Chris Waddle Defends Pardew - You'd Think He Was A Mackem Or Something...

By Simon Gallagher / October 10, 2014

Asking former professional footballers their opinion of managers is a little bit like asking a cow how best to cook a steak: they don't have the capacity to look at it from that perspective, and even if they did, they are wholly unqualified to even answer the question. Just because they were paid to play the game doesn't mean their opinions should be held up as the most holy of all opinions and blindly followed by fans: actors don't all make good directors, students don't all make great teachers, and footballers don't all make good pundits or managers. Just ask John Barnes. Or Chris Waddle, actually. But still those opinions are sought out, as Newcastle seem to be finding support from all quarters at the minute, from former footballers and pundits who think it outrageous that anyone would be upset with being 18th in the league, and having the worst record in the league in an entire year. Honestly, I don't know how we all sleep at night. You should be disgusted with yourselves just for wanting to win, frankly. Waddle's comments - which should be viewed as welcomely as Dennis Wise's were - suggest that Newcastle fans should stop protesting and just accept that Pardew is doing the best he can, because the current regime is impossible to succeed under. Perhaps someone should tell that to Alan Pardew, who was talking about Champions League qualification in the summer, and notoriously (and smugly) mentioned polishing his manager of the year award just last week - if success is impossible under Mike Ashley how did a distinctly average manager come fifth despite accusations of tight purse strings and board-room interference? Imagine what might happen in the same context with a good manager in charge. But no, clearly Waddle is right that nobody would be able to work with Ashley, which is at the crux of his sympathetic defence of Pardew - who he did concede should have been sacked by now. Annoyingly, Waddle is the latest mouthpiece to say that the protests are having a detrimental impact on the team:

€œThe one thing you don€™t want when walking onto the pitch is fans holding banners up with €˜manager out€™. The players are still playing for Pardew so he must be doing something right. I was at the Stoke City game and Newcastle played very well. They just couldn€™t grab a goal. €œThey dug in against Swansea and got a good result after going down to 2-0, so you can€™t say the players aren€™t giving it everything. But sometimes you have to be realistic and say €˜how good are the team?€™ Currently, they€™re on par with the teams in the bottom half of the league."

Let's deal with what's wrong there first. Newcastle played poorly against Stoke, and made them look good until Gabriel Obertan came on the pitch and made some progress going forward. That in itself should be indication that we did not play "very well". And then there's that issue of the players doing "everything they can" for Pardew: if that's the case, why are we 18th? Why are formerly good players like Yoan Gouffran and Fabricio Coloccini now shadows of what they were at the start of last season? And if we're on a par with the teams in the bottom half of the league why are we four or five points behind most of them? And then Waddle defers to the "who could do better" argument:

"People might say they€™re better than that, but does that mean you get a new manager in who can get more out of his team? €œPersonally I don€™t think you can. If a new manager comes in, he€™d say to Mike Ashley €˜I need to bring in three or four players to make this team stronger€™. Alan Pardew could probably say the same thing right now, but they haven€™t got the budget at the minute so what€™s the point in bringing a new manager in if he€™s going to work from the same sort of line?€

Again, how dare we want someone else to come in who might do better, how dare we dream about improvement on four points from seven games? How DARE we suggest that someone else might do a better job with the assets Newcastle already own? The very fact that Waddle cannot acknowledge that fact underpins exactly the quality of his argument: he's not making any insightful comments at all, he's just speculating that things could be a lot worse, when the reality is that anything and anyone at this stage would be better than Pardew and 18th in the Premier League. But then, you suspect that Waddle has been taking lessons out of the Mike Ashley/Alan Pardew book of financial excuses, because what he says next about competing reads like statements we've heard before:

"...You need a lot of money to compete against likes of Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United. Liverpool spent well over £100m this summer, Tottenham have spent a fortune after losing Gareth Bale, Everton are buying people like Romelu Lukaku. So there€™s a lot of a teams at the top of the league who are spending fortunes and Ashley has said he can€™t compete. He€™s being honest, I don€™t think there€™s a problem with that, I don€™t think he€™s ever hid from that. €œAt the minute, the only way Newcastle can get back into challenging for a Champions League spot is if Ashley were to sell the club to someone who€™s got lots and lots of money to spend.€

Someone maybe like a billionaire businessman with a gigantic personal wealth? No, facts and figures have proved that Mike Ashley has the money from TV revenue and would have from sponsorship and retail if it wasn't being swallowed up by Sports Direct to spend on transfers every season, and the transfer model is currently self-sustaining based on sales - just as Spurs has been with the Bale money, as he's so keen to point out. And if no teams can compete without spending obscene amounts of money, someone should probably inform Swansea and Southampton. He then goes on to say Yohan Cabaye and Demba Ba were great in the changing room - quite how he knows that is anyone's guess, but it is his final statement that proves his allegiance to Sunderland is probably still guiding what he thinks of Pardew and Ashley...

€œBut realistically, looking at Newcastle United, a Premier League club is their stature and that€™s what they should be. As for a top four or top six, I don€™t think their budget allows Pardew to get into that bracket. In terms of the size of the club and the size of the wage bill they should be mid-table, away from relegation every year.

So, basically, we're only middling in terms of size, and our wage bill means we should only ever hope to be mid-table. I'm glad someone has cleared that up for me, but it doesn't exactly clear up the fact that the team is currently in 18th position, which is roughly 6-8 places below where Waddle himself claims we should be happy with. So why the hell should we accept that quietly? Please, stop asking ex-pros who have no idea about what it is to be a football manager or a Newcastle fan their opinion. It's getting annoying.