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Does Pardew know his best side?

He gets in two wingers on loan despite (IMHO) Sam having a decent first season and Ambrose being our second top scorer and then leaves them on the bench. He spends £2m on Varney then spends another £1.5m on Gray in the window (but leaves him on the bench) and now brings in a Premiership loan striker who will presumably be 1st choice. Who makes way? He has tried all our central defenders for spells but not decided on a settled pairing, and half a dozen permutations of full-backs before deciding on the classy (last night apart) Youga and the iffy Halford. The only place he doesn't tinker with is central midfield who are the unit who should be dictating our patterns of play and seem the most likely reason for our inconsistency.

Comments

  • It's how Pards has ALWAYS managed his teams, with very high staff turnovers.
  • I always thought good man management was about understanding individual's strengths and weaknesses, playing to the strengths, working on the weaknesses and getting the right teamwork combination. A lot harder in practice than in theory, but it is a theory. Clearly not one that Mr P. believes in.
  • As I said on a previous post I think the situation has made finding the balance / 1st XI pretty tricky.

    We had a huge amount of out going players over the summer and AP needed to replace them pretty quickly in order to work with them preseason and for us not to get off to a stinker (ala Sheff Utd). He brought in some players that flattered, some players that have gone off the boil, and some that ended up getting injured, as well as some that have worked out.

    We are / were a team in transition from a PL team with wages and PL players to a team that needed to balance the books in order to ensure that we didn't put the club at financial risk, to a club that can achieve promotion in the short-term whilst balancing the books.

    We are not like Watford / WBA who in my opinion are more similar to where we were when we came back down in 99. i.e. having high class Div 1 players, on Div 1 wages, who were happy to spend time back from where they came.

    With this in mind I think Pards has done a pretty decent job.
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