80

Can't say for sure of course, but I imagine the emphasis is on making sure Nolan isn't left with one year on his deal next summer and gets sold instead of kept on. I wouldn't imagine the push is to whack a 50-100% payrise in there.

That's fair enough, and I don't really like comparing/intend to compare them either - just trying to look at what's changed since Pardew's arrived. I disagree about Pardew being an upgrade, but you're right that stats prove nothing on their own. The thing for me is that I've got annoyed, and sometimes really confused, over the last few months when I've seen some of the things people have said, as positives or negatives, about Pardew and Hughton's time at the club. Remember seeing a few statements which haven't matched up at all with anything I've seen, but only some of which are easier to disprove than others. At least above there are some hard facts, but whether anyone wants to/should draw any conclusions from them is up to them.

This is gonna be very controversial to say, there'll be a few different views, but looking through the fixture list with the benefit of hindsight, taking into account natural quality and form at the time of each game, I'm tempted to say Pardew only wins 3-2 against Hughton in terms of getting victories against weak teams. That's partly because I credit beating Wigan away, for example, as being better than simply doing a weak team for Pardew. I make it West Ham, Wolves and Birmingham (h) vs. Aston Villa and West Ham.

Ah, you'll be right about the starts and finishes. Following on from the rest of the post, my mind was on a certain track... still, at least the info is there now. If you're right about throwing away leads, though, he didn't read me properly seeing as I didn't say that. I think 3 injury times in 6 lost leads is often enough to say often, though...

I wouldn't say three times, spaced out over four months, was a 'habit' like. Plus there have been plenty where we've played out results effectively (Bolton 10 men and Wigan come to mind) and times where we've scored late to get results (Tiote vs Arsenal, Taylor vs Chelsea). At the minute, I can't really put much between them. Hughton gave us some spectacular results and a decent start, whilst Pardew made us stronger against the teams we should be beating and given us a decent finish. There's more to it than just the games in which we conceded after the 90th minute. Just go through our league results this season on .com (and remember the character of last season for good measure, to get the tone of our play). Under Hughton we failed to hold a lead in 2 games - Stoke and Chelsea (we had to last 84 minutes in that game). That's gone up to 6 for Pardew (Sunderland, Tottenham, Bolton, Everton, Blackpool and West Bromwich). That's 5 and 12 points lost respectively. I definitely don't, but a handful might count Liverpool and make it 7 leads lost for Pardew, fwiw. Regarding close games we held onto tightly after getting the advantage (i.e. not slaughters like Villa and Wolves), it's either 3-3 or 3-2 to Hughton (depends on whether you think we should have let the Birmingham home game become close after going 2-0 ahead). (The other games are Everton, Arsenal and West Ham vs. Wigan and Birmingham away, fyi) As for turning games around and not letting an early goal decide it, Pardew's only managed that 2 times - Chelsea and Arsenal (I've already given my thoughts on that last one...). Hughton managed it between 3 and 5 times - Wolves, Wigan and West Ham. Arguments can be made for Manchester City away and Blackburn at home where each time we equalised earlyish (24th and 47th minutes) and started pressing for winners before getting suckered late on. On the one hand the result turned out the same, but on the other we at least gave ourselves a shot at winning and taking three points, which boded well for the future. That's 2 points gained for Pardew and 5/7 for Hughton. The idea our finishes have improved under Pardew doesn't bear out. The truth is that most of his good results, in fact most of our just about tolerable results as well, come after we've started well and often finished weaker. It's a statement of the obvious, but our better finishes match up with our comebacks, and so under Pardew we've only definitely gotten better towards the end of a game on 2 occasions - Chelsea and Arsenal. An argument can be made for 3 (seeing the Bolton game out with 10 men). Personally, there's no way I'd list Liverpool at home here when he'd only met the players 48 hours earlier, any more than I'd give caretaker Beardsley credit, but some people might make it 4. Hughton's second halves also got stronger 2 or 3 times, meanwhile (Wolves, Wigan and putting the winner past West Ham away). As a final small point, seeing as you said we had better starts under Hughton, we only went ahead 2 times in the first quarter (23 minutes) of our games, while we went behind 5 times - Aston Villa and Chelsea vs. Man City, Wigan, West Ham, Blackburn, Bolton. Under Pardew, it's been 7/8 times ahead and 4/5 times behind. The arguable ones for Pardew are Liverpool (as usual) and Aston Villa at home (they went ahead before the 24th minute mark, which you might let squeak in, given stoppage time).

don't believe this for second Depends on just how much of a puppet he is, in fairness, but going on his comments + the prior agreement, we really didn't have to spend £4.5m on Ben Arfa this January - we could've hung on until this Summer (or just ditched him..?), but according to Pardew he personally wanted to push it through. If he'd had enough clout to get that spent well elsewhere, we could've earned nearly the same sum by finishing higher up the table without much trouble...

Right, you were serious. In that case, everything after the Souness comment. I don't think Pardew has much of a chance to build on things, I am just waiting until he fucks up and/or leaves the club, and I can't really enjoy any of the games in the mean time as a result, similar to when Souness was here.

Aye, was very depressing. If I remember right the old HTT site was taken off the net that day, I thought it had crashed from overuse or HTT himself had deleted the thing out of protest at the time...

Very good... although undermined by not asking me if I thought everyone backed Souness, instead.

Apart from me not expecting Pardew himself to destroy the club, I couldn't disagree more

In the name of intellectual honesty... bump. Totally got Birmingham's future wrong. In fact, that was one of the biggest and best things to happen for us. I think our win down there was one of the most important of our season. If it was them that had robbed an early goal, that following Bolton-Everton-Stoke period would have looked very ugly...

On this point, I've got to disagree. There are so many different factors in each game (both specifically, and in a wider 'team x scores four to equalise against team y' sense), not least the psychology, that it just doesn't balance out to say it's 6 and half a dozen. Anything less than some kind of comeback (not necessarily a draw) against Arsenal would have been as shameful a game as they come and we would probably have spun straight towards relegation. You can only think of praising him for such a big turn around if he had to achieve such a big turn around in the first place. To that extent, mounting a counter-attack was value neutral. To try and explain one of my points, we could say a manager has long term and short term influence over a team. Short term, to some extent, is talks, tactics and subs. Long term is the more institutional nature of the squad - their approach, mentality, talents etc. Now, I'd definitely argue it was the long term factors which got us through the Arsenal game, often times things he couldn't impact upon even if he wanted to unfortunately for him seeing as he was still new on the scene - the sense of self-respect people like Joey Barton had, and (recent) traditions Simpson felt he had to live up to etc. That was what let them visualise even trying to even the score up after a sending off. For what it's worth, I wouldn't (and didn't at half-time) particularly hold the result against Pardew, as to a large extent I believe/d he was a victim of circumstances bigger and older than his time at the club. In contrast, today's collapse (which, yes, meant we'd climbed high to allow the fall in the first place). I should say, I wasn't at today's game so it's not so easy for me to comment, but it seems to me to have been more a combination of short and long term factors (bringing on Smith, not selecting Tiote and losing us the £3m we could have bought his replacement with - versus - having only one decent defensive midfielder in the first place, and an uninspired, complacent squad mentality). But one of the things that is bothering me is that now Pardew's been here a while, we've 'coincidentally' developed this habit of throwing away leads and victories, often well into injury time, that we never had under Hughton. A slightly harsh statistic, but the 6 points we've lost to 90+ minute goals alone under him would've had us in a comfortable 8th. One thing that could at least be said for us before he came is that we were solid - we usually kept results, and if anyone scored late it was us. I don't mean to focus on Hughton, but our main failing with him was chasing victories when dead level, lacking the talent to kill it and getting sucker punched. Now, our leads have become unreliable, and I can feel that monkey starting to crawl onto our back all over again. I'll give you that, although I think ultimately they're likely to actually achieve similar things in England. No major insult, mind... most managers given enough time will oversee a relegation. Even Clough. One thing I do wanna say again seeing as I've noticed a few people say Pardew has done well because he's 'coped' with terrible injuries - you've really got to wonder why it is we only started getting them after he arrived. Don't forget the facts, our record had cleared up brilliantly over the prior 18 months, no under-soil heating excuses required. We haven't 'always' had a sicknote squad.

Disagree with a lot of what's now being said about him - feel confident better performances can be had out of him, and certainly don't think he's an urgent priority for replacing. Don't think it's any coincidence there's been a shift in the form of various players, sometimes for worse, very occasionally for better. Assume it's the new training and tactics, and mentality being drummed in, playing their part. Less well-drilled and optimistic, for me, one upshot of which means players who rely less on raw talents and more on contributing to a cohesive game plan aren't as effective (Nolan, Barton, Simpson and others, possibly inc. Enrique). I don't much buy the idea it's just down to Andy Carroll not playing up front.

We were ahead before we sacked Hughton, we've been behind since we sold Carroll. What a convenient and self serving way of measuring our position. Let me try, we were behind before we sacked Hughton and we are now ahead after we appointed Pardew, bought HBA and gave Tiote a new contract. This is fun! I don't remember the rest of the country saying we were consolidating our reputation as a stable, sensible club where players can concentrate on improving their games when we swapped Hughton for Pardew, and I don't remember the rest of the country saying we were heading upward to our traditional position in natural order of things as a leading club when we sealed the second Tiote contract in 6 months, but ok. That's the point, my measurement is as subjective as yours, they are both designed to fit our predetermined conclusion/position. Social status is a subjective thing, that's obvious, but measurement of the actual attitudes towards something can be pretty straightforward. It's not just a case of making random statements you can't back up and assuming you won't get pulled up on them. Not sure what my predetermined conclusion is supposed to be - if church bells had rung declaring how savvy we were for hiring Pardew, I would have just thought people are stupid, and said as much. I wouldn't have pretended they actually agreed with me, or changed my opinion to fit in with them, which logically you seem to be implying. Unless you are going to start producing some statistics, your "measurement of actual attitude" is equally subjective. Let me simplify my language for you, you have used measurement of when we were "ahead" and "behind" subjectively to nicely fit into your position and believe vis a vis Hughton and Pardew. It's fine if that is your believe, but that is just your subjective assessment (which makes it as valid as my own subjective assessment whether you agree with it or not). It is not an objective measurement of actual attitude as your put it. Regarding your first sentence, you make a valid, but in my view nigh on worthless point. The trouble is sticking rigidly to only the highest standards of evidence, even to the point of refusing caveating, means that shy of us all running large-scale controlled studies whenever we want to analyse something and make a contribution to a subject that isn't res ipsa loquitur, we're gagged and refused permission to say anything. And so nothing useful is said, and whatever problem that exists will continue without prospect of remedy. This attitude removes agency from people - everyone - who I think can still and should be agents. I don't like it when people with your approach try to kill discussions by saying that because neither you nor the person you're debating with know with absolute certainty that, say, something will take place next summer, that neither of you should say anything and anything that is said is of equal intellectual merit. The resultant situation you're arguing for is one I've previously consistently witnessed - no one is allowed to adopt a position on something until there's no point in them adopting one because the thing has already happened, and so they must again wait until they're allowed to adopt a position on yet another yet-to-be-conclusively-understood issue. There is no logical problem in this thread, you just don't like people like me attempting to make judgements. Likewise, I don't like your lack of judgement. Shy of me trying to convert you from your mode of thought to my own so the world will be slightly less stymied by anal-retentiveness, I think this part ends around here. Now, with regards my original post in response to ON, it's ironic that I also honestly couldn't give a shit as to its convenience. Whether I approve of things that happened re: Hughton and Carroll is redundant to the discussion that had started on our 'status' in the minds of other people, in fact it should be quite obvious that the reverse relationship is more pertinent (i.e. other people's reactions help inform whether I think those moves are going to make it harder for the club to succeed in the future). Furthermore, I dare say it's inconvenient that popular opinion is in tune with my own as it means I can't strut around posing as an outsider intellectual who's one of the few far removed enough from the crowd to objectively assess the situation and 'call it as it is'. Having said that, it's just occurred to me there's a small chance you've been trying to say my original post was about stirring an argument by dragging a status discussion onto Ashley etc. If so, no, I was originally just intending to back up ON in his disagreement with Prophet over whether 'Ashley getting us relegated' was responsible for a fall in respect.

I dunno if I've got out the wrong side of bed or something, but I think I like those comments.

It's a fair post, but would you like me to move it into a relevant thread for you?

We were ahead before we sacked Hughton, we've been behind since we sold Carroll. What a convenient and self serving way of measuring our position. Let me try, we were behind before we sacked Hughton and we are now ahead after we appointed Pardew, bought HBA and gave Tiote a new contract. This is fun! I don't remember the rest of the country saying we were consolidating our reputation as a stable, sensible club where players can concentrate on improving their games when we swapped Hughton for Pardew, and I don't remember the rest of the country saying we were heading upward to our traditional position in natural order of things as a leading club when we sealed the second Tiote contract in 6 months, but ok. That's the point, my measurement is as subjective as yours, they are both designed to fit our predetermined conclusion/position. Social status is a subjective thing, that's obvious, but measurement of the actual attitudes towards something can be pretty straightforward. It's not just a case of making random statements you can't back up and assuming you won't get pulled up on them. Not sure what my predetermined conclusion is supposed to be - if church bells had rung declaring how savvy we were for hiring Pardew, I would have just thought people are stupid, and said as much. I wouldn't have pretended they actually agreed with me, or changed my opinion to fit in with them, which logically you seem to be implying.

Certainly could have been, but amazingly we just about got away with it. Mike Ashley covering our debts so we only sold players most of us were already wanting chucked played it's part (no embarrassing, symbolic departures like Alan Smith (of Leeds to Man Utd I mean...)), as did the third highest attendance in the country, Hughton managing a press black out after Carroll broke Taylor's jaw etc. Partly good luck, partly good sense. Altogether though, I'd definitely say we were given more popular credit by the 10th game of this season than we were in the 30th of 08/09, though, which was my point.* My second point, though, is that nevertheless the Carroll sale struck a chord with people, not just our supporters, but our players, other clubs and the like, that hadn't been struck for 20 odd years. *Edit: Actually, no it wasn't, it was about when Ashley took over. I stand by my essential argument, though. Somehow or other, during our year in Division 2 we managed to cleanse ourselves of our latter Shepherd/Hall year sins like dragging a tearful Michael Owen out in front of a mentally handicapped crowd. We came back with a refreshed reputation, and having still managed to retain a lot of our good bits. Then I think we spoilt it again by returning to old and even older habits.

Laughing stock I'll give you. But they also see us as less important (perhaps there's some relation in there).

We were ahead before we sacked Hughton, we've been behind since we sold Carroll. What a convenient and self serving way of measuring our position. Let me try, we were behind before we sacked Hughton and we are now ahead after we appointed Pardew, bought HBA and gave Tiote a new contract. This is fun! I don't remember the rest of the country saying we were consolidating our reputation as a stable, sensible club where players can concentrate on improving their games when we swapped Hughton for Pardew, and I don't remember the rest of the country saying we were heading upward to our traditional position in natural order of things as a leading club when we sealed the second Tiote contract in 6 months, but ok.

We're going to have to clear up which status we're talking about... I was running with 'popular Anglicized perception', myself. Admittedly some people/places won't even now know who Carroll is, but then they didn't even know we used to sell on people like Waddle and Gascoigne, so we hadn't risen much over the prior couple of decades in their eyes. Still think there are more tremors following it which will see them learn, as I of course expect more Carroll-style departures from the club. It's a hard stigma to break.

We were ahead before we sacked Hughton, we've been behind since we sold Carroll.

I may be wrong, but I'm under the impression that by not challenging these publications on twitter, he makes it easier for the story to become 'accepted as' common knowledge, undermining the purpose of the original injunction, and making it more likely to be retracted or successfully challenged should any bigger media source choose to flout it themselves (on the grounds that there was no secret to expose). I remember a couple of years back hearing that an injunction was granted for some story or other and subsequently retracted partly because the scale of the public discussion surrounding the (non-super)injunction meant everyone had learned the story and it had itself become worthless and inappropriate to maintain. The courts don't exist to 'reprivatise' knowledge.