personally I think he is just trying to put himself ion the shop window and you shouldn't read too much into what is said.
‘My win percentage was healthy ... I was let down by transfer dealings’
In his first interview since being sacked by Crystal Palace, Alan Pardew says that loyalty to his players cost him his job but insists he’ll be a manager for another decade, even if his next position may be abroad
Matt Dickinson, Chief Sports Writer March 29 2017, 12:01am, The Times
As he drove to meet Steve Parish in the chairman’s offices in Soho just a few days before Christmas, Alan Pardew did not think he was about to be fired as manager of Crystal Palace. His mind was ticking over with plans, targets, thoughts of staging a recovery. “I was thinking about training for the next day, changing the team, who do I buy in January,” he says. “When I went to see Steve I thought I was going to talk transfers. Did I think there was a chance it was ending? I’m not daft. It was maybe a 35 per cent chance in my mind. The game humbles you. And if you don’t humble with it you are in trouble “But I didn’t think it would happen. It was not an unusual meeting. But then I walked through the door and I knew.” Pardew was frustrated that he did not get that January transfer window to refresh the team, to plot a way out of trouble — “I don’t believe we would have been relegated,” he says — but he does not recall his sacking with rancour. He met Parish at a charity function recently and they shook hands. I wondered if he might be bitter, angry at losing his job at a club who were the nearest thing to a spiritual home from his playing days, but he smiles and says football management reminds him of that famous diner scene in Heat. Al Pacino and Robert de Niro finally meet on screen, cop facing master criminal. As they chat over coffee, Pacino explains that much as it was nice to talk, to connect as men, there is an inevitability about the shoot-out to come. “You do what you do, and I do what I gotta do,” he says. “We’ve been face to face, yeah,” De Niro responds. “But I will not hesitate. Not for a second.” “It’s a bit like us in football,” Pardew smiles. “Chairman, manager, you do what you gotta do. But it’s not personal. It’s the business. “There’s no point me saying, ‘I didn’t make a mistake.’ Or, ‘It was the wrong decision.’ I have to accept it and make sure next time I go in I don’t make the same mistakes. I say this to other managers who have had the sack, it’s important, you mustn’t wear it or you can forget the next job. My family, friends, fans might say it’s wrong but I think ‘it’s done, we move on’.” He pauses. “When you are younger you have massive dreams. The game humbles you. And if you don’t humble with it you are in trouble.” Some will be surprised to hear Pardew talking about humility. He knows his cockney flash reputation. That touchline “dad dance” at Wembley has been replayed countless times. “I am quite forthright in my views and personality,” he laughs. “I am not shy. That’s documented.” But if that is part of him, it is certainly not the whole Pardew. He is reflective about his career, his strengths and weaknesses. As he considers where and how he would like his work to resume — “I’ve got far too much energy to live on the golf course” — he grapples with the strange trajectory of his rollercoaster career. The upward surges have been good enough to do something not many English managers have achieved in reaching two FA Cup finals (with Palace and West Ham United), be close to consecutive promotions at Reading and manager of the year at Newcastle United, and yet spells at West Ham, Charlton Athletic, Southampton and Palace have not been terminated at his behest. How to explain that recent dramatic Palace rise and slump? Pardew’s career is not an easy one to quantify. He struggles to answer if he is more thrilled by the good runs or disappointed by the struggles. “From where I have come from, from where I started, I wouldn’t have foreseen this success, let alone this failure,” he says. “So how do you look at it?” Most of his jobs have started strongly, and he wonders if that relates to his background playing non-League until his mid-twenties. “Whyteleafe, Epsom & Ewell, Dulwich Hamlet, Corinthian-Casuals . . . that experience moving around so much taught me to get into a group quite quickly,” he says. “I coached young too. When I was at Charlton, I’d take sessions on a Tuesday, Thursday night at Merton, just on a park pitch, a couple of lights. We started off with less than ten, by the end we could have 45, tough guys from Streatham. You have to keep them entertained and that takes a certain character.” That is where his force of personality works. Palace were the classic case: taking over an ailing team after the sacking of Neil Warnock, not only leading them to safety but the thrills of an FA Cup final. “We started in big trouble but it wasn’t even a struggle to stay in the division,” he says. But then came the downturn. “Looking back, I sat down with Steve in the summer and we decided we wanted to take the club forward,” he says. “We made changes but I definitely have the view we didn’t change the squad enough. “We brought players in but I think we should have done more. That was compounded when we thought we had good cover at left back, not thinking Pape Souaré would be in a car crash. That was a big mistake not getting cover in one or two areas. “Sometimes as manager you do get loyal to players. They kept us up, we got to the cup final. I couldn’t fault their attitude but we didn’t have a balanced team. “The players I’ve had, I think I’ve largely got the maximum out of them but maybe you can’t keep going for maximum. Maybe my loyalty gets in the way a little bit. I have been loyal to a fault with some. That’s just a trait I have. Something I have to keep an eye on.” Sometimes you have to acknowledge some of your strengths can be your weaknesses With time to think, to step back from the madness of it all, there are other ways he plans to alter his approach to the job. “Always learning,” he says, at 55. He is determined to train players harder physically. “When I started, the hard pre-season was a big thing, maybe too extreme among some,” he says. “But I think we have come too far the other way. “Doctors under pressure at Premier League level, sports scientists protecting themselves a little bit, sometimes worried what the chairman will think if there is any injury. I am not saying devalue them, don’t take their opinion. I just think we have become too protective.” He says that, in his next job, the players will have “a pre-season to remember”, especially having taken time to look at other sports. “I wonder if footballers are at the level they can be physically,” he says. “I think many can go further.” He notes that other leading managers he has spoken to concur with his analysis. As if to prove the point, we meet at St George’s Park where Pardew is delivering a training session on behalf of the League Managers Association to a group of coaches over from the United States. Pardew is keen to show the necessary intensity but, having borrowed a student team from Derby, two players are soon gasping on the sidelines. To watch Pardew lead the session is to be struck by his forcefulness. I mention it to him when he is finished. “It’s a powerful voice,” he says. “I have been conscious of that. Do I have to temper it sometimes? Maybe. Sometimes you have to acknowledge some of your strengths can be your weaknesses.” Pardew insists that the narrative of short-term impact followed by downturn is overstated, pointing to sustained improvement at Reading, constant rebuilding over four seasons on Tyneside. “It gets documented that my first year is a great success then it kind of fades away. That’s what people say about me. I could have arguments against that. “I thought I had come back well at Newcastle with the second team I built there. I was unfortunate to lose that team to transfers, big players like Loïc Rémy, Yohan Cabaye, Demba Ba. My win percentage in the Premier League, when you consider the clubs I’ve been at and the budgets I’ve had, I know it’s healthy. With buying and selling, I think I was in credit at Newcastle, not that the fans want to hear that. At Palace we were never going to spend fortunes. To get [Christian] Benteke, the books had to be balanced.” Yannick Bolasie departed. He feels as though there is unfinished business. “My career has stalled at the moment,” he says. “But I think I’ll come out stronger and better. Otherwise I would go and sit in Barcelona, eat tapas. “I love work. When I was a glazier [and non-League footballer], I was meant to work till 4.30pm but had to get it done by 3 to make the evening game. You had to get a certain amount of windows in so I had to work bloody hard to get it done, to get in my car, drive two and a half hours to Yeovil. Then driving back, A303 on a frozen night in the pitch dark. “I love the work, love being out on the pitch. When you are on it, it feels like you are engaged in an epic battle. You can’t replace it. I don’ t know any way to replace it. I might manage for another ten years.” The question is where. “I have thought about going abroad. The chances of the top six are slim when you’ve been sacked by Palace,” he says. “My CV is what it is and I think I’m in a good place to go back in. I think some managers don’t go back in a good place. They are scarred by what’s happened before or worried that it’s going to happen to them again. I feel robust like that. I had to show a lot of resilience at Newcastle. I soon realised you can’t always please people so you have to get about your job the best way you can. “I just want to feel confident going into my job that I can have success — whether that’s trying to get promotion out of the Championship, win the African Nations Cup or, ideally, back in the Premier League. I want somewhere with a plan, a target. Wherever it is, I don’t want to hear there’s no ambition. “The FA Cup — coming so close twice still burns so strong. You look at [Claudio] Ranieri. Who would have thought three years ago that he would win the title? That gives hope to all of us. I’ve always been an eternal optimist. Here we go, next one.” If he does not get a job this summer, Pardew plans to spend time looking around Spain. He owns a property in Barcelona and is due to visit Quique Sánchez Flores, the former Watford manager now at Espanyol. He speaks a little Spanish and may try to improve. He has heard friends advise a break, telling him to bow out of the insanity of it all, the short-termism. Financially, he has done well, especially when you consider where he started. But as the man said, you gotta do what you gotta do. For Pardew, that means getting back to management, back on the rollercoaster, still believing that the best is yet to come.
the dignified don't even enter in the game
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