Hughton v Pardew: managerial death-match

May 11th, 2011 | 22 Comments |

It is said that you can’t compare apples with oranges, although I think that’s bunk. I compared apples with oranges the other day and oranges are clearly better.

The point, though, is that if you’re going to make any sort of comparison between things, the circumstances of the comparison should be fairly similar or you’re not really going to be able to make any sort of valid comparison at all. It would be like comparing a bulldozer to an Amazonian tree frog: they’re such vastly different things that comparisons are pointless.

If, for example, we wanted to try and judge Alan Shearer’s ability as a manager we’d be hard pushed to do so. Forget for one moment his lack of experience and the fact that he spent most of the time since retiring from football sat on a sofa, we can’t compare him to another manager unless that manager took over the same team in the same circumstances. Which of course is impossible, so it would render any attempted comparisons subjective.

So please bear that in mind as I make an attempt to compare Alan Pardew with Chris Hughton. There is a lot of subjectivity and opinion in it. (more…)