Alan Pardew

[Ronaldo]

Just watched his interview on NUFC TV. Says the same as on radio Newcastle - get yourselves into Wigan's ground and make it into a home game. 'By hook or by crook' - it is possible to get in!

 

The tickets went quicker than I had expected so I'm going down without one.

 

Aye, me too. Admittedly it's only 20 minutes from my house.

[Cajun]

Meh.

[Jayson]

So also our 14th Clean sheet yesterday, as pointed out the other day equalling our best result ever in the prem in a 38 game season under Sir Bobby 

 

Lot of plaudits rightly going to our attacking play atm, but you consider we could've had 6 in a row now if not for that Krul/Williamson mix up vs Wbrom. Phenomenal stuff. Its not just going forwards we've hit this form.

 

Hes made us incredibly hard to beat all season, a clear theme has been that if we score twice in a game we'll nearly always win bar pens/luck. Thats what managed to rack up the points, perhaps not always enthralling to watch but very efficient if you have someone who can do the business upfront like Ba had been.

 

Hes now brought Ben Arfa in, used some imagination with formations & created a whole new attacking dimension now added onto our understanding & solidity at the back & the combination of the two is outstanding.

 

I predicted we'd win 7 from our last 10 before Norwich due to this (smug as about this btw  ) and theyre surpassing even that atm. Had pool as a draw. The way its come together & its falling for other teams...who knows what we can do.

 

Sir Bobby would be proud. Love this team.

Well in Pards !!

[Ally]

Surely manager of the year. Quite how people mention Rodgers is beyond me, promoted team finish 14th woop de doo.

 

England had better stay away!

[Guest Howaythetoon]

And my bairn's winning streak since he was born... Played 6 and won them arl.

[Guest]

And my bairn's winning streak since he was born... Played 6 and won them arl.

 

Oh look at me, I've never seen the Toon lose...pathetic.

[Guest BooBoo]

Brendan Rogers.

 

[Guest Howaythetoon]

And my bairn's winning streak since he was born... Played 6 and won them arl.

 

Oh look at me, I've never seen the Toon lose...pathetic.

 

 

Good record though.

[Guest]

You'd imagine him & Cisse will get Manager & Player of the Month for April regardless of the Wigan result.

[Guest]

And my bairn's winning streak since he was born... Played 6 and won them arl.

 

Oh look at me, I've never seen the Toon lose...pathetic.

 

 

Good record though.

 

Superb.

 

 

[Robster]

You'd imagine him & Cisse will get Manager & Player of the Month for April regardless of the Wigan result.

Hope not. I always see that as some sort of jinx.

[LoveItIfWeBeatU]

You'd imagine him & Cisse will get Manager & Player of the Month for April regardless of the Wigan result.

The dreaded curse of the Manager of the month award derailing our Champions League charge in May!

 

[STM]

And my bairn's winning streak since he was born... Played 6 and won them arl.

 

Oh look at me, I've never seen the Toon lose...pathetic.

 

 

Good record though.

 

HTT, you changed your mind about Pardew?

[Guest sicko2ndbest]

And my bairn's winning streak since he was born... Played 6 and won them arl.

 

Oh look at me, I've never seen the Toon lose...pathetic.

 

 

Good record though.

 

HTT, you changed your mind about Pardew?

 

Cue, 6 page assault on how Pardew is now playing the way he (HTT) would have done all season and it is in spite of AP that we are where we are

 

[Cronky]

He reminds me a bit of that other smoothie George Graham - a real pragmatist who was focused on winning first, and the pretty stuff second. Pardew has established a solid base of sound defending, team discipline and stopping the opposition, and from that point it looks like we can now start to play a bit.

 

Like GG, his conservatism can be frustrating, but overall results have proven him right. And you feel the best is yet to come.

[colinmk]

Although there is still something about him I don't like, I can't argue with what he's done. Very impressive.

[Keefaz]

I remember Allardyce always kept banging on about building from the back: ensuring we were defensively sound first, then going on to add an attacking dimension to the side. WELL, LOOK AT THIS, YOU FAT FUCK: PARDS HAS DONE IT IN ONE SEASON!

[TRon]

Got it bang on again.

 

Pushing Cabaye that extra 15 yards further forward meant he dictated the game. Scored 2 and made the other.

 

We're starting to look like a proper team. Not just a decent one with a few good players who are nicking results but a really good XI with quality in every area of the park. Dominating teams at home, slicing them apart away with pace and finishing.

 

Just hope Ashley recognises what he's got and adds to it in the summer. 2 or 3 new quality players to compliment what we've got and we're fucking laughing. Really, really encouraging at the minute.

 

The way we are playing now is how I imagined we were going to play when we signed all those players from France in the summer, which is why it was so frustrating to see us playing long ball with Obertan starting ahead of Ben Arfa for the first half of the season. As it turns out I have to hold my hands up and say Pardew has got it right with Hatem. Not only is he now playing fantastic football, he's also clearly playing with a team ethic which will add millions to his value. If Pards did all this with the end in mind then he's a football genius. Full credit anyway, the football we are playing now is superb.

[colinmk]

Got it bang on again.

 

Pushing Cabaye that extra 15 yards further forward meant he dictated the game. Scored 2 and made the other.

 

We're starting to look like a proper team. Not just a decent one with a few good players who are nicking results but a really good XI with quality in every area of the park. Dominating teams at home, slicing them apart away with pace and finishing.

 

Just hope Ashley recognises what he's got and adds to it in the summer. 2 or 3 new quality players to compliment what we've got and we're fucking laughing. Really, really encouraging at the minute.

 

The way we are playing now is how I imagined we were going to play when we signed all those players from France in the summer, which is why it was so frustrating to see us playing long ball with Obertan starting ahead of Ben Arfa for the first half of the season. As it turns out I have to hold my hands up and say Pardew has got it right with Hatem. Not only is he now playing fantastic football, he's also clearly playing with a team ethic which will add millions to his value. If Pards did all this with the end in mind then he's a football genius. Full credit anyway, the football we are playing now is superb.

 

Totally agree. Holding my hands up and saying fair play with Ben Arfa. Just can't argue with what's happened, Pardew 10 colinmk 0.

[Pilko]

Pushing Cabaye further up the pitch yesterday was a stroke of genius which essentially made sure we won the game.

[LiquidAK]

Anyone got the picture of him surrounded by da ladiez on holiday? I need it for something.

[Dave]

A high-tempo practice game ends at Newcastle United’s Darsley Park training centre in north Tyneside and a few players begin to funnel towards the changing room. It’s been a long season, tiredness now stalks the team but there’s still much to play for. Two days before their 34th Premier League fixture — which they won 3-0 yesterday — there is the possibility of a Champions League place and it comes with the certainty that both team and club are progressing.

 

No longer do Newcastle burn money and accumulate debt. Last season they recorded a £32.5m profit, the highest in the Premier League. The club have cleared all external debt and there are no interest repayments on the £130m still owed to Mike Ashley, the club’s owner. But on the pitch and at training is where the evidence of the club’s good health is most apparent.

 

Players linger after their session at Darsley Park. Jonas Gutierrez, Ryan Taylor, Dan Gosling and James Perch play a game of football-golf where the aim is to manoeuvre a football from point to point in the fewest number of kicks. There are no winners — just an extended submersion in the ice bath for whoever finishes last. Out on the pitch Demba Ba works on his finishing with coaches John Carver and Steve Stone. Carver describes a defender Ba will encounter: “He stands upright and if you go at him like this, you’ll get past him.” At the other end of the training pitch, goalkeeping coach Andy Woodman speaks earnestly with reserve keeper Robbie Elliot but it is perhaps the two players shooting hoops that best express the mood.

 

Here beneath the basketball net the 30-year-old Shola Ameobi shoots the breeze with 20-year-old reserve defender James Tavernier; they try jump shots, three-pointers, Ameobi leaps and grabs the hoop, levering himself up like an NBA star. Tavernier jumps but can’t quite get there. They laugh, they try to outdo each other and it will be a sorry day when they have to work for a living. There is a buoyancy that has been reflected in the performances of Mike Williamson and Perch when injuries to others offered them opportunities. Through the eyes of their teammates, they have been stars.

 

Alan Pardew started his working life as a glazier before moving slowly through the ranks of non-league football to Yeovil Town. From there he got a £7,500 move to Crystal Palace. He scored the winner in an FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool and has been a manager at Reading, West Ham, Charlton, Southampton and now Newcastle. It is the stuff of three or four careers. Pardew is 50. He had never met Ashley before being interviewed for the Newcastle job but felt a connection at that first meeting. Pardew admired Ashley’s business acumen and the owner liked what he saw of the out-of-work manager, though Pardew still knew he was lucky to get the job. His CV wasn’t bad and it improved on closer examination but it didn’t make him a likely successor to Chris Hughton. One poll showed only 5.5% of Newcastle fans wanted him but Pardew was ready for the challenge.

 

“I had a good feeling about Mike. There was nothing snobbish about his attitude to who should manage Newcastle. I am not Pardinho but he wasn’t bothered by that.” The opportunity came with strings attached. He was replacing a man who most football people saw as victim of an injustice. “Chris was doing a good job, he is a very good coach and he’s now doing a great job at Birmingham. But it was obvious that Mike and Derek [Llambias, the managing director] didn’t want to go forward with Chris; it was the same for me at Southampton, where I felt I was doing a good job. So I didn’t have any sympathy for Chris because I’d had it [the same treatment] at Southampton. That’s just how it is.”

 

Pardew’s first game as Newcastle manager was Liverpool at St James’ Park. It felt like the game of his life. His team won 3-1; Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton and Andy Carroll got the goals but Pardew already knew that Ashley and Llambias weren’t keen to keep Barton and Nolan at the club any longer than was necessary. He didn’t know that within three months Carroll would be sold to Liverpool. “Andy Carroll was a blow to me when he left,” Pardew says. “My ambition for Andy was to mould him into the England centre-forward and I couldn’t wait to work with him but the fee was . . . . well, we were all looking at each other and saying, ‘What can we do? This fee is ridiculous for the experience he had, 16 Premier League games’. But it left us so vulnerable, last day of the window, no striker, and we weren’t safe.”

 

But the team got wins when they needed them and managed to stay beyond the reach of the octopus that drags unfortunates into the land of relegation. “The players done marvellous jobs to get us over the line, Kevin and Joey played a big role in that,” says Pardew. “All the time I was putting little things in, drip-feeding changes and the two lads bought into that but it was evident the board didn’t want to renegotiate their contracts and my hands were tied.”

 

Perhaps he didn’t try too hard to wriggle himself free. Were Barton and Nolan oak trees, tall and strong but in whose shadow others couldn’t grow? “That’s a clever way of putting it but I would put it differently. They are two giant characters but they’re winners as well, right up my street and I had a good relationship with both of them. Down through the years, I’ve had a member of staff say, ‘We can’t lose him because in the dressing room, he’s the funny one and everyone loves him’. “And I say, ‘No, he’s gotta go and when he goes, a new comedian will emerge’. It’s just natural, you have the comedian, the sulky one, the moody one, the funny one, the one who farts a lot, the one who plays the practical jokes, the one who sleeps around or whatever, all that. Take one out and someone replaces him, automatically. It’s just the way of the group.

 

“And that is what happened here. It was a gamble because if we didn’t have somebody to replace them big characters we would have been in trouble. We had a ready-made leader in [Fabricio] Coloccini, who just needed that armband to take on the role and I didn’t hesitate on that one. And in attracting Demba Ba to the club, not only did we get playing ability but we’ve got leadership as well.” Pardew doesn’t want to compare his new captain to his former leaders but around the club, there is a belief that the Argentinian’s leadership is more inclusive and better for the squad.

 

The manager has got much else right. He has managed to draw the best from Hatem Ben Arfa — “I watched and re-watched that goal against Everton [last season] and thought there won’t be many times in my career that I get to work with someone this talented,” says Pardew. “I’ve had to work hard with Hatem, he had a terrible injury, I pitched him back in a bit early and felt the second time I brought him back that it had to be right. “He felt a little bit let down by me initially. I understood that, and I handled that better than I would have when I was younger. Hatem puts a barrier up, keeps people out, lots of very good players do that. Teddy [sheringham] used to do it but if you can get inside the wall, you’ll find a strong and likeable character. As well as that, Hatem’s got some good people around him and that helps.”

 

Pardew’s ability to man-manage has been needed since the arrival of Papiss Cisse, a £9m signing from Freiburg in the Bundesliga who has fitted in well, scored plenty of goals. Meanwhile Senegalese compatriot Demba Ba has lost his scoring touch. “I’ve got to make sure this works, they’ve both got great ability but they are very different,” says Pardew. “Demba is more creative, can link play well and make lots of good passes. Papiss just lives for getting on the end of things, putting the ball in the net.” Ashley backed Pardew on Cisse even though the owner carries the scars left by overpriced signings and is against paying big money.

 

Pardew understands the caution. “We can’t put ourselves at risk. Leeds, Portsmouth, Rangers: heads in the sands, decisions based on emotion, there’s no way Mike and Derek are going to do that. Mike’s put something like £273m into the club and he’s not taken anything back. Since I’ve been here I have not really shouted his corner. Politically for me it’s a minefield. I want to keep the fans in a good place but I would say to them, before they get emotional about it, that Mike has invested something like 25% of his personal wealth in this football club.

“Ask me for 25% of my money and you’ve got no chance, I don’t care how good your idea is.”

[Cajun]

And my bairn's winning streak since he was born... Played 6 and won them arl.

 

Oh look at me, I've never seen the Toon lose...pathetic.

 

 

Good record though.

 

HTT, you changed your mind about Pardew?

 

Cue, 6 page assault on how Pardew is now playing the way he (HTT) would have done all season and it is in spite of AP that we are where we are

 

 

Tbf HTT ate his humble pie yesterday.

[Darth Crooks]

It’s just natural, you have the comedian, the sulky one, the moody one, the funny one, the one who farts a lot, the one who plays the practical jokes, the one who sleeps around or whatever, all that. Take one out and someone replaces him, automatically. It’s just the way of the group.

 

Howay, name names pards

 

 

[JH]

It’s just natural, you have the comedian, the sulky one, the moody one, the funny one, the one who farts a lot, the one who plays the practical jokes, the one who sleeps around or whatever, all that. Take one out and someone replaces him, automatically. It’s just the way of the group.

 

Howay, name names pards

 

http://i.imgur.com/01RpZ.png