SAM Allardyce spoke today of how he feared for his safety when he was caught up in crowd riots on a scouting trip to Greece last weekend.

The Wanderers' boss was unharmed but fled the ground early after witnessing scenes of violence he described as "a massive eye-opener".

"When I think of what happened over there, we have no problems whatsoever in this country with supporters," he said.

Asked if the scouting mission to the Athens derby between Olympiakos and AEK had been successful, he laughed and said: "Apart from having my life almost threatened by supporters."

But he was serious when he went on to describe what he and assistant manager Phil Brown witnessed. "They were firing rockets at each other, burning each others' flags. I wasn't threatened but it was pretty scary and I didn't see the game through to the end. If we had anything remotely like that over here, we'd be hung, drawn and quartered.

"There were 300 to 450 riot police around and apparently it's like that week in, week out, just a normal everyday game. There's massive rivalry between supporters. They just hate each other.

"Browny warned me about it because he'd been there before. I thought he was having me on ... but he wasn't."