Interpolic

That 8 year deal is about as worthy as a Greggs paper wrapper tbh. Hope you are right. What were the comments Ashley made when Houghton was canned? Something along the lines of 'he wasn't achieving what we expect as a club', certainly that fits Pardew now. Ashley wasn't afraid to pull the trigger then, what's holding him this time? (Our success in europe probably) Houghton.

Zola? Would be a massive gamble, that. I'm going to keep going on and on about Martin Jol. Martin Jol, Martin Jol, Martin Jol.

So they shouldn't have clearly had a player sent off or their winning goal ruled out? Sorry you can call us shit but let's not pretend clear failings from the officials played a massive part in that result. You control your own destiny, if we'd played as well as we could against a poor Wigan side with a poor home record we'd have blown them out of the water. When you play the way we did you can't have many complaints when you end up getting beat. Also by your logic we should give points back to the likes of West Brom, amongst others. Not that that was down to bad officiating, but we were lucky as fuck.

Exactly, Pardew doesn't even have to make excuses now as there is a long line of people readying them up after every defeat.

Yep, we're that far ahead of the bottom 3 that we can afford to throw games. Absolutely ludicrous.

Alan Hansen started it from what I recall, every fucking incident is "terrible defending" and he says it like he's offended and he'd love every game to finish 0-0.

It does sound like he's having a pop though. The alternative is "we as the players need to stop ignoring the manager and try to win the game from the first minute".

So is that down to the players following Pardew's instructions, or the players not following Pardew's instructions? Ooh shit.

It would be class if they brought Monkey's Heed back just before the derby. Imagine it man.

Pardew used to say he was working towards better football, he's spun a myth. I think so too, I think he's talking absolute bollocks and people are still taking things he says at face value. If he wanted to win matches by playing better football he wouldn't have been in such a rush to abandon the 433 that served us so well towards the end of last season. I don't think it's a priority for him. His quotes about "letting the victory come to you" a while back sum it up, we never take the bull by the horns.

Fwiw, I wouldn't officially class myself as a 'Pardew supporter' and - although I'd prefer it that we stuck, I'm not gonna sit here and say I'd be devastated if he went in the summer. I'm just a supporter of the notion of stability. I'm nowhere near convinced he has the ability to get the full potential out of this squad - I just think there's something to sticking with a manager. It's not like Souness, Roeder, Kinnear or Allardyce, who were basically shite from the beginning - in my opinion Pardew has performed admirably as a manager for an extended period of time (though I concede there's discrepancies over that opinion, which appears to be the sticking point here). In addition to what was, imo, a brilliant job last season, I think it's worth pointing out that his opening spell has been forgotten about in this debate. It was pretty solid to be fair, especially considering the Carroll debacle. It was only an aberration against WBA that prevented us from actually finishing in the top half. I'm just sick of seeing us constantly chopping and changing, and I don't have faith in the board to upgrade on him. He's shown good and bad in equal measure imo, and should get till Christmas. Just repeating myself now. Fair points, can't say I agree massively about him doing anything better than a bang-average job in his first half-season but there you go. Certainly not something I'd give him a massive amount of credit for, he was OK. Anyway, do you think he wants to play better football or not, that's what I'm asking. People used to say he was working towards us playing better stuff, but they don't seem to say that now.

Fucking hell, unbelievable. It's incredible that people that are paid to be knowledgable manage to keep their jobs even though they show themselves to be so clueless.

Do his supporters still think he's trying to advance us to a better standard of football, or is getting back to the effective football we played for much of last year the ultimate aim? I don't hear people saying he'll get us playing good stuff much anymore, that's all. Seems to be that we got good results one season and can do so again.

He's fucking class like.

Fair dos. Either way... I think there's absolutely zero, zilch, nada chance of the board sacking him any time soon. Again, I think they might sack him. They must be fed up with it by now, they're doing a better job off the pitch than he's doing on it.

Fair enough, I'm honestly not on the wind-up though mate - by my own standards of watching us for 20 years, the quality of football we've played under Pardew has been pretty dreadful. You're right in saying that's my opinion rather than fact (or "true", which is what I said) so I apologise for that I suppose but nobody's going to convince me otherwise.

We've had consistently shite football with a six-game anomaly. I don't want to re-live arguments from last season, but I don't think that's fair at all and is to do with why I think he should have till Christmas. Last season was an excellent managerial performance on the whole; this season has been a poor managerial performance on the whole. Not being funny Yorkie, but how isn't it fair when it's true? Facts are true. These are opinions. I don't think that particular one (that we played shite last season aside from those six games) is fair. Played shite football. It's true, Yorkie.

What's their record and our record vs the same teams? Areet Alan, steady on - you're blowing your cover. Who? Erm, you know, the bloke who manages us.

oldtype is in fucking everything.

We've had consistently shite football with a six-game anomaly. I don't want to re-live arguments from last season, but I don't think that's fair at all and is to do with why I think he should have till Christmas. Last season was an excellent managerial performance on the whole; this season has been a poor managerial performance on the whole. Not being funny Yorkie, but how isn't it fair when it's true?

I don't get the 'mixed bag' argument, myself. We've had a mixed bag of results across the two seasons. We've had consistently shite football with a six-game anomaly. This season is more excusable given the severe disruption to our team because of injuries but, even so, you'd expect to see some progress in helping us reach a footballing identity that isn't "smash it to Cisse". I haven't seen anything of the sort. Pardew-believers and the wait-and-see-stance doesn't make sense to me, because I have seen nothing to suggest Pardew can be a long-term success. Not even glimmers of hope, really. Delaying getting rid is just delaying any chance we have of further success with this good group of individuals (which is all they are atm to be quite frank, individuals). Sewelly's post in Pardew's thread is a sobering, but true, analysis of how we play and what we can/can't do. Ashley is Ashley though, so all this is just forum rhetoric of course. Might be worse than that, if a few of them get fed up with it and fuck off.

I'm personally not interested in watching that sort of football every week, that's just me though and I obviously don't speak for the whole support. Life's too short to waste your time watching it on telly, travelling to games to be subjected to it, etc. He managed to play some decent stuff for 5 or 6 games last year then abandoned it, presumably because it wasn't him.