Tom Lappin: Newcastle managerial change may just come back to haunt rash Ashley

Published on Friday 10 December 2010 11:41

READERS of Ashley Cole's My Defence (new copies available at £0.99 on Amazon) would have turned the last page and thought: "Surely football can never come up with an Ashley so crass and self-serving as this admittedly rather talented left-back."

They rushed to judgment and must now repent. In Mike Ashley, Newcastle surely have the dumbest kid in the Premier League kindergarten.

Ashley's past misdemeanours as Newcastle United owner are legion, and had the karmic conclusion of costing him tens of millions of pounds and the club a place in the Premier League. Those with a rosily sanguine view of human nature believed that Ashley must have been humbled by his series of failures to sell the club, and by a spell of retrenchment in the Championship. It must surely have been chastening that Chris Hughton rallied the ragtag remnants of the Premier League squad, gave a chance to a promising if troublesome centre-forward called Andy Carroll and cruised to the Championship title. Far from it.

Ashley's pig-headedness shouldn't be too much a surprise from a man of his physique, but it still took the breath away when Hughton was summarily dismissed this week.

It might just have been understandable, albeit harsh, if Newcastle were off the pace at the bottom and running out of ideas. That is not the case. Newcastle sit in 12th place in the table. Given pre-season qualms that they would struggle without major investment in players, they have over-achieved. They have drawn with Chelsea, beaten Arsenal at the Emirates, scored six against Aston Villa and, most rewardingly for the fans, stuffed Sunderland 5-1 in the derby at the end of October. Carroll is now an England number nine.

Consistency has been a problem. That draw with Chelsea was sandwiched between defeats to Bolton and West Bromwich Albion. The reasonable expectation after promotion, though, is consolidation (exactly the word that Hughton's replacement Alan Pardew used in his press conference on Thursday) getting used to the Premier League again and building up funds for squad-strengthening.

Hughton deserved a chance, at least for the duration of a season. His achievements, not only in winning promotion, but in earning the respect and trust of initially sceptical players and fans, merit considerable respect. Perhaps because Hughton ran the dressing-room like a workers' collective, encouraging debate, Ashley treated him with disdain, paying him roughly an eighth of the salary that the considerably less effective Sam Allardyce received (and a tenth of the payoff Allardyce was given on departure), refusing even to talk about a contract extension. Hughton was bright enough to know that his future was fraught, encouraging his assistant Colin Calderwood to accept the Hibernian job rather than wait around to become one of Ashley's discards.

The identity of Hughton's successor encourages disbelief, or dismay, if you are a Newcastle fan. Alan Pardew's achievements as a manager invite the description "mediocre". After a promising start with Reading, Pardew took West Ham into the Premier League via the play-offs and came within a minute of winning the 2006 FA Cup Final. After that, it was all downhill for West Ham, and Pardew's career. Sacked after the worst run of defeats for 70 years, Pardew went to Charlton, where he presided over some disastrous form in the Championship, and Southampton, one division lower, where he did a fair job in difficult financial circumstances. All in all it's not the sort of CV that would usually land a Premier League job.

His dismissal from Southampton is clouded in mystery, with rumours of poor staff morale. Even if we dismiss the persistent stories of dalliances with players' wives at West Ham and Southampton, it is apparent that something about Pardew's personality does not encourage warm relationships with players.

In between jobs, Pardew thought he might bring his accumulated wisdom to the pundits' sofa on Match Of The Day. That career was stillborn, when he used the word "raped" to describe a Michael Essien tackle. We are not considering an intellectual colossus here. Pardew said he was assured that Carroll is staying at Newcastle, a promise that seems to take the player's wishes for granted. Carroll had a fruitful relationship with Hughton, a manager who developed his ability and confidence, and didn't rush to condemn his off-field actions. It would be surprising if Pardew is equally sensitive, or if Carroll was not enticed away by big-money overtures from, say, Tottenham. Newcastle's (and Pardew's) survival might rely on the centre-forward's mood-swings.

Pardew's first game in charge is today against Liverpool, the team that provided the opposition when he reached his pinnacle as a player (he scored the winner in the FA Cup semi-final in 1990) and as a manager (that 2006 Cup Final).

Newcastle fans, already contemptuous of Ashley's penchant for appointing southern acquaintances into positions of power at St James's Park, won't be inclined to offer much tolerance or understanding if Pardew fails to get results immediately. "I'm not a Geordie of course," said the man who has never played for or managed a club north of Barnet. That might be the least of his problems.