“I mean, he’s a flamboyant character. You can see it from his hair alone.” Sam Allardyce was back in wisecracking mode after his side’s impressive away win at West Bromwich Albion on Saturday. The subject of his affectionate mockery was the strapping 6ft defender with a lemon squiggle on his head, Mamadou Sakho.

The centre-half joined Palace in January with minimal fanfare. On loan from Liverpool until the end of the season, Sakho had in Allardyce’s words been “frozen out” of Anfield. His Uefa charge for consuming a banned fat-burning substance was ultimately dropped but, when Sakho turned up late for a club meeting during Liverpool’s pre-season tour of America and then a recovery session, it seemed to be the last straw for Jürgen Klopp. The defender was forced to train with the under-23s and did not feature for the senior side all season.

For all the controversy, though, Sakho remains a France international, the man who was made captain of Paris Saint‑Germain at the age of 17, an £18m recruit for the Anfield club and the standout performer in the Liverpool defence as they progressed to the Europa League final last season (his drug charge prevented him from making an appearance in the final, which the Reds lost to Sevilla). On Saturday, in only his second appearance of the season, he was the linchpin for Palace as they recorded back-to-back victories from a platform of back-to-back clean sheets.

“You’re slightly concerned when you take a player in the January window who’s been frozen out,” Allardyce said of Sakho, “but then again once you’ve got him fit – and we got him fit really quickly with the way he applied himself – we knew that you can’t play that many games for Liverpool and be a bad player. Certainly the lift he’s given us defensively in the two games he’s played has been exceptionally good.”

Sakho was clearly relishing the physical contest with West Brom’s equally statuesque centre-forward Salomón Rondón. His incongruous agility allowed him to get the better of the Venezuelan, nipping in to take the ball off his toe on more than one occasion and intercepting another opportunity with a diving header.

Allardyce knows a good defender when he sees one but he has also throughout his career been able to work with players whose reputations preceded them. From Andy Carroll to El Hadji Diouf and, some might say, the entire Sunderland squad, Allardyce has been able to find ways of coaxing performances from players who otherwise might find themselves in trouble.

“As managers we deal with players in different ways,” he said on Saturday. “Like if I’d have been harsh on Dioufy with some of the antics he got up to he’d have never played for Bolton. Sometimes you do it in a different manner. I’m not criticising Jürgen Klopp whatsoever about the way he runs his club or what sort of discipline he wants but for me I treat each individual differently. As for Sakho he hasn’t turned up late or not turned up anywhere up to now …”

Two performances do not make a comeback. It seems unlikely, however, that Allardyce, who admits that criticism in recent weeks as Palace struggled to find any sort of form “got under my skin”, will let Sakho take his eye off the ball. As for Klopp, when asked after his own victory this weekend about the future of the player who seemed likely never to play for Liverpool again, he offered a not entirely definitive “We’ll see”.