Personally I feel when Pardew came in we were a club on the up, looking to the future with an ethos Hughton had instilled in the club in his tenure, Pardew then came in and reaped the reward of that ethos and then slowly changed the clubs attitude from within to one of apathy and lowered expectations, of failed cup runs, and putting the blame on the fans. The issues that surround the club now were there when he took over, but he just heightened them to a shocking degree, and made them 10x more noticeable.
And this whole, we could of had any shit manager argument is true, the problem is, we had a shit manager, one that will probably go down as one of the clubs most hated and worst.