KEEP playing Russian Roulette for long enough, and eventually you'll get your brains blown out. Not so it appears Sunderland, as they prepare to dodge their latest bullet. Wearside's version of the great escape lives on, and is set to welcome its latest volume. As Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame might like to say, it's a trilogy - in four parts.

Paolo Di Canio in 2013, Gus Poyet in 2014, Dick Advocaat last year, and now Sam Allardyce in 2016? It's not quite yet mission complete, but almost. Perhaps of more concern to Allardyce than earning the two points to mathematically guarantee safety, is who will be in situ to emulate his feat next year should the clearly emerging pattern continue.

Implausibly, Sunderland could even extricate themselves with a game to spare. Everton, who visit the Stadium of Light on Wednesday, stand in the way of a such a scenario. Having allowed 50 shots on their goal last two away games as they bid a shambolic farewell to a season of gross under-achievement, Newcastle aren't expecting any favours from Roberto Martinez's side. They are fearing the worst at St James' Park.

Having been unable to beat Aston Villa either home or away, perhaps the Tyneside club don't deserve a helping hand in their efforts to stave-off relegation as they prepare to fall victim to near neighbours who seem to have escapology running through their DNA.

After a relegation battle of so many twists and turns, maybe it is somewhat premature to talk of the Everton game as its denouement. Certainly, Sunderland fans have been put through the ringer enough by their team not to be counting any chickens just yet, but with two games left they are in a position that you would want at this stage. Their fate is in their own hands, and Newcastle must sit, and watch, and pray.

There were spells when It didn't look like that would be the case as they twice fell behind at the passion pit that was the Stadium of Light on Saturday, where 47,000 made the noise of double their number. In the space of five minutes, Sunderland went from the utter high of Wahbi Khazri's wonderful long range volley finding the top corner, to the despair of switching off like a Sunday pub team as Nemanja Matic restored Chelsea's lead with an unflustered finish beneath Vito Mannone. There had been an element of misfortune about how the ball had found its way to Diego Costa for the Spaniard to open the scoring from a narrow angle inside the opening 20 minutes, but the visitors' second was simply down to rank bad defending.

Two goals in the space of 138 glorious second half seconds turned the contest on its head, Fabio Borini finding the net against his former club with the aid of a deflection off the hapless John Terry, before more questionable Chelsea marking allowed Jermain Defoe the luxury of a first touch a dozen yards out. With the second, he unerringly found the bottom corner for his 15th goal of the season. Pandemonium ensued.

“It was deafening," Allardyce reflected. "It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, never mind the players. That wall of noise excites and thrills them. That’s what gets them going. Supporters want to love you, they want you to do well and try and help you. If you give them something to cheer about they love cheering and supporting their club and you as a player."

All of which, Sunderland hope, should add up to a stress-free trip to Watford next Sunday, at just around the same time as Terry is reprising his role in Munich four years ago, by, like an excited man-child, quickly donning his kit to perform a lap of appreciation after a game from which he has been suspended.

Seemingly a rational man averse to unnecessary hyperbole, Guus Hiddink, Chelsea's avuncular interim manager, forwarded the somewhat bizarre claim that referee Mike Jones had been too close to the incident to make the correct call as Terry scythed down Khazri with an ugly, tired challenge in the fifth minute of stoppage time to earn a second yellow in quick succession following an earlier foul on Defoe.

With the 35-year-old's contract set not to be renewed as he considers lucrative offers to move to China and North America, his two-game ban brought an abrupt end to a near two-decade career with the London club, where he has often failed to match his sterling service on the pitch with his conduct off it.

Allardyce wouldn't be surprised to see the defender remain in this country, despite Terry's Steven Gerrard-like assertion that after so long at Stamford Bridge, he couldn't turn out for another English club. “It’ll not be his last game in this country, because somebody else in the Premier League will take him if he wants to stay," the manager said. Asked if such a destination on these shores could yet be Wearside, Allardyce added: "I’m not interested in anybody until we’re safe." Late on Wednesday, that hope for safety could become a reality.