Premier League next season.”

No sleepless nights, then. Can they say the same at Newcastle?