LucaAltieri

Because he has to say something, he doesn't want to get sacked for telling the truth, the media don't care if it's nonsense, and he reckons (correctly) that most of the fans won't notice.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to go and get a consultation from Pardew about open heart surgery or his views on the middle eastern conflict. I just object to the notion that we know more about football than he does. That we can somehow see Ban Arfa's upside and he's just too dumb to notice. That we know that we'd be better off playing a 4-3-3 and in his 15 years of management and throughout his extensive professional training he's just never heard of it. It's stupidity. The biggest barriers to getting your UEFA badges are 1) time 2) money 3) being affiliated with a club. In that regard being an ex-pro with contacts helps get your foot in the door. But you still have to put in the work. They're not just handing the licences out to any ex-pros who happen to want them. The man has a clue what he's doing. It's just not working for several reasons; players aren't performing (his fault), players aren't of a high enough quality (club's fault).

What do you want me to say? It's a safety-first formation that works well when you break quickly and have a striker that can handle the role. We don't have that striker (at least not fit and playing), we're not breaking quickly enough although in season past we were much better at it, and it's not providing enough safety to squeek the odd result at the moment. We're just getting hammered. There's nothing wrong with the principle of the formation but I agree the execution has been shit, performances have been shit, and Pardew has to answer for it. 451 in itself isn't a crime. *shrug*

Of course I'm beyond objectivity, I've seen enough of the fraud to know he's a shit manager who is out of his depth and should be out of his job. You seem happy enough to go along with the piece of shit so enjoy getting pissed on while he's still here, which will hopefully not be for much longer. I've said his time is up. He should be gone. Just because I'm not willing to lump him in with Pinochet makes me some sort of sympathizer, apparently. And that cannot be tolerated around these parts. He's a football manager. Not good enough for us, but not the worst we've had in the last 10 years either.

That's a load of bollocks, Pardew isn't clever enough to do a "Mourinho," he never has been and never will be. He's a fraud and you still haven't seen through him. Nah, you're talking s****. Whatever you might think of the sleazy, chavvy, git on a personal level he's still a professional football manager, been in the game for years as a manager and a player, has his UEFA licences. I wouldn't trust him on much, but the one thing he has even half a clue about is football. I don't know if you've ever tried doing any of the coaching badges but they get pretty intensive pretty quickly. What might seem obvious to us isn't going unnoticed by a pro. they're just seeing other things too. When it comes to football I reckon he knows more than message board Mick (and me). I don't think he's as good as Mourinho with the psychology stuff. And I think he's lost some of the players. But I'll give him the credit. I think he's trying. For me the parallels are obvious: find talk points that distract from the players, play down expectations ("we aren't favourites to win the league" while being top of the table), etc. You're beyond help. You're beyond objectivity. It's understandable, our club is fucking depressing. But you're still wrong.

That's a load of bollocks, Pardew isn't clever enough to do a "Mourinho," he never has been and never will be. He's a fraud and you still haven't seen through him. Nah, you're talking shite. Whatever you might think of the sleazy, chavvy, git on a personal level he's still a professional football manager, been in the game for years as a manager and a player, has his UEFA licences. I wouldn't trust him on much, but the one thing he has even half a clue about is football. I don't know if you've ever tried doing any of the coaching badges but they get pretty intensive pretty quickly. What might seem obvious to us isn't going unnoticed by a pro. They're just seeing other things too. When it comes to football I reckon he knows more than message board Mick (and me). I don't think he's as good as Mourinho with the psychology stuff. And I think he's lost some of the players. But I'll give him the credit. I think he's trying. For me the parallels are obvious: find talking points that distract from the players, play down expectations ("we aren't favourites to win the league" while being top of the table), etc. Calling him thick is just lazy. I think he's done here as a manager. He hasn't been good enough. But he's not thick.

Delude or gullible? Neither. It's pretty obvious what he's trying to do as far as I can see. He's trying to be Mourinho... distract and deflect. For a while I think it worked. Now it doesn't. I don't see what's wrong with that statement.

Martinez is a better manager, without question. If he was available I'd sack off Pardew and have him in a second. But I don't think Pardew is completely f***ing useless. He's probably not worthy of any more time. He hasn't been good enough in what I consider key areas of management; motivating players and getting confidence players, like Cisse, playing consistently well. He's on borrowed time. He's a mixed bag and nowhere near Martinez in terms of quality. But that wasn't the point I was making. We don't have Martinez nor do we have any real chance of attracting Martinez. We know Pardew's failings but the club's recruiting failings are just bigger in my opinion. We need a manager who can work around those. At the start it looked like Pardew could. It's becoming increasingly obvious that he can't. What are his strengths? He's diplomatic. We see him on TV obviously talking shite, and pisses off the fans because we know he's talking shite, but at the same time he protects the players. He tries to make up shit excuses like blaming "science" or refereeing decisions not just to protect himself, but to protect the players. He's being the anti-Di Canio. He doesn't want to slag them off or slag off the club (and their recruiting policy) because that's toxic. In previous season it has helped with morale. The players liked him. Limited players like Perch, Williamson, Simpson performed above themselves for him. Players who wanted to leave like Colo and Cabaye were convinced to stick around. When we had bad results we'd bounce back - the battering we took at Fulham a year or two ago sticks in my mind. Our heads didn't stay down. He appears to have lost that ability now. Maybe it's because the players no longer believe in the bullshit, maybe there's a bad influence in the locker room (I don't know, just speculating), maybe the club losing players like Cabaye has got their heads down, maybe it's a combination of lots of things. He has his failings, but he does (or did) have an up-side too.

Martinez is a better manager, without question. If he was available I'd sack off Pardew and have him in a second. But I don't think Pardew is completely fucking useless. He's probably not worthy of any more time. He hasn't been good enough in what I consider key areas of management; motivating players and getting confidence players, like Cisse, playing consistently well. He's on borrowed time. He's a mixed bag and nowhere near Martinez in terms of quality. But that wasn't the point I was making. We don't have Martinez nor do we have any real chance of attracting Martinez. We know Pardew's failings but the club's recruiting failings are just bigger in my opinion. We need a manager who can work around those. At the start it looked like Pardew could. It's becoming increasingly obvious that he can't.

Poyet was on a hiding to nothing taking that shower of shit over mid-season. I don't think he's the right man for the job anyway, I can't see him being motivated in a dump like that in the lower divisions. He didn't do his career any favours going there. I begrudgingly rate him. He'll have them somewhere near the top of the Championship next season. They'e not going to attract anyone better and no bigger clubs are about to take a risk on him. This is a good opportunity for all parties. I do feel Di Canio is partially vindicated, though. The players are to blame for the mackem's current plight. However, PDC is still a cunt who hasn't a clue on how deal with these sorts of players without resorting to being a nightmarish dictator. He made the situation worse rather than better.

Our squad was still thin last season. Cisse had stopped scoring (and Pardew should have fixed that). But we still didn't have a period like we have over the last few months where we were getting routinely tonked. Our form before selling Cabaye - while up and down - was still much better on the whole. There's a very obvious contrast. You completely disregard from the fact that our squad was in terms of quality still easily a top 8 side last year. I'm not disregarding that at all. We had some good players and should have done better in the league than we did. As a whole, we under-performed last season. The season before we performed well above expectation. I said at the end of last season that he'd had one good and one bad and he'd earned the benefit of the doubt for this season. Now this season is basically over, our league position is borderline acceptable but our performances are garbage. Patchy in 2013 and disgraceful in 2014. Had everything else been equal then Pardew should be walking. However, all else is not equal. We've sold without buying. Our squad is still way too thin on bodies and quality. Pardew deserves criticism but I don't feel like he deserves all, or even most, of the blame. The way I see it, there are 3 ways this goes: 1) We're already looking for a replacement, we get them in soon and re-build in the summer around them. 2) We decide Pardew is worthy of a little more time. We recruit in the summer and he's got the first 5-10 games to show he still deserves to be in the job. 3) We don't recruit in the summer and the manager is irrelevant. We're fucked whoever is in charge. Personally, I'd be going for option 1. I think option 2 is what will happen but I wouldn't be surprised by any of them.

Our squad was still thin last season. Cisse had stopped scoring (and Pardew should have fixed that). But we still didn't have a period like we have over the last few months where we were getting routinely tonked. Our form before selling Cabaye - while up and down - was still much better on the whole. There's a very obvious contrast.

While I'm not arguing that Pardew is a fantastic manager and deserves no criticism (the Cisse situation is still pissing me off), I think the lack of investment has done more to kill us this season. I don't think it's a coincidence that selling off Cabaye preceded our results turning to shit. The players are clearly demoralized. It's his job to get that sorted ASAP. He's entirely to blame for not fixing the problem but he didn't cause it, in my opinion. I don't think there's a manager in the league who do well under the current circumstances. However there are plenty who'd be able to stop us getting battered at home. He needs to get that shit sorted. If he can't then he needs to go. I view Ashley's board appointment as tentatively positive. I think him sacking JFK and getting more involved with the club is a sign that the last two transfer windows were not acceptable. If we see some investment in the summer then the onus is on Pardew to get the results. A slow start again next season and will mean he needs fucking off. If we don't get investment in the summer then we're screwed whoever is in charge of picking the team.

Glad he's playing for us. We need the goals. Lord knows our goalkeeper isn't keeping a clean sheet for the rest of the season, useless cunt.

I don't know why anyone is so confident about Pardew being unsackable. The one thing we know about Ashley is that he's very unpredictable with hiring and firing managers. Who saw the sacking of Hughton coming? The hiring of Kinnear? Pardew 8 year contract? They guy is anything but predictable. Even if results do get better between now and the end of the season I still wouldn't bet against Pardew being sacked. However, my personal opinion is that Ashley knows he fucked up appointing Kinnear and blames him for he lack of signings and therefore our shitty results.... at least in part. And that's why Pardew hasn't been sacked already. Still, I don't know how anyone can claim to be confident one way or the other.

Shit graph. Labeling is awful.

It's still pretty much impossible to stop He's obviously got some quick feet and he'll go down with even quantum-levels of contact, but fucking hell... every time! We know what's coming. You can defend against it.

How is that even possible in 2014? Have people still not noticed ROBBEN CUTS INSIDE EVERY TIME.

That thread's amazing They just ignore their £23m losses like a missed payment letter from Wonga. 'We'll sell 3 players for 5 million each and get £20m parachute so we've got £35m to spend derp derp' Mackems in not understanding paying bills shock. The next suggestion will be to move the club to another stadium and not tell the bank where they've gone.

So if he didn't eye gouge Tito Vilanova he'd be a worse manager? That's exactly what I'm saying, yes. Which is also why he chinned SAF and punched Leonardo in the nuts. Pretend you've got a little common sense for a minute, would you?

Pardew sits 9th with this team. We should all love him as well. Because he's doing a good job in terms of results come on, Flip. You're better than that. He really isn't.

His antics are part of what creates the winning mentality. If Mourinho stopped being Mourinho then he wouldn't be as good a manager.

"No more goals"