Mr.Average: What is Alan Pardew’s average season performance?
Posted on December 13th, 2013 | 20 Comments |
So, bearing that in mind, I thought I would look at Pardew’s 113 Premier League games, crunch some numbers and see what we can learn.
As well as the results, one other thing I have used to assess Pardew’s performance is Transfermarkt’s table of Premier League clubs ranked by the value of their squads. I have been consulting this for quite a few years now, and when Newcastle United were first promoted from the Championship under Pardew’s predecessor, Chris Hughton, Newcastle had the 12th most valuable squad, worth around £90 million like Aston Villa or West Bromwich Albion today. However, some astute signings whose value increased such as Hatem Ben Arfa and Chieck Tiote took this up to around ninth by the time by the time Hughton was replaced by Pardew. With a further influx of cut price talent, mostly from France, they soon rose a couple of places higher to seventh. Since then Newcastle have slipped back to eighth behind Everton, who have been the closest side to Newcastle United squad wise over the last few seasons. Basically over that period there has been a top six of Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham. After that there is something of a gap until you find Everton and Newcastle. Then, after another fairly large gap there is the rest.
Bearing all the above in mind, the benchmark for Pardew with the tools at his disposal should be fighting it out with Everton for the last ticket to the Europa League in seventh (unless someone outside the top seven wins a cup competition).
Moving on to examine how Pardew has performed against this benchmark, below you can see a table with the row at the top showing Pardew’s complete 113 game Premier League record at Newcastle United. Below that, I have used the same figures to calculate an average Pardew 38 game season.
3 years of Pardew in the Premier League. | ||||||||||
Pardew’s complete Premier League record. | ||||||||||
Season | Pos | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | Win% |
2010-14 | * | 113 | 44 | 27 | 42 | 153 | 172 | -19 | 159 | 38.94 |
Average Pardew Premier League season. | ||||||||||
Season | Pos | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | Win% |
* | 8th | 38 | 14.8 | 9.1 | 14.1 | 51 | 58 | -7 | 53.5 | 38.94 |
So there you have it.
Going with the players he’s had at his disposal, Pardew should have finished around ninth or tenth at the end of his first (half) season in 2011, which is where they were when he took over from Chris Hughton. In this he slightly underperformed, finishing twelfth at the end.
However, he did slightly overperform the season after. Top six teams Chelsea and Liverpool both had disappointing league seasons, leaving Newcastle to snatch fifth place when they should have been around seventh by that stage.
Next season was a car crash for Pardew however as he flirted with relegation, finishing 16th when he should have around seventh once again. Funnily enough though, this didn’t throw Pardew off the mean that much more than finishing only two places higher than he should have the season before.
As you can see above, if you take the results of all of Pardew’s 113 Premier League games and condense them down into a 38 game season, Pardew would have come eighth in the last three seasons (all behind Everton in seventh) with 53.5 points. In his two full seasons he got 11.5 points more than that mean figure to finish fifth, and 12.5 points less to finish 16th the following season.
So, in conclusion, the Silver Fox’s overall performance has been about average over the three years, but way too inconsistent in his two full seasons so far. After all, a team with the strength of Newcastle should never at serious risk of relegation, whatever Pardew’s excuses were at the time.
For now though, the ship has been been stabilised and we are just about where we should be.
Poll

First thing you notice is the Goals For and Against. Pardwho’s never been one to take the opposition by the scruff of the neck and shag them until they’re cross eyed :)
Which, given the group of players at his disposal right now, is somewhat baffling ? Ever the “container”, maybe I should reame him Tupperware ?