10 Darkest Days In Alan Pardew's Newcastle United Career
2. Fulham 5-2 Newcastle
Date: 21st January 2012 Like the Arsenal game, Newcastle turned potential points into a mind-numbingly embarrassing defeat, shipping 5 goals in the second half of an extraordinary game that made Clint Dempsey the first American to score a hat-trick in the Premier League. Having bossed the first half and gone into the break one up, Pardew showed his typical half-time magic by inspiring his team to lose the will to even try, and though Hatem Ben Arfa scored a fine late goal, the game was already down the drain. Pardew blamed losing Cheick Tiote to the African Cups Of Nations, sort of... Frankly, it wasn't all that clear:
Did we miss Tioté in the second half? possibly, You could turn it on its head and say in the first half we didnt miss him. It wasnt about players we did have or didnt have, it was just a lack of concentration in the second half which cost us.
