Chris Hughton sacked!!!!

[Drago]

Pardew must be blackmailing Ashley. Surely?!

The minute I read the five and a half year contract this popped in my head

It's not to unbelievable that Pardew has some compromising pictures took after one of their casino sessions.

[Fredo]

Instead of laughing at Newcastle fans, why aren't we laughing at our own laughing stock of a manager.

[sambirken]

Instead of laughing at Newcastle fans, why aren't we laughing at our own laughing stock of a manager.

I think most of us are too busy crying to laugh about that one mate.

[spud_gun]

[-V-]

This stinks so bad.

There are only 3 possible explanations for this

1) Ashley lost a bet to Pardew and has been forced to appoint him

2) Ashley and Pardew are lovers

or

3) Ashley has already agreed to sell the club and so has appointed his best mate as manager just for the sake of it

[dww]

Alan Pardew set on re-establishing his name – whatever Newcastle's fans say

Despite scepticism and anger among Newcastle's fans, Alan Pardew will be determined to prove he belongs in the top flight

Dominic Fifield guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 December 2010 07.00 GMT


Alan Pardew After starting the season in League One, Alan Pardew will relish his unexpected opportunity in the Premier League. Photograph: Tony Marshall/Empics Sport

Many of those on Tyneside will view the appointment as the latest unwanted twist in the cockney conspiracy. Alan Pardew will consider it an opportunity to restore a reputation. The man once seen as one of the brightest young English managers emerging in the game is to return to the Premier League despite beginning the season in League One. This is a man who will relish the prospect of winning over the locals in Newcastle if it means he can also re-establish his name.

The 49-year-old can pinpoint the precise moment his career turned. His West Ham team were leading the reigning European champions, Liverpool, 3-2 in the 2006 FA Cup final, the manager's stock never higher, when, with the game already in stoppage-time at the end, Steven Gerrard belted a glorious equaliser. In that split second, Pardew's career veered off course. There was an inevitability about the subsequent defeat on penalties and, where he might have ended that afternoon hoisting silverware with his potential candidacy to succeed Sven-Goran Eriksson as England's next coach enhanced, instead began the downturn that dragged him from elite to also-ran status.

He did not see it coming. The outward brash arrogance that had annoyed more senior counterparts in the game in his early days at Reading – an attitude born of fierce ambition and desire to succeed in a game he only entered professionally at the age of 25 – had appeared to have mellowed over his time at Upton Park. He had been maturing, his willingness to learn, adapt and progress impressive. West Ham played an attractive, energetic brand of football that had even won over those sceptics among the supporters. Yet that was the peak. After that final, Pardew seemed to regress. He was to win only four more games as West Ham's manager.

He bought himself a Ferrari, his flashiness only serving to encourage the "Baby Bentley" culture that so dismayed Alan Curbishley upon his arrival at the club's Chadwell Heath training complex as successor. Even Pardew, in retrospect, might concede that the considerable achievement of leading a newly promoted team to a ninth-place finish and an FA Cup final had gone to his head. From the outside, he appeared to lose the plot. When he was sacked, the Londoners were under new ownership, entrenched in the relegation zone and enduring a horrible bout of second-season syndrome.

Not that the Premier League was done with him yet that season. Appointed at Charlton Athletic, 19th and as sickly as their neighbours across the water, within a fortnight of exiting Upton Park, Pardew flirted with survival, satisfyingly thumping West Ham 4-0, before succumbing at the last. But if there had been much to admire in his attempts to right that sinking ship over the initial five-month period, his inability to mount a prolonged push for promotion the following year, as Chris Hughton did, was damning. After a horrendous start to his second full season, the manager was cast adrift once again.

His spell at Southampton, a League One club operating on Championship wages and with Premier League ambitions, ended in August with his relationship with the executive chairman, Nicola Cortese, fractured beyond repair. Narrowly failing to reach the play-offs despite starting last season with minus 10 points might have constituted a success elsewhere, but not at St Mary's. Sacked from a third-tier club, Pardew had effectively hit rock bottom with his plight reflective of a generation of apparently forward-thinking young managers – Iain Dowie, Aidy Boothroyd, Paul Ince, Steve Cotterill, Chris Coleman – who have not made their mark in the Premier League.

He should at least return to the top division wiser for having endured his fall from grace. He will bring qualities. Forget the blue-sky thinking and annoying soundbites of his early days. "Tenacity, Spirit, Flair" became Reading's slogan over his tenure, and the T-shirts worn at the 2004 play-off final against Crystal Palace, "The Original Academy", might have been commissioned by David Brent. In fact, he was a fine motivator at West Ham, where he moulded together a team that arguably overachieved, with the emphasis he placed on fitness and industry admirable. That is a throwback to his playing days as a workaholic midfielder, initially in non-league and then with Palace, Charlton and Barnet.

Billy Smith, who took him from Corinthian Casuals to Dulwich Hamlet, called him "a 90-minute player, not the best passer, but someone who made the most of himself". Those are qualities he has brought to his management style. Steve Coppell, who signed him for £4,000 from Yeovil, considered him Palace's heartbeat, the dressing-room motivator integral to team spirit. His bullish attitude was key to lifting a team deflated by a 9-0 loss at Liverpool in September 1989 into the season's FA Cup final at the Merseysiders' expense, Pardew nodding the extra-time winner in a 4-3 success at Villa Park.

Ensuring the players' mind-set is right, and their fitness at its peak, are just as integral to his managerial approach. "There's no secret format in football and Alan hasn't discovered something new in terms of preparing a team for a game," said Phil Parkinson, who worked under Pardew at Reading and Charlton. "He just does the right things well and is thorough in his preparation." Those standards may have slipped after that heady first season in the top flight with West Ham. They surely won't lapse again.

Neither will the locals' scepticism bordering on hostility in Newcastle deflect him. Pardew will not be daunted. Finding acceptance has often been an issue. As a player, he was never truly appreciated – his winner at Villa Park aside – at Palace. Alan Smith, Coppell's assistant when Pardew signed in 1987, admitted the midfielder initially "had to fight hard to be accepted, both by the fans and the other players".

Upon arriving as manager at the Boleyn Ground in 2003 he was initially reviled. The team, stripped of its best players before his arrival, failed to captivate on the pitch, and Pardew was no true cockney. "I think West Ham fans probably felt they did not know me and did not have any attachment to me," he has said. Yet his unswerving self-belief saw him through that period and, for a while, on to better things.

His skin will have to be thicker still on Tyneside, where the chants on Saturday will be bellowed for the departed. But, given time, the outsider could yet win them over. One senior manager in the game claimed he was "a lucky boy" to be given this opportunity. Pardew will not see it like that. He has unfinished business in the Premier League.

[Exiled_red]

He's got a five and a half year contract

[Rowan]

More from my friends in the North

HIS IS RIPPING ME UP ASHLEY JUST **** OFF YOU FAT VILE PISSTAKING NONCE PARDEW IS A ****ING BORING USELESS ****FUL NON ENTITY!!! WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING AS A COLLECTIVE !! X x

It's not pardew's fault at the end of the day !! But what happened to bring a big name in with loads of experience !! Nufc= laughing stock of the country thanks alot mr ashley !!

wonders if the cost to the team of Andy Carroll being locked up for 6 months for smacking Mike Ashley would be worth it?...

Five and a half year contract wtf man

and

Went up to the little Asda employee ... 'excuse me mate but you wouldnt happen to have three aisles devoted to useless Christmas related tat anywhere would you?' ... his little eyes lit up.

[Drago]

wonders if the cost to the team of Andy Carroll being locked up for 6 months for smacking Mike Ashley would be worth it?...

[lfcred]

It really is an absolute joke, possibly Newcastle's biggest joke yet. You couldn't make this **** up

And that is saying something with them lot. It is almost as if they deliberately d stuff like this just to make the news. A nice, quiet, comfortable mid-table season just wasn't good enough for them.

[lickedlollipop]

if feel kinda sorry for NUFC fans.

[joyno]

the players better watch their wives every movement with pardew being appointed apparently. allegedly.

[-V-]

the players better watch their wives every movement with pardew being appointed apparently. allegedly.

Allegedly what? You haven't actually alleged anything........

[joyno]

the players better watch their wives every movement with pardew being appointed apparently.

[-V-]

Cheers for clearing that up