In my opinion Alan Pardew's early success with us was built on the firmly embedded defensive organisation that lingered on after the Pulis reign the previous season, he merely injected us with the attacking adrenaline shot that he, the ultimate impact manager, can give.

Months later that inherited defensive steel crumbled to dust and it became patently clear that he couldn't organise a defence to save his life. That was why we saw his spell in two violenty contrasting halves, the first when our form was that of a European qualifier and the second, relegation candidates. If he hadn't gone we would 100% have gone down that season.

He is a fraud of a manager and, from all accounts, is also a dreadful bloke. The son of a former Newcastle director was a client of mine briefly and told me some horror stories about his antics at the club. They were apparently thrilled to get rid of him in the end and, from the sounds of it, we were lucky to do the same.

For the record I am now strongly in favour of Roy departing. Though his brand of football is undeniably effective, the game has moved on and we stick out as the worst side to watch in the division. Saturday afternoon's have become akin to having a dementor suck out your soul. However, Pardew vs. Hodgson shouldn't even be in question as the latter is superior in almost every aspect, whether in terms of experience, knowledge, general managerial ability or just as a gentleman.

Edited by Canterbury Palace (21 Oct 2020 12.08am)

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

Pards was a big time Charley..Agreed

In Pardew's last game the back 5 were

Hennessey, Ward, Delaney, Dann, Kelly (Friars 84).

Roy has been a lot more fortunate in that regard.

..very unnecessary and Pardew made two huge mistakes with losing Murray and keeping Hennessey in goal, he was basically a total idiot.

Hodgson by a mile. Pardew was taking us down. Hodgson has kept us up against all odds (0 points, 0 goals in first 8 games) when he rescued us from Frank the crank.
You want to stay at the top table and slowly but surely improve infrastructure throughout?
The alternative is back to the Championship where it might be more entertaining and we will win more often but progress will be frozen and financially we'll be living hand to mouth.
Everyone is entitle to their opinion but I know what I prefer.

Hodgson came in after 4 games with a team that finished the previous season in great form and got to the cup final the year before. They have brought in £80m worth of players in the previous 6 months.

Of those 4 games, we only really would have expected to lose 2. It wasn't a great deficit to catch up.

There's only so long he can trade off that success.

Pardew may have been taking us down. But Hodgson has won 2 in 13 games (against two teams that played 1 friendly each).

Pardew won 3 of his last 13 games gaining 11 points to Roy's 8.

In Pardew's last games Kelly regularly had a nightmare trying to fill in the left back role after Souare's accident and Hennessey always had a mistake in him. We pretty much started games 1-0 down.

At the moment, Hodgson's form is worst than Pardew's last games and a damn site less entertaining with a much better side.

Not trying to protect Pardew, he had to go.