Which former Magpies manager made a Premier League ‘Manager of the Decade’ list?
Posted on February 28th, 2020 | No Comments |
As for the ‘route one’ football, that certainly hasn’t changed at St James’ Park but that’s another ‘blog, so getting back to this one, in a recent Sky Sports report on the most successful Premier League managers of the last decade, Pardew scraped into the top ten with 304 points, nine places behind winner, Arsene Wenger, who won exactly double Pardew’s total with 608, but ahead of such notables as Manuel Pellegrini (11th with 302 points) and Roy Hodgson (16th with 231 points). Pardew was also ahead of Sir Alex Ferguson (13th with 300 points) and Harry Redknapp (17th with 204 points), though their spells of Premier League management ended too early in the last decade.
Premier League ‘Manager of the Decade’ 2010-20 Points Won
You can get a much better of who the real top Premier League managers of the last decade by looking at the other chart in the story, which shows who got the most points per game. In this Pep Guardiola tops the list with 2.37, followed by Sir Alex Ferguson (2.27), Jurgen Klopp (2.15) and Antonio Conte (2.14) to make up the top four. In this list, the winner in terms of overall points, Arsene Wenger can only manage 8th with 1.88 and of course, Alan Pardew is in 28th (just behind Sam Allardyce) with 1.24. Incidentally, Rafa Benitez’s points per game rating took a bit of a battering through his spell on Tyneside and he finds himself in 21st place on both lists with 1.41 points per game and a total of 183 Premier League points.
Premier League ‘Manager of the Decade’ 2010-20 Points per Game
Getting back to Alan Pardew though, what has the ‘Silver Supremo’ been up to since his rollercoaster spell on Tyneside? It’s no secret that after Newcastle, Pardew swiftly moved on to Crystal Palace at the beginning of 2015 and recreated his time on Tyneside with remarkable accuracy, ie a very good start indeed followed by a swift descent into the abyss. With Newcastle it was a 5th placed Premier League finish, a place in the Europa League and even the double of both the Premier League ‘Manager of the Season’ AND LMA ‘Manager of the Year awards. At Palace, he took them from the Premier League relegation zone to a season finish of tenth, the highest in their history and a cup final appearence. The first half of the 2015-16 season started even better, at the half way point the Eagles were doing what Eagles do, flying high in fifth place and he also took them to the 2016 FA Cup final as well. However, it was all downhill from there as the club went into a classic Pardew descent. With a season of record breaking glory up for grabs, he then went 14 games without a win, though the Eagles’ excellent start to the season still ensured a safe 15th place finish. The losing streak continued in the next season though. The first 17 games went Played 17, Won 4, Drew 3 and Lost 10, with Pardew being sacked five days after the 10th loss with Eagles Chairman, Steve Parish, saying on his departure “We all bought into the decision to play a more expansive style of football. We all believed in it. That hasn’t worked. It’s no-one’s fault.” If Parish signed Pardew to bring an ‘expansive’ style of football to Selhurst Park, I would suggest that some of the blame lied with him as Pardew’s style is ‘expansive’ in the same way that Sam Allardyce’s and Steve Bruce’s style is ‘expansive’ and Parish doesn’t seem to have a clue about football.
In his next job as manager of West Bromwich Albion, Pardew dispensed with the flying high bit at the beginning and just cut straight to the losing streak with a John Carver like record of Played 21, Won 3, Drawn 5 and Lost 13 with a win % of just 16.7 before the Throstles could take no more and sacked him on April 2nd 2018. Whether they held out for an extra day to spare the embarrassment of sacking Pardew on April Fool’s Day is unknown.
Bouncing Back.
After that, a spell of almost two years in the football wilderness followed, but like his (almost) namesake, Alan Partridge, Alan Pardew is now ‘bouncing back’ at the Dutch Millwall, A.D.O. Den Haag, who are probably known more for the robust behaviour of their fans than they are for their football. After an almost two year break, Pardew has picked up where he left off at Albion with a record so far of Played 6, Won 1, Drawn 1 and Lost 4. To be fair to Pardew though, Den Haag were already having a ‘mare of a season when Pardew arrived, and he came in for his first game just after they suffered a 6-1 stuffing by Ajax. Despite my rather mordant comments above, which admittedly have stressed his failures more than his successes, I genuinely wish him the best of luck, and hope that he manages to turn things around and pull Den Haag out of their current crisis.
Breaking News
As I write this piece, news has come in that one of Pardew’s training sessions at Den Haag has been rudely interrupted by some of the ‘robust’ Den Haag fans I mentioned above. As the Daily Mail put it: “Chaos for Alan Pardew at ADO Den Haag: Angry fans armed with a flipboard HIJACK his training session in front of stunned players to show why his tactics are wrong as club hurtles towards relegation.”
Ah, the memories!
NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1095 articles on this blog.