Nah.
When Pardew took over we were just a few months into our first season back and coping well. We'd signed HBA (admittedly he was injured but had looked brilliant), spanked Villa and the mackems, won 1-0 at Arsenal and had a team that seemed to care.
By the time he'd left we'd lost HBA, had been spanked 6-0 at home, were getting spanked off the mackems and were left with a squad full of disinterested, incapable mercenaries.
No way was it just remaining a shitty midtable team.
Hatem had only had one standout game for us when Pardew got the job, like. Not that it really matters.