Newcastle: Stuck In The Middle With [Pard]You

Article By Paul Nicholson

(Follow me on Twitter: @magpie5uk)

Do you ever get the feeling that you can’t win?

Do you ever think that no matter what you do, if things go wrong, unravel around you, disaster strikes, it’ll be your fault?

Newcastle fans have that feeling.

According to manager, Alan Pardew, a master in the art of deflecting blame in any direction but his own, the fans have been to blame for late goals and heavy defeats this season.

Crystal Palace at home, Newcastle fight from being behind (twice) to take the lead in injury time to look like gaining an unlikely (and largely undeserved, it has to be said) first victory of the season. As you would expect, the fans celebrate, as any fans would. A release of tension and exuberance. A feeling that only football fans around the world truly understand. In what other situation would you get grown men and women, old and young, physically jumping up and down and yelling at the tops of their voices in sheer joy? It happens at every game up and down the country, no matter what size the club is, what level the league is, be it Premier League, or Northern League. If a club is in your blood, it’s there for life (Man City and Chelsea fans may have to jump off their bandwagons to offer us a differing opinion of course). So this natural reaction that all football fans have is normal then right? You’d think so. Unless, it seems, you’re Alan Pardew, who, after seeing his Newcastle side give away a needless free-kick in a dangerous place in the dying embers of added on time, then displayed their usual comical defending to concede an equaliser with the last kick of the game. According to Pardew, it wasn’t the silly foul that contributed to the goal, nor was it the kamikaze defending…oh no…it was…THE FANS!

The fans, he claimed in his post-match interviews, were too exuberant, too excited, too happy…and that transferred to the players, who, due to this, tried to go forward and get a fourth goal instead of defending their lead. This was a new one! An excuse that even participants that play in the ever-growing game of ‘Pardew-Excuse-Bingo’ couldn’t have foreseen. Those Newcastle fans eh? How dare they celebrate when the team, that they have spent their hard-earned money on, score a goal! DISGRACEFUL!

Fast-forward two weeks. Newcastle are away at Southampton. Those ‘over-exuberant’ fans are getting more and more fed-up with Pardew’s tactical (in)genious, negative displays, blatant lies (‘We need to bring in a striker before the deadline’ prior to dealine day; ‘The players we’ve brought in have increased our depth and brought more quality…I’m happy with the goal-threat we have here’ post deadline day) and constant excuses (‘Alan Pardew…It’s never your fault’ goes the fans’ song). Yet still they spend their wages, and get up at 5am to travel the 640 mile round trip (the longest journey in the Premier League) to support their team.

The game starts, and within nineteen minutes they’re two-nil down, have no threat in front of goal, and a group of ‘players’ on the pitch that look as disinterested as a sloth at a party. The fans, having seen their team take only 4 league wins from the last 24 games (since Christmas 2013), have had enough. All of the pro-pro pundits that you hear telling us that he deserves more than four games at the start of the season to turn things around, or the comical ‘Newcastle fans just don’t like people from London’ statement from the equally comical ex-player Tony Gale (I think Rob Lee, Warren Barton, Glenn Roeder, et al would disagree), have all missed the point. It isn’t about this season, it’s about months upon months of inept performances…but I digress. With no hope of getting back into the game on the South coast, the fans vent their anger at the person that they (and thousands of others) hold responsible and accountable…the manager. He is barracked and ridiculed every time he tries to leave the dug-out. Newcastle go on to surrender completely and are thrashed 4-0.

Post-match, Pardew tells the TV media (he won’t even front up to the written press), that it was the negativity and animosity of the fans that got to the players, and caused us to produce the paradox of a defending master-class and goal-scoring prowess for a full ninety minutes.

So as I said, the fans are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

All that the fans should do, in the eyes of their least popular manager for decades, is just sit like an opera audience, watch the game in silence, and applaud politely at relevant periods. A mundane experience, very much like an Alan Pardew team’s performances.

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