Successful modern football managers need a lot of things: tactical nous, contacts high in the game, luck and thick skin being chief among those requirements, but it's always handy to be able to deflect blame for yourself and your team when things aren't going well. Most managers will say something non-commital in the wake of a heavy defeat, dust themselves down and spew out cliches that "next week we start again" and nobody thinks a second thought about it. Then there are the managers who like to entertain in their responses to post-game probing. Ian Holloway was the king of analogies, whether his side had won or lost, Arsene Wenger hilariously developed eye-sight problems whenever his side profit from bad decisions, but is as keen-eyed as a hawk when things went go the other way and Jose Mourinho and Louis Van Gaal get away with basically saying whatever they want. Alan Pardew, though, is on an entirely different level. He is the undisputed master of deflection, whether the excuses he uses are logic or otherwise, and in his years at the club, there have been precious few occasions where he's actually come out with the right reason for his side's defeats. Which is probably why he's not exactly the best at fixing the problems. But not one to let that break his stride, Pardew instead goes to his trusty little book of excuses, and comes out with some absolute pearlers that fans will remember for all the wrong reasons for years to come...
