The disgusting campaign against Alan Pardew

I find the media campaign against Alan Pardew pretty disgusting. I don’t think there has been a concerted effort to get him sacked, but some of them really don’t like him, and journalists and pundits have a nasty habit of jumping on the bandwagon against someone. Garth Crooks on the BBC play-by-play analysis on Saturday said that Pardew’s position was ‘untenable’ when Newcastle went 2-0 down to Hull, then quietly changed his tune when Newcastle came back to draw the match. Fickle. But the idea that a certain manager is struggling can then become a self-fulfilling one as the players on the pitch start losing confidence and fans get on the managers back.

Pardew’s critics have some reasons for wanting him to be sacked.

1.      His record in 2014

Newcastle have only won only five games in 2014. Some say that this is ‘relegation form’ and that Pardew should be sacked because of this.

But shouldn’t managers be judged season-to-season rather than year-to-year? Newcastle had a good first half of 2013-14, but this analysis doesn’t take that into account. And Pardew’s good managerial record strongly suggests they’ll pick up this season too.

2.      His touchline behavior

Pardew has done several stupid and ugly things on the touchline over the years. Some pundits argued at the time of the Neil Meyler incident that Pardew should have been sacked (they overreacted badly, he was only given a three match ban for it by the FA, not a twenty match ban!). Robbie Savage said on Match of the Day that evening that Pardew’s position had become ‘untenable’(that word again); he seems to have a thing against Pardew. Although these incidents were unedifying, ultimately nobody was hurt and I think, frankly, some commentators and pundits have been rather sanctimonious.

3.      Newcastle have been ‘drifting’ or ‘stagnating’

If drifting or stagnating means staying in the Premier League, well I think many clubs would love to be doing this year after year.

Why he shouldn’t be sacked.

Newcastle United are a profitable club, that’s the way Mike Ashley likes it. St James’s Park is one of the biggest stadiums in the country and regularly sells out for match days. Then there is the transfer strategy whereby Pardew and his team find bargains and Ashley sells them for a profit. Ba was picked up for free and sold for just over £7 million, Debuchy was bought for £5.5 million and sold for £12 million, Cabaye was bought for £5 million and sold for £19 million. Pardew would have liked to keep those players but clearly Ashley wanted the money. I hate to say it, but that’s modern football. And if Newcastle United fans don’t like it, well they could blame Ashley, they could curse the whole damn world, but they can’t really blame Alan Pardew.

The man’s not perfect, but I’m sure he’ll keep Newcastle in the Premier League if he’s allowed to stay, and will keep them top ten most of the time (they have been top ten in three of his four full seasons). Given that Ashley keeps selling his best players, I don’t think anything more can reasonably be expected of him.  

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A Manchester United pre-mortem

The ‘pre-mortem’, developed by the behavioral psychologist Gary Klein, is a tool used by business executives to spot flaws in their own planning due to the natural innability in human beings to do this well (a problem known known as the planning fallacy). It involves imagining a scenario a year from now where your business has gone bust or your project has failed and pre-emptively identifying the possible reasons why this might happen. In this post I will use a pre-mortem examination to try to pinpoint where Manchester United might go wrong again this season.

So, imagine that it is now May, 2015 and Manchester United haven’t qualified for Europe again suffering devastating losses to Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal in the process. What went wrong?

1    They made too many changes over the summer.

Seventeen players left the club and six came in over the summer. Having a high turnover of players makes success on the pitch difficult (e.g. QPR in 2012/13 and Spurs in 2013/14).

2    There are too many ‘stars’

Not everyone got game every week and this caused unhappiness and resentment among the star names. Players they got rid of in the summer such as Hernandez, Welbeck, Anderson, Nani and Cleverley were not stars but were happy to play in different positions and do a job for the team when required. Every big club needs players like that.

3    Louis van Gaal’s personality

Not a likeable man at all. He’s arrogant and abrasive and became a hate-figure among opposition fans and the press. Modern managers need to be media-savvy, slick and eloquent in order to successfully represent the club brand (Mourinho and Wenger are absolutely excellent at this, for example). Even Ferguson, in his later years, mellowed considerably and learned to play the media well. Van Gaal’s negative behavior put unnecessary pressure on the players. 

4    Crap fans

As happened last season Manchester United fans got frustrated far too quickly with the team when they weren’t playing well. This made the players feel nervous and caused them to play even worse. Fans need to support the team, even when they’re playing badly. If they don’t they’re not doing their job properly in my opinion.

5     A sense of panic

In 2013/14, under Moyes, Manchester United were gripped with an almost paralyzing sense of panic when things started to go wrong which then only served to exacerbate their problems. Unfortunately this sense of panic continued into this season. The huge amount of money spent on player recruitment created an almost intolerable pressure on Van Gaal to succeed. Profits are down and they haven’t qualified for the Champions League for two years in a row. They know that if they carry on like this they will start losing money putting into jeopardy the long term future of the club.

A Pundits League Table

It's an easy job being a football journalist or pundit. You can use action replays to spot when referees make errors, you can use hindsight to pinpoint managerial mistakes and you can take the moral high ground with the escapades of players thirty years your junior. There's nobody around to call you to account.

I'm not going to pretend that me and my little blog are going to be the ones to rein in bad football punditry. But this is my review of the top three and the bottom three Premier League football pundits.

1. Gary Neville

Eloquent and insightful, Neville is by far the best of the ex-player pundits. He is the best there is at giving fans a player's perspective. His analysis of diving, for example, has really contributed to my understanding of the game. Although he's respected more than liked by the average fan, he's one of the few football players who you could actually imagine enjoying having a beer with.

2. Tim Vickery

Prominent at this year's World Cup, Vickery is by far the best football pundit on the BBC. I like his confidence and his deep knowledge of the game. It's a pity they don't use him more often. Vickery never played football professionally (he is a journalist) but I think that actually helps him understand the game in a broader perspective.

3. Gabriel Marcotti

Clearly a highly intelligent man, articulate and clearly very passionate about the game. Marcotti works for cable channel ESPN, since the BBC didn't seem to want him. He talks about football in a cerebral, grown-up way. A thinking-man's football pundit.

And the three worst.... (Honorable mentions to Alan Shearer, the world's most boring man, and Peter Schmeichel)

3. Rio Ferdinand 

A wonderful football player, graceful and dignified he is more likeable

than many other players. He's won six Premier Leagues and the Champions League. However, he obviously isn't the brightest star in the night sky to put it kindly. Asking him to be a pundit is not fair, either on us or on him. Let him enjoy his retirement in peace, when the time comes.

2. Phil Neville

Barbara Slater, the head of BBC sport, seems to think that only ex-players can work as football pundits. She could not be more wrong, the majority of players don't have the personality or the communication skills to carry it off. A prime example of this is Phil Neville, completely overshadowed by his brother, he is a rubbish pundit. The decision to allow him to commentate on the England vs Italy match at the World Cup with no previous experience (the BBC received 445 complaints about how boring he was) was idiotic, something only the BBC could do. We deserve better.

1. Phil McNulty

Prescient, insightful, interesting......none of these words can be applied to the BBC's chief football journalist Phil McNulty. His continuous use of cliches grates, as does his boring, generic style.

 There is something faintly ridiculous about his columns too. a great example of this is the predictions he makes at the start of the season. Last year he hailed the fantastic business Spurs had done in the transfer window predicting them to finish in the top four. Of course, he got it badly wrong. And every single year since Thierry Henry left Arsenal he's been predicting them to finish outside the top four, he hasn't been right yet.

Unlucky!

As well as being an exciting time for a club to strengthen its squad, the transfer window is also an opportunity to get high-earning driftwood off the wage bill. Some players just don’t quite make it and end up being quietly offloaded with their club often taking a huge financial hit in the process. However, others are sometimes quite unlucky to get moved on by overambitious, short-sighted clubs.

Tom’s Thursday Premier League blog (TTPLB; pronounced tuhplub) presents its list of five players who were unlucky to get sold or loaned out by vain managers in the last transfer window.

Ashley Cole

Cole made 26 appearances for Chelsea last year and although he was no longer the first choice left-back, he still could have played a role in the Chelsea squad for many years to come. Unlucky to be dropped by England (Leighton Baines is nowhere near good enough) and wide hated, he probably felt it was high time to get the hell out. Why should you stay when you are not appreciated? But I find it very odd that Mourinho allowed him to go. His performances against Atletico in the Champions League semi-final show that he’s still world class.

Javier Hernandez

His record of 56 goals in 150 games (many of those as a substitute) is a fantastic for a fourth choice striker. Manchester United are crazy to get rid of him. Sure, he’s not quite world class, but he has been a very valuable addition to the squad for a number of years and is still only 26. Shipping him out on loan after one poor season seems like an overreaction; nobody at Manchester United played well in 2013/14. Manchester United are a club in panic and Real Madrid have got themselves a bargain.

Julio Cesar

Signed by the incompetent Mark Hughes for QPR on a huge salary, the next manager, Julio Cesar didn’t play badly. However, Harry Redknapp didn’t take a liking to him at all despite being Brazil’s national goalkeeper. He was sent out on loan to Toronto last season and then given a free transfer to Benfica at the end of the window. You have to feel a bit sorry for him, I doubt he would be treated that way if he was Spanish or German. 

Nani

Not an out-and-out superstar, but a typical Ferguson era squad player at Manchester United. He was signed for 18 million in 2007 and played 229 games for United scoring 40 goals. He also managed to win eleven trophies at Old Trafford including four Premier League titles and the Champions League. Still only 27 years old he has bizarrely been sent on loan to Sporting in Portugal for the year. Quite how that will help anyone remains a mystery. Nani is exactly the kind of hardworking player (one who does a job for the team and doesn’t mind being rotated) which a big club needs.

Alvaro Negredo

Another strange one, Negredo scored 23 goals in 48 games for Manchester City last year, but lost form badly towards the end of the season. Nevertheless, he can surely have been considered a success as a third/fourth striker. City though have decided that they no longer need him and have sent him off on a one year loan to Valencia with an clause obliging Valencia to buy him after that. He had a far, far better season than his Spanish contemporary Roberto Solano who, bizarrely, is still at Tottenham. What do you have to do to get retained over at the City of Manchester?