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Andy Brassell wrote a piece on Pardew. I was prepared for another wankfest but he's surprisingly fair about his final months up here.

 

You sense that at both the start and finish of the arriving international break, plenty will browse the Premier League table with a bit more scrutiny than is usually the case at this time of year. The opening two months of the season have been so wonderfully chaotic (for any neutrals, at least) that re-familiarising oneself with where it's at is pretty much an imperative.

 

Crystal Palace are a case in point, having crept up to a heady fourth place on the back of successive wins. Their manager Alan Pardew has never been known for his subtlety, but Palace's progress under the man who famously scored their winner in the 1990 FA Cup semi-final win over Liverpool has proved that leopards really can change their spots.

 

Palace's upwards trajectory since Pardew's appointment in January has been relentless. His achievement in plucking his new side from the relegation zone to a top-ten finish was extraordinary, and has led many to claim that Newcastle made a huge mistake in willingly letting him go.

 

The argument that his former club have gone from bad to worse since his departure is a poor one, however, with the Geordies' woes more related to Mike Ashley's own management since than the lack of any Pardew magic. A more sober assessment is that he had become very stale at St Jamess' Park and overstayed his welcome by several months, at least.

 

Yet Pardew's work so far back on his old stomping ground is firm proof that relationships run their course, and that people move on and change for the better. Palace have been nothing short of sensational since his return to south London, and his team's ambition and maturity in this campaign so far demands that they must be taken seriously.

 

His increasingly stodgy tactics at Newcastle did nothing for talents like Hatem Ben Arfa and Remy Cabella, which needed nurturing, but he has provided a platform for flair players to flourish at Selhurst Park. The intermittent use of his wingers, Wilfried Zaha, Bakary Sako and Jason Puncheon, in more central roles has been imaginative, as was his decision to start with another, the outstanding Yannick Bolasie, as a lone front man in the recent trip to Tottenham.

The forward players owe much of their freedom to the incoming influence of Pardew's trusted muse Yohan Cabaye. The France midfielder has been used in a more defensive position - surprisingly, perhaps, given his success as a de facto number 10 at Newcastle immediately before his transfer to Paris Saint-Germain - and has given Palace great solidity.

 

The first game back in the swing of things after the break, against another former Pardew club in West Ham, will be a fascinating one, especially given the Hammers' thrilling unpredictability since Slaven Bilic took the helm.

 

Having the joint-best defence in the league with just seven conceded (albeit a title shared with four other teams) gives Palace reason to look beyond this, however, to the bigger picture. Competition may be fierce, but the fact that Pardew's team look so organised and that they can hope to do even better if their strikers start scoring (Cabaye is the top scorer so far with three, two of which were penalties), means that they have earned the right to dream.

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Goodness me. A very fair assessment of his time here, but f*** me, reading about his time at Palace would have you think Klopp had picked Selhurst Park instead of Anfield.

 

I hate this guy so much.

he has taken a team from a relegation battle, to midtable, to an early season CL position. That's impressive by anybodies measure.
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Goodness me. A very fair assessment of his time here, but f*** me, reading about his time at Palace would have you think Klopp had picked Selhurst Park instead of Anfield.

 

I hate this guy so much.

he has taken a team from a relegation battle, to midtable, to an early season CL position. That's impressive by anybodies measure.

 

It's nothing but new manager bounce. He's a charlatan and a fork-tongued chancer and he always will be.

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Goodness me. A very fair assessment of his time here, but f*** me, reading about his time at Palace would have you think Klopp had picked Selhurst Park instead of Anfield.

 

I hate this guy so much.

he has taken a team from a relegation battle, to midtable, to an early season CL position. That's impressive by anybodies measure.

 

Not mine.

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That's the worst sentence I've ever read, it pretty much sums up every aspect of what's wrong with football fans.

Tbf he's just a casual fan, and has never really supported anyone fully.

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Goodness me. A very fair assessment of his time here, but f*** me, reading about his time at Palace would have you think Klopp had picked Selhurst Park instead of Anfield.

 

I hate this guy so much.

he has taken a team from a relegation battle, to midtable, to an early season CL position. That's impressive by anybodies measure.

 

Really fucking bored of this tedious fuckwittery now like.

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CQf4Zk6WUAA2KS9.png

 

Palace concede more shots to the opposition than every club bar us and the mackems and no club has a conceded fewer.

 

Walking a tightrope.

 

Thanks! I love analysis like this. There are lots of weird stats about Crystal Palace this year. They lead the league in fouls committed and concede loads of shots as shown in the above chart. Going forward, they are team that attacks least down the middle, only 21%. There are fourth in % on each wing (strong and v. balanced) and lead the league in crosses. We're not actually that dissimilar, but the numbers don't show the quality of balls sent in. You check all these numbers in the team statistics on Whoscored.

 

Given Pardew's handling of HBA, his choice of Obertan, and the poor quality set pieces we persisted with for year after year, it's hard to fathom why his new team can have successful wing play and score from so many set pieces. His record at Newcastle almost rules him out as the cause.

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Bored because even if he goes onto win the fucking Champions League with Palace and returns to football to nab the Ballon D'Or, he would still have done a fucking ridiculously shit job here, and should've been sacked long before he willingly left. And was integral in leaving us with the defeatist mentality the club is finding difficult to get out of (yes, I know it's mainly Ashley's fault, but Pardew was his Goering).

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Bored because even if he goes onto win the f***ing Champions League with Palace and returns to football to nab the Ballon D'Or, he would still have done a f***ing ridiculously s*** job here, and should've been sacked long before he willingly left. And was integral in leaving us with the defeatist mentality the club is finding difficult to get out of (yes, I know it's mainly Ashley's fault, but Pardew was his Goering).

 

Agree with that.  He was forever telling all and sundry that we could not compete and so it has come to pass.

 

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He's won, you've lost. When he thinks back to that Stoke game, he laughs. When he looks at the league table, he laughs. The media are on his side. Fans of other clubs are on his side. He doesn't care if Newcastle fans hate him. Even if it goes terribly next season, people will refer back to the 'good job' he did at Newcastle, and his first one and a half seasons at Palace.

 

Then he'll get another PL job somewhere, or a cushy job as a media expert. Or maybe just retire on his millions and focus on his playboy lifestyle. His ego will not be dented.

 

 

Accept it, move on. It's over. Will be less painful for you this way.

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He's won, you've lost. When he thinks back to that Stoke game, he laughs. When he looks at the league table, he laughs. The media are on his side. Fans of other clubs are on his side. He doesn't care if Newcastle fans hate him. Even if it goes terribly next season, people will refer back to the 'good job' he did at Newcastle, and his first one and a half seasons at Palace.

 

Then he'll get another PL job somewhere, or a cushy job as a media expert. Or maybe just retire on his millions and focus on his playboy lifestyle. His ego will not be dented.

 

 

Accept it, move on. It's over. Will be less painful for you this way.

 

Can we ban this guy?

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He's won, you've lost. When he thinks back to that Stoke game, he laughs. When he looks at the league table, he laughs. The media are on his side. Fans of other clubs are on his side. He doesn't care if Newcastle fans hate him. Even if it goes terribly next season, people will refer back to the 'good job' he did at Newcastle, and his first one and a half seasons at Palace.

 

Then he'll get another PL job somewhere, or a cushy job as a media expert. Or maybe just retire on his millions and focus on his playboy lifestyle. His ego will not be dented.

 

 

Accept it, move on. It's over. Will be less painful for you this way.

 

Can we ban this guy?

 

:lol: It's tough love. Needs to be said.

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Also his reputation was shot before we gave him a chance out of nowhere. He has no excuses now he can't fall back on Ashley being the reason for his ineptitude. To say he's going to go onwards and upwards now is speculative, he's been flavour of the month before and he fucked it because he's a shit manager and a fucking arsehole.

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Also his reputation was shot before we gave him a chance out of nowhere. He has no excuses now he can't fall back on Ashley being the reason for his ineptitude. To say he's going to go onwards and upwards now is speculative, he's been flavour of the month before and he fucked it because he's a shit manager and a fucking arsehole.

 

This. He wasn't in the lower leagues for ages for nowt.

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