The view from Casa St James’ can rarely have seemed more attractive. Sam Allardyce used his handsome pay-off from Newcastle United in 2008 to fund the purchase of that magnificent holiday villa on the Costa Blanca and, at the time, could have hardly imagined that, seven years on, he would be returning to north-east England.

Allardyce spent much of the past week sunning himself in Spain and, as he waited for his negotiating team to finalise the deal that would make him the new manager of Sunderland, the Mediterranean horizon must have appeared particularly bright.

In retracing his steps to the region once known as the hotbed of English football, but which has long been much more of a sickbed, the 60-year-old faces one of his greatest, yet most enticing, challenges.

If rescuing from relegation a team that has not only failed to win a Premier League game all season, but also leaked 18 goals in eight matches is no minor task, the potential prizes on offer proved irresistible to the former Bolton Wanderers, Newcastle United, Blackburn Rovers and West Ham United manager.

Quite apart from the generous remuneration package offered by Ellis Short, Sunderland’s owner – not to mention the chance to choreograph players in front of regular 40,000-plus crowds on one of the domestic game’s most passionate stages – there is scope for some major point-scoring.

Should Sunderland escape the drop to the Championship, Allardyce will reinforce his reputation as a highly proficient, immensely underrated, coach, while leaving the detractors who question the sometimes brutal pragmatism of his methods as rather silly, and sometimes churlish, idealists.

Never knowingly tempted to place style over substance, his hopes of becoming England manager were dashed when, in 2006, Steve McClaren beat him to the job. Allardyce has described that blow as the biggest disappointment of his career, but now – by one of those strange quirks with which football abounds – he finds himself as McClaren’s new neighbour.

With Newcastle also struggling horribly, the next north-east derby, at the Stadium of Light in two weeks’ time, has assumed an extra resonance. His sacking by Sunderland’s great rivals still rankles with Allardyce and it is an understatement to say he would relish exacerbating their misery.

A brand of often binary, sometimes gamesmanship-suffused football, which José Mourinho dismisses as “19th-century” and which has frequently left Arsène Wenger, Rafael Benítez and friends wincing with distaste, prompted his dismissal not only by Newcastle, but by Blackburn and, most recently, West Ham.

While ‘Big Sam’ is a little more three-dimensional than many critics maintain – his reinvention of Stewart Downing in the hole at West Ham last season was intelligently subtle – stylistic principle is an extravagance Sunderland can no longer afford.

Little more than a year ago, Lee Congerton, the out-going sporting director, talked of the team – then managed by Gus Poyet – being built with “a British heart and a Spanish style”. At the time “identity” was the club’s buzzword and Congerton spoke of “leaving footprints in the sand”.

Unfortunately Sunderland have merely become synonymous with annual relegation struggles and an apparently never-ending procession of head coaches. As the eighth manager to work with Short in the past seven years, Allardyce has a narrative to change – and a defence to organise. Along the way, a sizeable new backroom team big on psychology, sports science and computerised analysis must be assembled, with Neil McDonald possibly swapping managing Blackpool for the No2 role.

Despite noises to the contrary, Allardyce is said to have been interested in the job in June, when it appeared Dick Advocaat – who resigned last Sunday – would be retiring rather than returning for what everyone hoped would be a last hurrah.

At the time, Sunderland were still wedded to the director-of-football model that Allardyce has now demanded Short scraps, and regarded Burnley’s Sean Dyche as a more suitable appointment. Four months on, Dyche’s star had waned and Allardyce’s representatives knew that the American financier’s terror of his considerably indebted club being relegated just when a gargantuan new television deal kicked in meant he had effectively backed himself into a corner.

Short has apparently guaranteed Allardyce cash and autonomy to remodel a mentally fragile, sometimes less than uber-professional, squad in January, but Sunderland have only three points and their former centre-half needs to hit the ground running.

On Saturday he will attempt to mastermind a win at West Bromwich Albion – then comes that potentially season-redefining rematch with McClaren and Newcastle.