It’s becoming very clear that last season’s demise of seeing Newcastle struggle in the Premier League and just avoiding relegation, was caused by the squad simply not being good enough or big enough to compete in Europe.
Alan Pardew – doing well again at Newcastle
And after losing 10 Premier League games in 13, Alan Pardew came within a whisker of being fired as Newcastle manager, after we were beaten 2-1 by Reading at home in January.
But then owner Mike Ashley took some drastic action to save the club from a second relegation under his watch, and brought in five Frenchman – all in the following week.
And although it was still touch and go, Newcastle survived – thank goodness – since a second relegation in three years would have been hard to take – and that’s a huge understatement.
Those five Frenchmen brough in during January and Loic Remy on loan in the summer now look like stellar signings for Newcastle.
Things are still early in the season, but Newcastle have now won four of their last six league games and are in 8th position in the league table but just 2 points out of 4th place, and 4 points out of second place.
And we have to give Alan Pardew some credit for making some tough selection decisions this season, that have seen stalwarts like Hatem Ben Arfa and Papiss Cisse benched, and players like Mike Williamson come to the fore.
There are another 8 games to play from now until January 1st in the Premier League, and it’s hard to know where we will be at that time.
But if Alan Pardew can keep Newcastle going and even get a decent position at the end of the season, that will be twice in his three full seasons that he has done that – and he will deserve enormous credit for that.
And if only owner Mike Ashley would act like he did last January – but this time bring players in that could make us a top four team – then Newcastle may be going places in the future.
And with a fully fit squad right now – who knows – we could even be going places this season .
That’s all we want – Newcastle to be successful – whoever the manager and the owner are.
It’s really very simple, from our point of view.
Howay The Lads!!
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4 comments so far
Our Toon
Nov 29, 2013 at 8:48 AM
Comment #1Good debating yesterday, gone are the days when teams are built around the best players instead this has been replaced by 11 grafters with no creativity. If we hadn’t have scored so early against Norwich things would have been tough.
TS: Carlos Tevez suffered his worst goal drought in his career under Pardew, 13 games without a goal and he blamed that on being played LW a position he never played in during his career
Jamiemac
Nov 29, 2013 at 8:51 AM
Comment #2^ Cool.
Our Toon
Nov 29, 2013 at 8:54 AM
Comment #3http://www.redcafe.net/threads/tevez-sticks-the-knife-into-pardew.137028/
tequilamag
Nov 29, 2013 at 9:23 AM
Comment #4http://www.nufcfans.co.uk/2012/11/joey-barton-alan-pardew-newcastle-united-mike-ashley/