Playing for 90
Fansided

Should Alan Pardew get another Premier League job?

By Stephen Fox

BOURNEMOUTH, ENGLAND - MARCH 17: Alan Pardew, Manager of West Bromwich Albion reacts during the Premier League match between AFC Bournemouth and West Bromwich Albion at Vitality Stadium on March 17, 2018 in Bournemouth, England. (Photo by Henry Browne/Getty Images)
BOURNEMOUTH, ENGLAND - MARCH 17: Alan Pardew, Manager of West Bromwich Albion reacts during the Premier League match between AFC Bournemouth and West Bromwich Albion at Vitality Stadium on March 17, 2018 in Bournemouth, England. (Photo by Henry Browne/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit

After being sacked from West Brom after failing to help their survival chances in the Premier League but instead doom them to being relegated, the question needs to be asked if Alan Pardew deserves to manage in the Premier League again. 

If there was one thing Alan Pardew could fall back on as a manager, it was his ability to get his teams to buy into him right off the bat and have a good start as a manager. It didn’t matter if his time at every single club ended the exact same way, it didn’t matter if his team eventually stopped believing in his methods and stopped performing well – to the point that they would become one of, if not the, worst teams in the league.

His ability to get off to a great start at any club that he joined was always going to get him another job that ability was always going to appeal to clubs struggling at the bottom of the table who wanted a quick fix that would pull them out of the bottom and move up the table.

This is what West Brom thought they were getting when they made the move to hire Alan Pardew after sacking Tony Pulis. West Brom were hovering just below the relegation zone and if they could get a good run of form going then they would surely be right out of the drop and up the table. This is all that Pardew had to do but it never happened. Pardew only managed three wins in twenty-one games as manager with only one coming in the Premier League. West Brom went from just being above the relegation zone to being dead last and ten points behind everybody else as Pardew finally leaves the club. His methods, his motivational skills that work at the start didn’t even catch on at the club. Pardew never once got the players on his side.

Without that good start, Pardew is an ineffective manager. He isn’t tactical by any stretch of the imagination, he isn’t known for having any kind of playstyle – he’s just there and he will never turn any of his teams around when they inevitably hit the poor form that his teams always do.

West Brom shouldn’t be in the position they are in, they have a solid team of players and whilst Tony Pulis’s effects on the team had long wore off by the team he left the club – Pardew still would have had a team that was excellently drilled in defensive positioning where he could have built off that while trying to instil a more attacking philosophy into West Brom’s game. That didn’t happen either and one only has to wonder what exactly was even the point of hiring Pardew to begin with?

More from Playing for 90

This isn’t anything new. Pardew is a man who almost relegated a West Ham team that featured the likes of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano and made the FA Cup final a year prior. Any who still rates Pardew as a manager would point to the fact that he did finish 5th with Newcastle in the 2011/12 season but Newcastle finished there because of the near regular wonder goals scored every week from the likes of Papis Cisse, Demba Ba and Ben Afra. Newcastle got fifth in spite of Pardew, not because of him and that became glaringly obvious when he shifted Cisse and Ba out-wide when that didn’t suit them and his awful treatment of Ben Arfa was never going to keep the players on his side.

It’s no wonder that immediately following that season, Newcastle finished 16th and remained a relegation threatened side until they finally did go down – long after Pardew had left but already inflicted the damage on the side and the Newcastle supporters, whose hostility towards him made the ArsenalFanTV crowd even tamer than they usually look in comparison.

Pardew has never truly shown he is capable of managing in the Premier League outside of that one season with Newcastle. Whilst he may get off to a good start typically at his new clubs, that isn’t out of the usual for any new manager as there have been plenty who start off well in their ‘honeymoon’ period – Craig Shakespeare is a relevant example of this when he took over at Leicester last year.

Related Story: Tottenham confident in winning transfer race

And even then, Pardew has shown at West Brom that he isn’t capable of getting off to that hot start at every club so is there much point to him as a manager in the Premier League? He’s nothing more than a quick-fix manager who cannot even guarantee that quick-fix anymore and he doesn’t improve teams – Newcastle and West Brom were worse off, Crystal Palace may as well have stayed the exact same team they were before he even arrived.

The question really needs to be asked if Alan Pardew should get another job in the Premier League again and if he should, why? What new ideas to Pardew bring to the table that other managers wouldn’t, especially those who have to toil their way in the Championship doing impressive work but get ignored for seemingly no reason at all.

Home/West Bromwich Albion