It’s as you were for Alan Pardew and Newcastle United, as the Toon suffered yet another 4-0 defeat (take a look at all the heavy defeats NUFC have suffered under Pardew’s management), this time against Manchester United at St. James’s Park.
I thought we started off well, seeing a lot of the ball and pressing Man United in their own half. If we had scored during that time, the atmosphere would have been totally different inside St. James’s Park. In reality, it was an all too familiar feeling, as the players wearing black and white shirts capitulated, letting Man United do as they please. This then turned the atmosphere inside St. James’s Park from enthusiasm to apathy, and it didn’t get better from that point forward.
The players appeared to lack any kind of urgency once they went a goal down, with Rob Elliot positioned incorrectly from Juan Mata’s free-kick. You can argue it wasn’t a free-kick all you like with Dan Gosling giving away the foul, but a Premier League keeper should be better positioned than Elliot was (Dan Gosling starting ahead of Ben Arfa is a discussion for another day).
With Pardew looking on from his lofty seat in the stands, he saw Newcastle go in at half-time 1-0 down. A manager with even a slight tactical acumen, would be looking to make a difference for the side he manages. Unfortunately for us, Pardew makes a difference alright, but it’s always for our opposition! An error from Coloccini allowed Man United to get in behind our defence and allowed Mata to slot the ball in after a pass from Javier Hernandez.
Hernandez managed to grab a goal himself, and Januzaj completed the rout in injury time. Bizarrely, Pardew didn’t even hang around for the last 15 minutes choosing to disappear into the bowels of St. James’s Park for who knows what..maybe this:
At this point I’m struggling to say something that hasn’t already been said. #PardewOut
Oh go on then, I will say one more thing: Currently Alan Pardew poses a bigger problem than Mike Ashley does. Here’s why – the players we have in and around our first team (aside from Shola and Dan Gosling) are better than they’ve been showing in recent games. This does not speak well for Alan Pardew’s ability to get the best out of them (if he had any ability in the first place), or show a group of players that are in favour of their manager. I would argue that another manager, take your pick, would do a better job than Pardew with the same players. But whether we’ll ever see another manager at St. James’s any time soon remains to be seen.
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