10 Questions For Alan Pardew

"This win is for Mike Ashley and all our fans.  Trust me, he is a fan and I’m pleased for the club.  We are all Newcastle fans."  ...Alan Pardew

Would a real fan try to rename St James Park?

Over the last few months Alan Pardew seems to annoy me more and more every time he opens his mouth.  His latest comment to get me completely riled up (made after the Chelsea game) will no doubt have annoyed many other fans as well, and it's printed above.

Mike Ashley is a fan, is he, Alan?  If that's the case, here are a few questions which perhaps you could answer...

1)  Would a real fan trouser the £60 million TV money for himself, or would a real fan spend that £60 million on improving the squad?

2) Would a real fan sacrifice millions of pounds worth of potential advertising revenue by using marketing space at St James Park to promote his own company for free?

Who Will Leave Newcastle First?

Pardew V Kinnear

You can bet on pretty much everything nowadays and Paddy Power were recently offering a market on who will be the first to leave Newcastle United, Alan Pardew or Joe Kinnear?

A recent poll on The Mag suggested that fans think Pardew will leave the club before Kinnear and the bookies seem to agree with the odds as follows:

Alan Pardew - 1.5
Joe Kinnear - 2.5

Joe Kinnear's appointment was initially greeted with silence from Alan Pardew, and when he did eventually comment, he wasn't exactly overwhelming in his support of Kinnear with Pardew declaring himself to be 'open-minded' about the appointment.  Given that Pardew generally toes the party line, that's a pretty damning criticism of Kinnear.

"I don't really care if Arsenal win 4-0." ...Alan Pardew

It was Pardew's "Thank God we are not in the Europa League again” comment which angered me the most.

Our second away win in the league all season owed as much to the mistakes of Jose Bosingwa and QPR's overall lack of quality as it did to our own performance, but at least we can 'celebrate' the fact that our Premier League survival is now guaranteed.

A Liverpool friend of mine commented that being involved in the relegation battle must have been 'exciting' which just shows how little he knows about being involved in a relegation battle.  'Exciting' has been a rarely used word when watching Pardew's tactics this season, and 'nervous' would be a far more appropriate word to describe the final run-in to of our season.

I have to admit that when fans were criticising Pardew earlier in the season that for a long time I personally thought the blame deserved to be pointed higher up and that it was our failure to strengthen the squad pre-season which was the real reason to blame for our current predicament.  However, Alan Pardew's constant excuse making has gradually worn down my patience more and more, and he really needs to start accepting responsibility for our shortcomings.  If Pardew had put as much effort into improving our results as he does into making excuses then we would probably have been challenging for Europe again rather than battling to avoid relegation.