Don’t judge Pardew on 10 games, judge him on 176
Posted on November 21st, 2014 | 531 Comments |
Indeed, it has only taken half that many games to take Alan Pardew from the mire to the sunlit uplands of redemption. There have even been calls for the fans who doubted him to make a humble public apology to the great tactician after his sudden return to route one paid instant dividends, thrusting the Magpies to the giddy heights of eighth in the table at the time of writing.
Good or bad, of course it would just be silly to judge any manager on a mere 10 games as Pardew pleaded, or even five, especially a manager whose form is notorious for going up and down like a bride’s nightie. So, lets ignore Pardew’s appeal, move beyond the temporary peaks and troughs of Pardew’s mercurial fortunes and judge him over his full 176 games with the Magpies so far. Importantly, we can also compare his performance with that of previous managers of Newcastle United in the Premier League too.
Below are a couple of tables and a chart. They are a rough guide to how Pardew’s results from almost four seasons in charge compares with the average of all the others who have managed Newcastle United in the Premier League until his arrival. In the first, you can see the combined average of all the Newcastle United managers since Newcastle United’s first appearence in the 1992-3 season. The season where the club was relegated back the Championship again has been excluded as it would be unfair to compare Pardew’s results in the Premiership against those from one league below.
Newcastle United managers: The Premier League years. | |||||||
Manager | P | W | D | L | Win% | ALF/HF | MTs |
Pre-Pardew Avg | 833 | 371 | 202 | 260 | 44.53% | 9th(2nd) | None |
Best (Keegan 1st spell) | 190 | 104 | 36 | 50 | 54.74% | 4th(2nd) | None |
Alan Pardew | 176 | 68 | 40 | 68 | 38.64% | 11th(5th) | None |
ALF(HF) – Average League Finish (Highest Finish) MTs – Major trophies |
Looking at the chart below where the shaded area represents the Pardew years, you can see that overall the Pardew years have their closest analogue in the post Robson decline of Souness, Roeder, Allardyce and finally Keegan’s brief second coming which covered the same four year period. A mediocre season followed by one good season, with two mediocre to very poor seasons following that. In both cases the average league finish is 11th. Basically though, Pardew’s (almost) four years in charge has been pretty much a return to things as they were in the post Robson period preceding relegation.
Finally, the table below breaks down these two four year periods further, looking at League and Cup performances seperately over the two periods. I have also included a measure of average Points Per Game and points per 38 games for League games.
Post Robson stagnation years v Pardew. | ||||||||
Overall | ||||||||
Manager | P | W | D | L | Win% | PPG(PPS) | ALF | MTs |
Sou/Roe/All/Kee | 200 | 83 | 45 | 72 | 41.50% | – | 11th | None |
Alan Pardew | 176 | 68 | 40 | 68 | 38.64% | – | 11th | None |
PPG – Average Points Per Game / Points Per 38 games ALF – Average League Finish MTs – Major Trophies | ||||||||
Premier League | ||||||||
Manager | P | W | D | L | Win% | PPG(PPS) | ALF | MTs |
Sou/Roe/All/Kee | 147 | 48 | 39 | 60 | 32.65% | 1.24(47) | 11th(7th) | None |
Alan Pardew | 147 | 55 | 33 | 59 | 38.64% | 1.35(51) | 11th (5th) | None |
Cup competitions | ||||||||
Manager | P | W | D | L | Win% | PPG(PPS) | ALF | MTs |
Sou/Roe/All/Kee | 53 | 35 | 6 | 12 | 66.04% | – | – | None |
Alan Pardew | 29 | 13 | 7 | 9 | 44.83% | – | – | None |
PPG – Average Points Per Game / Points Per 38 games ALF – Average League Finish MTs – Major Trophies |
You can see through this that although the average league position is the same, to Pardew’s credit he did slightly better in the league in terms of win percentage and the amount of points won every 38 games. However, as you might have guessed, the other four did much better than Pardew in Cup competitions. Having written that, Graeme Souness (and the club) were the beneficiaries of a place in the then UEFA Cup won by Souness’s predecessor, Bobby Robson. Glenn Roeder subsequently qualified for the same competition two seasons later on his own.
The final aspect is how well Pardew SHOULD have done over his four years, where he should have been with the resources at his disposal. This is more difficult to quantify. Hence I’m not putting it forward as some kind of empirical evidence, just my own vague speculations on some imperfect data I did to amuse myself (I need to get out more). I used squad value estimations from the football transfer website Transfermarkt as a rough guide since the Magpies were promoted back to the Premier League. I wrote a piece about it around 11 months ago, coming to the general conclusion that Pardew had slightly underperformed.
As I wrote in that piece, when Newcastle were promoted with Chris Hughton, the squad was the 12th most valuable according to Transfermarkt. By the time Hughton was sacked after 16 league games, they were about 9th or 10th with the addition of players such as Chieck Tiote, Hatem Ben Arfa etc, and in 11th place in the table when Pardew took over. Hence, according to my dodgy method, he should have finished around 10-11th but finished 12th, which is close enough. Next season of course was a very good one for the Silver Fox. With a squad which was by now estimated to be the 7th most valuable with further additions like Yohan Cabaye, Demba Ba and Paipiss Cisse he came fifth. Credit to Pardew, though another factor was that Chelsea and Liverpool had very bad league season by their standards, Pardew took advantage when the situation presented itself. The season after was almost another relegation catastrophe though, with the side finishing 16th with a squad with a squad which was the 7th most valuable once again.
Since the time of the piece linked above, he finished 10th last season with what was estimated on average over that period to be the 8th most valuble squad in the Premier League. Since then, the squad’s value has now slipped below Southampton’s this season, with Newcastle now having only the 9th most valuable squad according to TM, with Pardew currently 8th in the table on the eve of the club’s 12th game of the season against West Brom. This leaves Pardew with an average finish of 11th with a squad estimated on average to be the 8th most valuable. In these cock eyed observations, I found Newcastle’s closest analogue in terms of squad value over this period to be Everton. Realistically they are the team we should have been battling for one of the last European places in the last few seasons under Pardew. With one notable exception, this hasn’t been the case.
Final thoughts.
Summing up, Alan Pardew hasn’t been catastrophic though he almost was on one occaision. However, he certainly hasn’t been great either. He’s been slightly below average but it could be argued that this is part of a wider malaise at Newcastle, who have been below what they should be overall for 10 years now.
To put it as best as I can, Newcastle are a big club with a small club mentality. By this I mean they play the kind of direct football usually embraced by smaller clubs trying to even the odds against bigger teams with more skilled players. This hasn’t just been Pardew either. As you can see in this piece, it goes back as far as I could find the the stats for (2008).
If things continue in the same way as previous Premier League competitions in recent times, there is little to no chance that Newcastle United will ever have sustained success at the higher end of the Premier League. It just doesn’t happen nowadays with Pardew’s style of football. In fairness he tried earlier in the season but it failed badly. There might be a cup final, even a League Cup win and a European campaign like Birmingham City in recent times. Newcastle will not grow year on year and become a big club again though. It will just be up downs with an average somewhere in the middle.
Very good article and agree standards have gone down under Pardew.
But what would also be good to compare would be the amount of money each manager has spent compare to Pardew.
I think what Pardew has had in terms of players and squad size you can’t deny he has done an okay job. Although I would also say he has been lucky with Carr finding “cheap” gems…. As long as Ashley is in charge, I can’t see any change even if Pep or Jose was manager!
But Really well thought out intelligent article!