You forgot to mention that Pardew is better at headbutting people and insulting them mate... whereas Rafa.....
The post was actually intended as a dig at Pouchy who seems to be suggesting that Pards had it as bad as Rafa. Pards didn’t get dealt a great hand but he still had much more money made available for players, relatively speaking, than Rafa has and at a time when that same money bought much more. Also i much prefer a manager who challenges the owner than what Pards was. If Pards had any integrity he would have walked but he didn’t and that sums him up for me.
Ok that’s understandable. I guess the difference is Pardew was relatively speaking more attack minded than Rafa. But Rafa has become so negative. Even with the players at his disposal the tactics are clearly ultra defensive.
Wishful thinking im afraid. I suspect that reports of the deal being at stalemate are more accurate than people want to believe. Not because Ashley thinks that a better offer will arrive just because he is stubborn as a mule and too used to getting his own way. He will want what he thinks its worth and i cant see anybody convincing him otherwise. If the deal does fall through Ashley will take his chances with Rafa. If we get relegated he will chuck another £20 - 25 million at getting us back up under a new manager and look forward to the enhanced TV money that just keeps on rising and rising. What we all forget is that Ashley is a multi billionaire. The odd £20 million gamble here and there is **** all for him. His kids will still eat turkey next Christmas if it all goes sour. Any more money that he puts into the club just gets added to the 'loan' anyway, so he will get it back eventually.
Not really the club just spent what little money it had better. They picked up bargains like Santon, Ben Arfa, Ba, Cabaye, Sissoko (somewhat), Debuchy etc. Most generated from the sales like Carroll. Similar to Rafa with Gino and Sissoko. I’d have to look at actual figures but I’d imagine Pards spend over the 5 yrs was bottom end and from sales mainly. It’s not popular to criticise Rafa but he has burnt his money on ****e if we are being honest. He bought players to get us out of the championship is always the cry. However let’s not pretend he didn’t have both a responsibility and hope that some of those purchases would improve and be able to step up. So he thought Yedlin, Gayle, Hayden, Sels, Hanley, etc would do the job two fold. If you ask which system worked better, you’d have to say with the constraints we had our money was far better entrusted to a scouting team and Pardew than Rafa. Instead of Joselu we were finding a Demba Ba. Instead of Murphy (who might turn out canny) we were buying Ben Arfa. Instead Yedlin we were buying Santon. Instead of Hayden we buy Tiote (Hughton). Sorry but I’m just not buying these bullshit excuses people churn out for Rafa. He may be a better manager of big clubs with money etc but in terms of pure performance against a backdrop of frugality then he is neither as astute in the market nor as good as understanding how you Man manage through the media. He’s stopped calling his players **** and falling in the media trap of talking windows in his last couple of interviews. At least he is smart enough to realise he has made mistakes. We will see if he can sort this mess out. When in trouble Pards got given 13m one Jan. realistically Rafa needs a similar opportunity in Jan which is prob 26m in today’s money. It worked then even if we did squander the money poorly at the time on Haidara, Mbiwa, Sissoko and Gouffran. It gave us a lift. I just think it’s massively bias to just think Rafa has had it harder than Pards. If you said McClaren I’d say yes for sure. That guy spent 50m in a window and another 20m in the next. Pardew operated under austerity for 5yrs solid and we never went down. I did say this at the time. He was the right horse for the right course. At present Rafa is finding it tough under similar circumstances. He is making mistakes in transfers and management of his resources. It’s just a foreign concept for him having been at the likes of Real, Valencia, Napoli, Liverpool, Inter, Chelsea. Different world of resources at your disposal.
He has had it harder because he's had to do his business in the middle of being relegated, and therefore having to sell all of his players with real quality with decent players mostly not wanting to come to a relegated club, and also with us being a newly promoted which good players didn't want to join. On top of that the market is just completely different now. The fees are ridiculous and rising by the month, smaller clubs know they can hold out for maximum money they can get, other EPL clubs earn so much now that us as a newly promoted club are actually a less affluent club than the likes of the mighty Watford, Bournemouth and Swansea (I could go on), French clubs will no longer get mugged by English clubs with cheap deals for players like Cabaye and Sissoko (they are demanding £20m+ for players while we are offering £5m), and Demba Ba was a bit of a one off in any era (are any clubs anywhere signing players for £7m who can leave for free after half a season if they get relegated?). Loan players are no longer cheap options - clubs want several millions usually to get a player for a season. You can point the finger at Rafa if you want to ignore history, but think of the players he ended up signing versus who he actually wanted in - and I'm talking about realistic signings, not pie in the sky, "I want Messi, Ronaldo, and Kane" signings. Take last summer. He wanted Abraham and Cairney as an example, and a string of other 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc choices. He was left an option of signing Joselu and nobody for number 10 because we wouldn't stump up the cash/players weren't interested. I forget all the other names we were in for but he basically got nothing near what he wanted. Don't get me wrong, Pardew's hands were tied in the past and I defended him at the time but the circumstances are very different now and Rafa has had it harder. It's pretty naive to just say Rafa has full control and it's all his fault that we've signed (some) dross. Left back/right back for example, he either had the choice of nobody (and a gap in the squad) or Manquillo. Yes, there may have been other options but they wouldn't have been any better. That was the bargain bin he had to deal in. If we don't at least start the next season in the Premier League with new owners (and ones that have some ambition, i.e. coin) then we are going to struggle for a long time to come with us being a yo-yo club as a optimistic outcome.
You are speculating a lot on what Rafa did or didn’t do though. Were Manquillo and Joselu really all that were available? Was his list realistic? Cairney is a good example, no club would pay that for him clearly or were Fulham ever willing to sell. We spent 12m on Murphy, 9m on Lejeune, 5m on Joselu, 6m on Atsu. 5m on Manquillo. I think he squandered our 37m and people are unwilling to accept this. He piss farted on with Abraham who supposedly wanted to join Swansea from the off and Chelsea preferred him at Swansea. Will Hughes moved to Watford for 8m. Ricarlison for 11m. Joe Bryan didn’t even move from Bristol C. Far better than Manquillo. Jota who looked impressive at 10 last season moved for about 7m to Birmingham. Pontus Jansen moved to Leeds for 3.6m. They also signed Anita for free from us who is far better full back than Manquillo. They signed Sáiz for about 3m who plays as a wide forward. They loaned Lasogga who is a far better striker than Joselu. Burnley paid a compo fee of about 3m for Charlie Taylor. Again far better than Manquillo. Wolves are obviously a strange one but they have signed a variety of loan deals and cheap purchases through their contacts. Many of whom look better in their position than those we squandered 37m on. Did we need Lejeune? He has played a lot (badly). We had 3 better centre backs in Lascelles, Mbemba and Clark. I think we all know that for 5m we could have done better than Manquillo. Indeed we could have just kept Anita and signed a left back. Did we need Murphy and Atsu? Could we have managed with one?Would we not have been better spending 8m on Hughes or Jota? Or loaning Lasogga and using the 5m we wasted on Joselu? Or selling Mitro given he didn’t want him and using the money. The above is just off the top of my head. When you are bottom feeding you have got to be smart - Rafa wasn’t in my opinion regardless of the current market or the other excuses that are thrown out there. People still found value in the market. We didn’t. We bought utter ****e for similar fees. We can talk about crazy transfer fees or rafas list of targets, how French clubs don’t get rinsed, the bottom line is others got the job done with similar transfer fees. Plenty of clubs sold players for relatively similar values to those we did the likes of Lille and Toulouse for. It’s out there if you have the contacts and your homework is quality. Sorry but ours was either unrealistic or just ****e.
If we signed Ricarlison, Hughes, Bryan, Atsu and retained Anita I think we would be better off this season. I’m sure Hayden could have filled in at centre back if things got desperate. I think other clubs used their budget better and had better contacts/homework. Rafa does have a history of dodgy transfer work. He sold pissed off Alonso trying to sign Barry. Then sold him and replaced him with Aquilani. https://www.theguardian.com/football/gallery/2009/may/20/liverpool-transfers#img-17 This sums up some of the dross he signed outside of the good ones when he had money at Liverpool. Prepare yourself - some of it is pretty ugly
But transfer fees are only part of the equation. Standing from the incoming players perspective counts. In that respect Watford and Swansea look better than us as already being in the PL. Also wages come into the equation. If we aren’t prepared to pay the going rate then players won’t come and we seem to be known as not being willing to pay the going rate. Also throw in the attempt by Ashley to “improve” the books in anticipation of a sale.Again not saying Rafa hasn’t made mistakes but from an outsider looking in, which is what we all are, the constraints on Rafa are noticeably more than Pards. Plus, for me, Pards innate ability to drag the Club down whilst being a mouthpiece for Ashley, will mean I will never stand the man.
There nothing noticeable about it. We were poor at paying wages then, we are now. We wouldn’t pay the big transfer fees then, we won’t now. Ashley has been supposedly trying to improve the books and sell the club for 10 years. Sorry this is just all poppycock to defend Rafa. There is no difference. Or at least no one has presented any in my opinion. I will say in terms of representing the club well, clearly Rafa is a much classier fellow. He hasn’t had any of the flashpoints Pardew with the headbutt or pushing the linesman. I can accept that he will always act a bit more in keeping with a professional manager. Nor do I want rid of Rafa. However I’m not going to be blinded by some soppy love in. I’ll just judge him on performance rather than make excuses. In his reign so far I’d give him a D-. He failed to keep us up but it was a tough task in 10 games. He got us up. We are not in the relegation zone currently. Those are both plusses. Merino is a great find. Ritchie was a good signing. On the negative the football is poor to watch, we made hard work of the championship, the transfer business has been ****e, our home form this season has been horrific regardless of excuses, his team selection is at times baffling, his reluctance to use what I see as his best players is baffling, his rigid substitution regime which is ineffective is annoying, and his handling of the media/constraints he is under has been below par. To be honest if Pardew hadn’t done the silly things and had performed like Rafa, I have no doubt there would be a massive swell for his head by now. I think people are either blinded by him being a big name (this seems likely as people keep saying “we won’t get any better” which I find a weird statement) or they are holding out hope a takeover happens and he gets money, being well equipped to utilise this situ better than most. Perhaps this is somewhat true as he is well respected. Personally if we did get taken over I would fully understand the new owners sacking him in the summer and getting a more modern up and coming name to take us on. He has just never really got anything going here so far. It may just be this situation is so alien to him that he has been out of his depth in terms of a battle. Maybe he would suddenly come alive with backing but I think it takes a pretty big leap of faith.
