As fans, we should all celebrate the fact that Newcastle are winning again: we should all be positive. And more than anything, we should never, EVER have to qualify that we actually are happy to be winning, because there's way too much glee in the way supposedly negative fans are having their faces rubbed in victory. Because a significant portion of fans have been openly critical of a manager who has lost a frightening number of games this year, we were somehow classed as no longer fans - as if wanting to win, and wanting the best from our team is somehow a crime. With the victories, and the inevitable celebrations, we're called fickle, deluded, unreasonable and everyone questions where the Pardew Out Brigade are. They're still here, and it will take a lot more to silence such fundamental concerns about a manager than a winning streak. The biggest untruth is that Newcastle fans will simply flip on their manager because of four games - that is simply not true. Ask yourself this: if you were punched in the face for a year, before being kissed for a month, would you forget the pain? Exactly. The overriding problem with Pardew's track record is that while his October was brilliant, the 7 points he picked up there, and the 3 points he's already picked up in November eclipsed the points haul of April, May, August and September all together. If even the most optimistic of fans cannot see a problem with that, you have to question their thinking. So while some fans will shout Pardew In, or set up Back Pardew Twitter accounts, smugly celebrating how clever they are after four wins, others will look at the whole picture of the year, and see there's still something wrong. It isn't the converted critics of Pardew's management of the team who are going to the stadium with banners proclaiming he is back from the dead - it's more likely the same people who have been asking for a year what the alternative is. They are a transient group, who are inevitably going to celebrate their refusal to protest or openly critique with self-congratulatory banners and social media statuses asking where the Pardew Out lot are now. And it's no accident that the positive banners find their way onto TV screens unmolested, while the critical ones mysteriously disappear under stewards' arms. But again, this is not to say victory isn't to be celebrated or commended: that couldn't be further from the truth. It doesn't make you any more of a fan to be unhappy with an abject run of losses. It makes you more human to respond to long periods of disappointment with despair, dismay and dissent: if you accept losses with such optimism, you're unlikely to accept logical analysis either. Pardew has got a long way to go before he claws back even the least ardent of his critics: if he continues to win, and does so against teams who don't spectacularly implode in the face of reductive tactics, or hand victories on a plate, then he will be worthy of praise. No doors are closed on that, no matter what Danny Mills says, but it would have to be a serious period of success to completely block out the abuses of the past. And as the media continues to heap scorn on the fans who criticised Pardew's start to the season as if it was somehow unwarranted, and completely ignores the fact that his record speaks volumes, the manager himself could score a win by actually acknowledging where he's gone wrong this year. Instead he has simply said he knew all along it would be fine, that he was building a new team that needed time - but what about last season? What about the mistakes? By creating this emotional disconnect between why the fans and the club's poor form, the manager is hanging fans out to dry, and they will not accept it well. He's feeding into that cliche of the unreasonable, nasty Newcastle fan who demands Champions League victories every year, when the reality is, as a fan base we have been abused for most of the past year, and it goes a lot deeper than victories will heal.
