You forget that Pardew was quite happy to be Mikey’s mouthpiece whereas the same accusation can hardly be levelled at Rafa. Also with HBA if he didn’t have the personality issues he would never have been here. Brilliantly talented but forgot to stand in the “professionalism” queue before he was born.
Almost 5 years down since the Silver Haired Fox left the club, and you can still feel the love for him on here. I'm sure Pards would appreciate all the gracious sentiment. I suspect the only queue that HBA has stood in, led to the pasty counter at Greggs.
Certainly he was more willing to play the game with Mike. He is not alone in that though, plenty of managers do it that way. To be honest it could be argued quite easily that its actually detrimental to go up against him in some attempt to garner favour with fans and get him to spend. If anything he digs his heels in further and all it does is whip the fans into a frenzy of hate, which always seems to coincide with a downturn in results. So you gain nothing really. Saying that neither way is right because Pardew also whipped the fans into a frenzy because they still weren't happy and turned on the manager instead. All of this stuff goes back to Ashley though rather than Rafa or Pardew. He puts them in that situation. Agree on HBA and would not change it despite the way he ended up going on. It was worth watching him for that short period he concentrated on football.
I have to say I think Pardew is a pretty gash manager. Its just that results here don't lie and his time here has to be seen in a different light now Rafa's had a go and done no better. Others have tried under Ashley and failed badly. Pardew for some reason did pretty well consistently at Newcastle which flies in the face of the rest of his career. Don't get me wrong he's had spells at most of the clubs he has been at, but they've all fizzled out. At Newcastle he was consistently pretty good for 4-5 years given the constraints he had placed on him (and the fact he was abused most weeks by the home support for at least 2 seasons )
It's the greatest element of not606, one minute we're signing Gareth Bale, the next Alan Pardew is returning!
