Chris Hughton’s dismissal this week opened up a vacancy in the Newcastle United dugout, and Martin Jol’s simultaneous resignation from the Ajax job seemed to leave it an open and shut case. Well, for about five minutes anyway, before the too-mundane-to-be-false rumours started to filter through about Alan Pardew, lately of Southampton. The prospective appointment of Martin Jol at least seemed to put the sacking of Hughton into some perspective. It’s true that Newcastle had a promotion and current mid-table league position to be thankful to Hughton for, but Jol is, at the very least, a proven top-half Premier League manager. In his two consecutive 5th-place finishes with Tottenham, the Dutchman has achieved the sort of league positions Newcastle will recall with longing from their not-too-distant past.
Manager # 6 in three years at St. James's
This isn’t to make out that the Newcastle manager’s job was a two-horse race, or that Mike Ashley even considered Jol. From the outside, it seems that there were half as many candidates and that no-one else was given meaningful consideration; at least in the time between Hughton’s exit and Pardew’s arrival. So was it a case of ‘who you know’ for Alan Pardew, an associate of Toon’s managing director Derek Llambias?
The 49-year-old’s managerial CV is a mixed bag. Success with Reading in his first job, achieving automatic promotion between two play-off defeats, was built on a regime of fitness and teamwork. Although he originally struggled to impose his values on a West Ham United side which was struggling to come to terms with relegation just a season after finishing 7th in the Premier League, scraping through the play-offs was Pardew’s Hammers’ cue to display all that was good about his leadership. A tremendous sense of optimism and team spirit engulfed the club and West Ham finished in a comfortable 9th and were denied the FA Cup by a 30-yard Steven Gerrard thunderbolt in the 91st minute.
It could be argued that that Gerrard equaliser, which eventually forced the game into a penalty shoot-out which was to be won by Liverpool, marked the end of Pardew’s rise and the start of his decline. After that season of success, Pardew’s name was one of those frequently mentioned in conversations about the identity of the next England manager, but his stock has never been as high since. The following season, the confusion enveloping the club after the ‘signings’ of Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano seemed to strangle West Ham’s progress and Pardew was sacked after a 4-0 destruction by Bolton, leaving his side in the bottom three.
A fortnight later, he was back in the relegation zone – this time appointed as manager of struggling Charlton. Perhaps he can’t be blamed for that poor squad’s eventual relegation. Failure to mount a serious promotion challenge the following season left him on thin ice, and when the subsequent campaign started in disastrous fashion, Pardew again left his club in the relegation zone. At Southampton, a Football League Trophy and a flirtation with the play-offs despite a 10-point penalty represented a good first season, but an unhappy dressing room (as well as an uneasy relationship with the club’s chairman Nicola Cortese) was cited for his dismissal after just three league games this season.
It seems remarkable that Pardew could land such a job considering his steady slump in status since his West Ham days. He is now, to my mind, in the biggest job of his career despite a consistent slide since his days at West Ham. This management game must bewilder relative rookie Chris Hughton, who one would hope will now be able to find another position – his time at Newcastle certainly has done his public image no harm at all, which couldn’t be said of those making the key decisions at St. James’s.
