10 Talented Newcastle Players Who Were Well And Truly Pardewed

10. Demba Ba

It's fair to say that the Senegalese striker took some time to adapt to playing at Newcastle: when he signed on a free from West Ham he didn't find his feet straight away, thanks in part to the impact of Ramadan (or so fans said) and partly because the team took some time to gel with his more athletic style than Andy Carroll's purer target man mould. But then, Ba arrived with a bang and started hitting the net with aplomb, scoring 15 goals by the time he went off to the African Nations in January. Then Newcastle signed Papiss Cisse to play alongside him, and Newcastle fans started to dream about having a strike-force like Shearer and Ferguson again, with two names to scream out. Except, that's not how Pardew's brain worked at the time, and instead of playing the pair together, or entertaining the idea of letting the 15 goal hitman play in the position he'd scored 15 goals from, he changed system. Ultimately, the move to a wider attacking front with Ba on the left profited Cisse and helped Newcastle finish fifth, but it came at a cost. Ba was forced out of position and stopped scoring entirely, and his attitude seemingly changed, spelling the beginning of the end of his career. He was always very keen to be considered the star player, and once more Pardew misjudged the situation and compromised one of his most useful players because of his inability to juggle more than one talent.