Alan Pardew

[Tiresias]

Newcastle's Jonás Gutiérrez: 'Alan Pardew is a bit like Diego ... shit at managing'

The Guardian-7 minutes ago

In a corner of Newcastle United's training ground canteen four players sit playing cards, seemingly oblivious to the world around them. For Jonás Gutiérrez

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/25/newcastle-jonas-gutierrez-pardew-maradona

 

fyp

[Ameritoon]

Love Jonas

[Tiresias]

Tis a lovely interview actually, hope he can rediscover some form because right now he's a liability, but he's way too nice for it to be anything other than sad

[SteveMc]

Good read

[Ronaldo]

Usual nonsense. I do like Jonas a lot but we're a far bigger club than he deserves on his best day.

 

 

[oldtype]

 

 

thats a pretty simplistic way to look at it, and dismiss all the other factors like travel, disruption to training etc.

 

Travel, we played at home as often as we played away and two of the away trips resulted in flights of 2 hours or less.  The disruption to training should be minimal if he re-schedules days off.

 

Before Pardew arrived we played in Europe and didn't use it as an excuse, we managed the situations instead of looking to use it as a way of deflecting the attention away from poor performance.

 

We’ve rarely had a massive squad of quality and we’ve had seasons with as many games as this in the past without looking for excuses.  We’ve been hearing since September or October that the players are tired and it’s more of the same bullshit.

 

Nail on the head

 

To be fair, pretty much the exact thing happened the last time we were in Europe.

 

Injury crises, shit form, lethargic performances. I remember losing to Sheff Utd 1-0 at St James Park to a Danny Weber() goal two days after we played in Turkey or something.

[alexthegreat]

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/football/view/289496/Alan-Pardew-needs-to-sort-out-player-war-before-Newcaslte-blow-up-warns-Malcolm-Macdonald/

 

ALAN PARDEW NEEDS TO SORT OUT PLAYER WAR BEFORE NEWCASLTE BLOW UP WARNS MALCOLM MACDONALD

 

Macdonald said: “I’m just telling it as I see it and it’s like a slow-motion car crash before my eyes.

 

“There’s no communication on the pitch. Players aren’t looking out for each other. There’s no team spirit.

 

“Okay, people who disagree will say Newcastle played well against Man City. Yes, they did and got beaten 3-1.

 

“You can play all the best football you want and still get relegated. If Newcastle don’t snap themselves out of this dreadful situation my worry is that they will get relegated.

 

“They must put arguments aside and go about the job in a professional way. Put the club and the supporters first and not their squabbles.

 

“Newcastle have Man United, Arsenal and Everton coming up – three of the top six. If they don’t buck up their ideas by the time January comes around they’ll be looking to bring in players.

 

“But they are not going to get the quality they need because players will look at the league table and say, ‘I’m not joining you, you’re going down’.

 

“It’s like a disease eating away at the club and it’s spreading like wildfire.

 

“It’s a nightmare. Excuses are being made without people pin-pointing what’s really gone wrong.

 

“It seems to me as if there’s a battle going on between the French and Spanish - speaking players.

 

“I’m seeing things on the pitch which don’t add up. I saw Gutierrez come in from wide left into centre midfield  and stand by Cabaye as if he was man-to-man marking.

 

“Cabaye gestured to get back to the left and Gutierrez ignored him. So Cabaye just shrugged his shoulders and went out to play on the left.

 

“That was the first indication that something was seriously wrong.

 

“I’m just seeing people not getting on.

 

“You don’t have to like each other. But you go out on that pitch and treat everyone the same.

 

“When you have a dressing room situation, the first things to suffer are results and performances. And Newcastle’s have been dreadful.

 

“One or two players are looking around thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’

 

“Ben Arfa looks like he’s getting sick and tired of it all. He’s not joining either camp but is obviously upset with the situation.

 

“The divide is complicated but it’s cutting the cake into slices. It’s totally damaging.

 

“The manager has got to sit down with the players and get it sorted. But he’s got one hell of a situation on his hands.

 

“How do you mend it? You need people wanting to work together. Just one look at the table tells you how serious it is. It’s there for all to see.”

 

Some interesting stuff , am I putting that on the wrong topic ? 

 

Spoke to someone in my local this evening who knows Steve Harper. Harper basically told him similar to MacDonald's quotes above - French and Spanish speakers not getting on, and Ba just does whatever the f*** he wants.

 

Also reckoned the French in our sqaud were really unhappy that Debuchy didn't arrive.

[Ronaldo]

There's what, 3 Spanish speakers in the squad? One of which is Jonas and another is Xisco. Enough said.

[loki679]

In a corner of Newcastle United's training ground canteen four players sit playing cards, seemingly oblivious to the world around them. For Jonás Gutiérrez, Fabricio Coloccini, Xisco and Davide Santon shuffling, dealing and trumping forms a regular post-lunch ritual, a chance to temporarily forget about the team's poor form and share a few jokes in Spanish.

 

"Davide's Italian but our languages are not so different and we understand each other," says Gutiérrez in near flawless English. "It's not like French – we have a lot of French speakers in our dressing room but I don't really understand a word. It doesn't matter though because I talk to most of the lads in English – except Xisco; he only speaks Spanish."

 

That's from the Jonas article.  Kind of goes with what MacDonald was saying.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

If those quotes are genuine then Supermac should be ashamed of himself TBH. As if he really knows anything about what goes on. These days he makes a living whinging about Newcastle and has done for years. Can't stand the bloke.

[Tiresias]

It suggests there are cliques, doesn't suggest there's a rift

[merlin]

Europe is a massive distraction, I can't see how anyone can deny that. Instead of spending a week preparing for the next PL game we're spending half of it preparing for a European match.

 

How did we ever win the Fairs Cup in 1969 and still stay out of trouble..??

[merlin]

Europe is a massive distraction, I can't see how anyone can deny that. Instead of spending a week preparing for the next PL game we're spending half of it preparing for a European match.

 

Comes with the territory i'm afraid and i'd much rather have our team competing regularly in European competition than not.

 

If Pardew is a manager who cannot deal with having his club in Europe than quite simply he is not cut out to manage a club of that calibre.

 

Nail on head - KK and SBR both managed it.

 

To be fair to Pardew though, its not only his ability to handle the situation that is in question, its also the so-called Board...failed to strengthen the squad for more games.

[merlin]

If those quotes are genuine then Supermac should be ashamed of himself TBH. As if he really knows anything about what goes on. These days he makes a living whinging about Newcastle and has done for years. Can't stand the bloke.

 

Just because Macdonald has made his mouth go in the past doesn't mean he is always wrong...are you saying he should keep his mouth shut because he's wrong- questionable in my view - or just because you don't think anyone should rock the boat by telling the truth..? There is CLEARLY a major problem at SJP and I have no doubt that many of the players aren't happy. The manager's job is to sort it out and that is not happening.

 

If Given has also made similar claims about dissention in the squad it seems there is more chance of Macdonald being right than wrong - hiding a problem never solves it , all that happens is that it festers below the surface.

For what its worth I think that the French guys WERE disappointed about Debuchy, esp Cabaye, but more for footballing reasons than nationality and that has been proven correct so far. ALL the talented players are probably fed up with the hoof style of play and Ba is unsettled and probably a law unto himself...Pardew just has to take it because he is not confident about getting a suitable replacement...just as we aren't confident in Ashley's ability to obtain a suitable replacement for Pardew.......

 

All a recipe for stasis...i.e. nothing getting done to improve things generally.

 

Facts are that the way the club is being run is open to question apart from the fact that we have little OPEN debt.

[Guest neesy111]

Macdonald is an easy target for people to vent fury at.

[mrmojorisin75]

war in the camp?

 

1. we're not getting results

2. we're not playing football and everyone but pardew knows it

 

fix either or both of those and the war bullshit will cease to exist

[lovejoy]

This "Pardew finished 5th" malarky needs to stop.

 

Carr assembled us an excellent team, and we finished 5th despite Pardew, not because of him. His part in putting that team together was next to none, and although he's a good spokesman and says all the right things and comes over as very articulate, he hasn't got the faintest idea on how to put together an attacking side that has any flair or can play lesser teams off the park.

 

We defend doggedly, but once we get the ball we're just not set up to exploit teams or create chances.

 

If we can't praise him for doing well then we can't criticise him for doing badly then. Thread over.

 

Nonsense.

 

He deserves praise for last season as much as criticism for this.

 

[lovejoy]

This 'we didn't use Europe as an excuse for bad results in the past' isn't entirely true either. Bobby did. Granted shepherd wouldn't move the games back 24 hours in order to get the sky £ (we had expected champs league) but the excuse was trotted out regularly all the same.

 

[oldtype]

Europe obviously has some degree of negative effect, it would be foolish to argue otherwise.

 

It only starts becoming an "excuse" when we're doing exceptionally badly.

[mrmojorisin75]

Europe obviously has some degree of negative effect, it would be foolish to argue otherwise.

 

It only starts becoming an "excuse" when we're doing exceptionally badly.

 

same argument as "tired" players; messi and ronaldo aren't tired playing 70 or so games a season are they?

 

nobody would be talking about europe if we'd swashbuckled our way through the games, or indeed any fucking games at all the entire season to date

 

i'm entirely convinced everything about this season is coming down to our coaching and style of play with the obvious exception of injuries and the depth of squad in certain positions...we saw it last year, players didn't want to leave the pitch and would play through to stay in the team, this year they can hardly hide their distaste at being on it if you ask me

[JH]

What's Europe exactly getting in the way of, though? Qualifying for Europe?

[TaylorJ_01]

What's Europe exactly getting in the way of, though? Qualifying for Europe?

 

Exactly I can't be arsed arguing but the players shouldnt be fucking tired.

[Skeletor]

Man Utd, Man City, Arsenal, Spurs all regularly play 2 games a week and their match preparation is still consistent. Probably because they have a style of play they've all been trained to play in the first place and concern themselves more with asserting their superiority on teams and not countering the strengths of other teams.

[Stifler]

Europe obviously has some degree of negative effect, it would be foolish to argue otherwise.

 

It only starts becoming an "excuse" when we're doing exceptionally badly.

No, consider the fact the most of our European games have seen us field the reserves it is not an excuse.

[NG32]

Man Utd, Man City, Arsenal, Spurs all regularly play 2 games a week and their match preparation is still consistent. Probably because they have a style of play they've all been trained to play in the first place and concern themselves more with asserting their superiority on teams and not countering the strengths of other teams.

 

THAT