Pardew plans to “educate” unrealistic Toon fans and eventually replace Hodgson
Posted on May 23rd, 2012 | 64 Comments |
In it, he spoke of his ambition to replace Roy Hodgson as the next England manager, and also how he intends to “educate” Newcastle United fans that we cannot expect to compete in Europe AND finish fifth again next season with our current finances. He also commented on several other things, both Newcastle and non Newcastle related, including raking over the circumstances leading to the departure of Joey Barton once again, and how he convinced Mike Ashley that Papiss Cisse would be good value for the club.
Firstly though, he gave his thoughts on recently winning the League Manager’s Association “Manager of the Year” award, saying:
“To be recognised by people who do the job and understand football is fantastic”
Then, revealing his England ambitions, he felt that his CV was not quite complete enough yet, remarking:
“I will not have proven myself good enough until I’ve been in the Premier League for four or five years, won a trophy and competed in Europe,”
Despite Newcastle United recording a whopping Andy Carroll sized pre tax profit of £32.8 million in their last set of accounts, and the club currently having the eighth most valuable squad in the Premiership according to football site, Transfermarkt; our Silver Supremo then sounded a warning note about our ability to be as competitive now that a new European front has been opened in the war for trophies. After Bose wrote that we Geordies were in need of “a dose of realism” after the season just passed, Pardew continued on his mission to educate unrealistic Geordies:
“I’m hoping that I will educate our fans for next season. If they think we can finish fifth with a European campaign and the finances we’ve got, it’s impossible. I honestly believe that you need to be a bit more open with the fans. The problem some managers have is they’re not open enough.”
He then told us what we could expect, adding:
“This year, I’m sure we’ll say something like, ‘We’re looking for a top-eight finish, hopefully attack one of the cups and have a great run in Europe. I wouldn’t say we couldn’t challenge for the top six if we got knocked out of Europe. Then we wouldn’t have those extra 13 games.”
Pardew then moved on to how he used his “aggression” to win over the dressing room at SJP, and ultimately, the fans, contrasting himself to his more restrained and thoughtful predecessor, Chris Hughton. After Bose referred to an alleged poll which supposedly stated that only 5.5% of fans wanted Pardew at the club when he arrived, the Silver Supremo gave his stock humorous response to a question he has been asked several times before, quipping:
“Probably less than that!” continuing:
“I knew that the first few months were going to be difficult but, if you’re going to walk into a manager’s job, you’ve got to take away the fan element of it. You have to say, ‘Are you going to be able to win the dressing room?’ Chris is a great guy, he had coached me [Pardew spent a brief spell as a fringe player at Tottenham] but is different to me. I’m probably more aggressive than Chris and I had the confidence that I could get the dressing room. And if you get the players on side, then you’ve got a chance of getting the fans because ultimately one leads to the other.”
Continuing on how he started by winning the trust of then captain, Kevin Nolan, and ultimately, we fans, he then added:
“Kevin was a powerful captain and I made sure of his loyalty. Before I even met him at training, I went to his house and said, ‘Look, I know there’s probably a lot of disappointment that I’m the manager but I am. I want to work with you and I need your help.’ Being the great guy that he is, he offered me that.”
Pardew then went on to wax lyrical about Nolan’s successor as captain at St James’ Park, Fabricio Coloccini, saying of the permed one who is currently leading our latest “Player of the Season” poll:
“He is our most influential player. A classy footballer, he brings calmness, a winning mentality and a sense of order to all proceedings. He reads the game well.
“You can’t coach it. He might see that my left-back is in big trouble with a wide player and he’ll move closer to that area. He’ll look to read situations before they evolve. Bobby Moore was probably the greatest at it but Coloccini does that for us brilliantly. Before it happens he’s extinguished it.”
Quite.
He then moved on to another player who has become a huge hit with fans in a very short space of time, Papiss Cisse. He began by revealing that Ashley had some doubts about signing the player from Freiburg worrying that he would not be getting “value,” for the player whose fee could rise as high as £9 million:
“Mike had some initial worries: were we getting value?” Pardew told Bose, adding:
“He’d had two years in a poor Freiburg team, scoring loads of goals.”
He then looked back to Cisse’s memorable second goal against Chelsea at the beginning of this month, recalling:
“It came out to him and he hit it on the side of his foot, For him to even attempt it was just audacious. We were winning 1-0. As the ball came out to him, I thought, ‘Take it to the corner.’ But, because of the way he did it, I turned to Didier Drogba on the pitch and said, ‘You’ve got to take your hat off to that!’ and he just laughed.”
He then contrasted the signing of Cisse with his signing of Dean Ashton when he was manager at West Ham. Pardew blamed Ashton’s serious injury before he started his second season at the club for his own eventual sacking as the club teetered on the brink of relegation. Despite being able to bring in Carlos Tevez as a replacement, it was not enough and the club eventually had to turn to Alan Curbishley to save them from the drop at the eleventh hour.
“If Cisse had played one game and got injured like Dean Ashton, I could have been out of a job. He came back injured after he went off to play for England at the start of the 2006 season. It absolutely killed us. He was flying. He was going to be England centre-forward for the next 10 years. I’ve not seen a player as good as him. He was better than Andy Carroll.”
Ashton went on to score 19 goals in 56 games for the Hammers before another serious injury ended his career for good at 26.
But anyway, getting back to Newcastle United, Pardew then outlined how we fans have now “warmed” to Mike Ashley, and now understand that all of Mike’s actions are for the benefit of the club and not Sports Direct:
“The fans have understood that Mike’s actions are for the club’s benefit. He’s put in the best part of £200m and there’s no return on that as yet. The berating of him in the stands has stopped. That’s been a massive battle in itself.”
Of course, the club even had to go as far as breaking up the popular “singing section” of St James’ Park to crush this vocal dissent against the owner.
This was a rather long interview and the Grey Gaffer also shared his thoughts on matters ranging from whether Roy Hodgson or Harry Redknapp would have been the best candidate to keep his England spot warm for him, whether Roberto di Matteo will get the job at Chelsea, whether Hodgson was right in selecting John Terry over Rio Ferdinand for the forthcoming European Championships and also his latest thoughts on the Joey Barton show as mentioned above.
You can read the full interview here.
NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1091 articles on this blog.
See, then he inevitably goes and opens his mouth and proves how arrogant he is.
AP: you’ve been interested in this club for precisely as long as you’ve drawn a check from it. You probably have a lot more to learn from us than we do from you.
If we can’t compete in Europe and finish high, I’m going to ask: what was the point? Great ambition there, let me tell you. Oh wait, he’s reserved all his expressions of ambition for himself. Got it.
Was the swipe at AC-who, you might note, Alan, will always be a geordie-really necessary?
Finally, I have to wonder about a guy whose analysis is that losing Dean Ashton got him sacked but couldn’t figure out that Tevez was a more-than-adequate replacement.