An awful lot has been said by Newcastle United fans about Alan Pardew. Was he hounded out of the club? Has he been harshly treated? If so, was it been deserved? Toon Army fan Jake Jackmann shares his thoughts on his tenure at the North East club.
Alan Pardew arrived at Newcastle United under a cloud and he is leaving under one.
Although there were good times under Pardew, he never managed to get the full backing of St James’ Park, even when we finished fifth during the 2011/12 season. I was never completely anti-Pardew and I wanted him to do well at the club, there were even points when I felt sorry for him but the move to Crystal Palace is one that benefits all parties.
He had been at Newcastle just over four years and he never looked like the manager to get the best out of our squad. However, I do not believe he did a terrible job. The word I would use to describe the Pardew era is average. The last twelve months were awful and for that reason the fans were getting on his back but from day one, Newcastle fans knew that he was not the man to take us into the top eight consistently, and that is where we need to be.
Although there was initial shock across the media and both fan bases as this move developed, it is one that makes sense. I would warn Palace fans about believing too much written in the national press about Pardew deciding to leave Newcastle. He was not driven out, football fans are fickle and calls for the manager’s head are all too frequent in football. Pardew himself admitted that criticism from the fans was part of the job and I do not think it was unwarranted in his case, but more of that later.
Nor did he leave as he was tired of working for Mike Ashley as the two had a good relationship. I think Pardew knew his time was coming to an end and a move to Crystal Palace, another Premier League club, was a way to save face for him and a way for Ashley to avoid a compensation payment.
I would go as far to say Pardew may have even been nudged in the direction of taking the job from above. I am not suggesting Pardew does not want to manage Palace, I am sure he will love it at Selhurst Park, but he himself said when he was asked about the job in August that he had loftier ambitions than Palace.
Pardew as a manager is an interesting case. He has started well in every job he has taken. During his first full season in charge of us, he led us to fifth and we qualified for the Europa League. At West Ham United, he oversaw their promotion, then took them to the UEFA Cup after getting to the FA Cup final. At Southampton, he led them to Wembley and started their surge to the top flight, making the crucial signing of Rickie Lambert.
There are a lot of good things on his CV, but there are also a number of negative ones. He suffered relegation with Charlton Athletic and was on the brink of taking us back down during the 2012/13 campaign. Before we appointed Pardew, he was in the managerial wilderness after getting the sack at Southampton in League 1, there must have been a reason for that. He has restored his reputation at Newcastle, but it will be interesting to see how he fares away from St James’ Park.
We are no longer a big club, but we still attract a lot of good players. Pardew relied on players like Yohan Cabaye, Demba Ba, Loic Remy and Moussa Sissoko a lot of the time to produce moments of magic, but he will not have that quality available to him at Palace.
I will quantify that last point a little bit as it may come across unfair on Palace. There is a very good hard-working squad at Selhurst Park and Pardew will enjoy working with it. Some of his best work at Newcastle was getting the best out of James Perch, Danny Guthrie, Leon Best, Mike Williamson and Paul Dummett who are all the type of player that Palace have a lot of.
That will be promising for Palace, as he will get the best out of workmanlike players and he will organise the side well. That is one of his managerial strengths. It has often been said that he works on the defensive shape four out of five days a week, while allowing one day for attacking training. This could prove fatal at Palace, as the club is already failing to score goals, and need some direction in the final third. Pardew will not give them that. In 2014, Newcastle failed to score in 18 of the 38 matches.
As I write this, I fear for the futures of Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha. Both are exciting, attacking wingers and could be crucial for Palace in the second half of the season if used correctly. However, from his time at Newcastle, Pardew has been known to favour hard working defensive wingers in the shape of Yoan Gouffran and Jonas Gutierrez. He has also favoured Moussa Sissoko and Joey Barton on the wing than players like Hatem Ben Arfa, Wayne Routledge and Remy Cabella, all of whom are in a similar mould to the two Palace wingers I have mentioned.
A thing that you should expect from Pardew is to be very inconsistent. He is a manager that goes through streaks of good and bad form. We had a number of good runs, one as recent as this November, but we suffered a lot of bad form too. We could go five or six games with straight defeats and Pardew never looked like a man who could turn the form around.
He is a very reactive manager, and often makes changes to the shape when it is too late. That was evident on Boxing Day, when he chose to play three at the back to match Manchester United, only to go two down before changing the shape in the second half. The side looked better both defensively and offensively, but it was too late.
Also, I would not buy into his own comments on his playing style, as he does not play attractive football like he claims. There were one or two spells of attractive football, but that was down to players like Yohan Cabaye and Hatem Ben Arfa, not Mr Pardew. For most of his time in charge, the football was dull and very defensive. He liked to pack the midfield, even in home matches against sides we should be beating as he fears defeat more than anything else.
Maybe that was due to the fan pressure and the freedom at Palace will allow him to be more expansive. Only time will tell. Even for a defensive manager he failed at times, as we conceded three or more goals in 11 league matches in 2014, which is poor for any Premier League side.
As an individual, Pardew has done a lot of questionable things, especially on the touchline. He has got into numerous touchline bust ups with opposing managers, pushed assistant referees and everyone is familiar with the headbutt on David Meyler. While players who have played under him like Don Hutchinson at West Ham have commented how his arrogance does rub senior players up the wrong way.
He also uses the press a lot to make himself look like the good guy, this was evident in talk about Jonas Gutierrez. It was well known that Pardew told the winger to find a new club despite knowing about the Argentine’s cancer. A Premier League manager needs arrogance to a certain extent, but Pardew’s falls close to delusion. He always felt he was bigger than Newcastle United as he has talked about managing England and Champions League clubs. The truth is, I doubt he will ever get to manage a club bigger than Newcastle.
Overall, like I said at the start of this piece, Pardew’s time at Newcastle was average. He was not a disaster, but even with the restrictions in place on money available to spend on players, the club could have achieved a lot more. We should be competing with the likes of Everton on a yearly basis, but Pardew could never get the best out of the players he was supplied by Graham Carr.
This season, Remy Cabella has been sidelined, despite being one of the best players in Ligue 1 last season, scoring and assisting plenty for a poor Montpellier side. Pardew has never been able to manage those flair attacking players, and the word coming out about our next appointment being a head coach, with lots of foreign names being mentioned, will be better suited to us than Pardew ever was.
However, I do feel Pardew will do a good job at Palace as he likes to work with the type of players you have at the club. He will make you hard to beat and with the right attacking signings, he will be able to make sure you get enough goals to stay up. It is the season after this one that it will get interesting as Pardew has never been able to sustain a good start to a job.
The platform is there for him at Palace, he will have more authority, a fan base that loves him and a squad that is good enough to stay in this division, the rest lies on his shoulders.
He will not be missed at St James’ Park though.
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