Records that stretch across seasons are always slightly contrived things. The summer break is a significant thing, after all; players come and go, teams change managers, new approaches are worked out and implemented. But since this season is young, and since Newcastle United have decided to begin this one the way they ended the last, it seems justified.
Alan Pardew’s Newcastle reign looks doomed
Two points from four games, on the bottom of the league, and with a fanbase in open revolt, Alan Pardew’s grip on the Newcastle job is looking weaker than ever.
Richard Heathcote
So: in 2014, Newcastle have played 23 league games. Of those, they’ve won five, drawn three, and lost 15. That’s less than a point a game; over a season, that’s about 30 points. Not just relegation form. Getting on for humiliation form. Not too far from oblivion form.
It's one hell of a run, and it's included all manner of defeats. A 3-0 loss to local rivals Sunderland, a couple of hammerings at the hands of Champions League sides, and one of only three victories managed by Felix Magath's Fulham (so far, at least). In 15 of those games, Newcastle have failed to score a single goal. In the interests of balance we should point out that this run has also included a 3-0 win over, er, a doomed Cardiff City, and a 4-1 win over Hull. That last game was an excellent performance, and manager Alan Pardew was so excited that he headbutted a passing opponent.
Yet those numbers and facts and calculations and comparisons, appallingly appalling though they are, don't quite nail what's so miserable about Newcastle at the moment. What's miserable is the misery, which is trite, but here we are. Consider the matchgoing fans from Saturday's 4-0 defeat at Southampton — 281 miles as the magpie flies, ages as the magpie sits on the train — and it's the potent, hideous cocktail of anger and misery that hits you. It drips from the homemade banners. It echoes from the endless, rumbling chants of dissatisfaction. It cries out of every face.
It’s not just what comes from supporting a team that are getting pummelled into oblivion on the pitch. That can even be fun, in a strange sort of way; while it’s becoming increasingly rare to find anybody in the Premier League who will admit that losing a game of football isn’t the Worst Thing that has Ever Happened, there is still a little space for gallows humour, for being silly in the face of defeat. The gleeful and knowing chant that predicts triumph in the face of an unassailable scoreline — “5-4! We’re going to win 5-4!” — remains one of football’s more enjoyable peculiarities.
This feels deeper, or at least it does from an outside, non-Newcastle-supporting point of view. This feels like what happens when a fanbase knows — or at least suspects, thinks, and feels deep down — that the club they support seems, for reasons mysterious and opaque, not to care too much about them. Where relegation form doesn’t trigger the sackings that should follow; where appointments are made without apparent reason; where players are sold without explanation or replacement, or bought without an obvious plan. Where things happen that don’t make sense at the moment, then don’t work out well in the fullness of time, yet are just allowed to drift.
Much of this is Pardew’s fault, and much of it isn’t. Making its way around the internet today has been the website Sack Pardew, which catalogues the manager’s various excuses for his side’s various disappointments. It’s an impressive list that takes in fans being too positive, fans being too negative, Notting Hill Carnival, his players being too short, the grass being too long, and the club being on precisely 46 points. Apparently that makes things difficult.
Which is not to say that some of the more sensible excuses don’t have some basis in reality. On Match of the Day, Alan Shearer pointed out that Pardew is not the controlling voice when it comes to transfers. That criticisms of the the composition and balance of the squad aren’t to be laid at his door; they, presumably, should instead be shared between chief scout Graham Carr, Mike Ashley, and whoever else he consults with. More generally, Ashley continues to guide the club in the manner of a truculent adolescent, surfacing only to ban this or that journalist, and things have reached the point where his recent promise not to sell the club at any point over the next two seasons sounds less like a reassurance and more like a threat.
Nevertheless, the case for Pardew’s dismissal is compelling on a number of levels, and not just because there are a couple of notable and reliable Premier League managers currently unemployed, as well as Tim Sherwood. To choose just one aspect of Newcastle’s dreadful recent football, look at their attempts to defend against Southampton. Fabricio Coloccini isn’t the greatest central defender of all time. But he’s playing like a man who has either (a) been told to stand in the wrong place, run in the wrong direction, and roundly ignore the strikers or (b) been told to stand in the right place but is so mentally scrambled by everything around him that he simply can’t.
Underperforming players means a sacked manager, for a combination of reasons: pragmatic, since you can’t sack an entire playing staff; logical, since management is about making those managed perform at their best; and symbolic, since the headsman’s axe gets thirsty in times of discontent. There is great value in marking the end of one era and the beginning of another.
Basically, Newcastle look like a club where nearly everybody is doing their job badly. Normally, when that happens, the manager gets fired, and surely Pardew’s time has come. It won’t solve all the problems, but then Newcastle are by no means fortunate enough to be struggling with just the one. Yes, he has a long contract, and yes, it’ll cost a few bob to break it. But it’ll be worth every penny to Ashley if it averts relegation. And if it can lift the gloom around St James’ Park, then it’ll be worth something infinitely more precious.
See More:
