I Wish I Was A Geordie - The Blog of Newcastle United in the US

Carver Might Not Be Right ... Truth Is, We Don't Know

I don't know if John Carver is Newcastle United manager material.

And unless you are a former Newcastle, Leeds United, Luton Town, Toronto FC, Plymouth Argyle or Sheffield United player, you probably don't, either.

Pretty much all of Carver's coaching work over the past 20 or so years has come on training fields across England, away from the scrutiny of reporters, fans and the general public. We can't judge him on tactics, lineup decisions, signings and the other factors we use to hammer or praise managers.

True, Carver has filled in as caretaker manager a handful of times in his career — with less than stellar results, including last season's stint in place of a suspended Alan Pardew — but it's hard to glean too much from a few games sprinkled throughout 10 years. Caretaker managers rarely find themselves in stable situations, do they?

Carver's 11-15-10 record over parts of two seasons in Toronto wasn't terribly impressive, but keep in mind TFC is Major League Soccer's perpetual trainwreck (come to think of it, TFC might be the MLS version of Newcastle).

This is all to say it's pretty hard to declare with any degree of certainty how Carver might fare if Mike Ashley installs him as Pardew's permanent replacement ... or even as a stop-gap solution until the summer.

As I read through Carver's quotes from his debut press conference on Wednesday, his emotive references to Sir Bobby Robson and Gary Speed reminded me of a moment from the 2011-12 season. As Newcastle paid tribute to the late Welsh midfielder with a minute's applause before a game against Chelsea, Carver shook as the tears poured down his face. This is clearly an emotional, passionate man (sometimes to his detriment; see Wigan, 2013).

Carver might be a bit too feisty for my managerial tastes, but haven't we all spent the last six years complaining that this club lacks passion? Carver even talked about aiming for the Champions League on Wednesday: "If we haven't got that ambition, then we are all wasting our time in my opinion. It's no good just turning up thinking mediocrity is good enough. Let's go and win every game we can. If you don't think that way, you won't get in those situations again." It might be 90 percent nonsense, but it sure makes for better reading than "We can't compete financially with Southampton."

I'm not advocating for Carver to get the job; I still think there are better options out there. But I'll be pulling for him today against Burnley and for however long he's in the St. James' hot seat.

Reflections On The Pardew Era

The Toon Army can finally exhale. After months of protest-filled angst, Alan Pardew has finally taken his leave. Like the majority of the fans, I'm happy to see him go. For one thing, our sparse output on the blog is partly attributed to Pardew's tactical predictability. After four years of watching the man work, it felt like we had said all there was to be said. Making the same observations 10 or 20 times over didn't seem like a productive use of my time, and reading my fatigued analysis probably wouldn't have been a worthwhile use of yours. But now he's off to Crystal Palace, and we can all hit the reset button.

Honestly, when he first washed up on the banks of the Tyne, I had a lot of sympathy for the man. Sure, he ended up at a club with a lot of prestige and history, and was being paid handsomely to walk the touchline at St. James' Park, but the situation was difficult for him before the ink dried on his initial contract. Here's another excerpt of my unfinished manuscript which touches on his early days at the club:

Most managers hired at midseason can count on some goodwill from their new fans. After all, it usually takes a stretch of poor performance to force a change. But Pardew was under siege from the moment his appointment was announced. Before he ever led the club out for a single match, the popular Newcastle-Online forum had over 2,500 posts in response, virtually all negative. His introductory press conference was parsed for every slip of the tongue, each mistake a sharpened dagger pointed right at Pardew himself.

Pardew was punished dearly for replacing a good man (if a mediocre manager) in Chris Hughton, then immediately had the rug pulled out from under him when Andy Carroll was sold to Liverpool. You can say that he knew what he was walking into when he took the job, but it's not as if he was to blame for either situation.

Since then, we've all been on the rollercoaster together. I know the 2011-12 season has been touted to death by Pardew's defenders, almost to the point that we've forgotten how great it was. But that season did produce some of my fondest memories as a Newcastle supporter, and I will appreciate Pardew for the role he played in those memories.

In the end, though, it's best for us and for him that he's gone. Pardew clearly was not taking the club any further, and he didn't know how to get the best out of many of the players in the squad. When someone like Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa is barely given a sniff in his natural position, then immediately finds himself starting for a club in the Champions League and the French national team after his departure, it's a sign that the manager is not making the most of the talent he's being given. No doubt Pardew would argue that Newcastle wasn't bringing in his sort of players. To me, that sounds like a perfect reason to cut ties and find a new manager whose style fits the squad.

And that, of course, is the ultimate question we're faced with now: do we trust Mike Ashley to appoint a suitable replacement? Maybe Graham Carr has a candidate or two whom he thinks would mesh well with the players he's brought in. If not, I imagine I'll probably be writing a version of this piece a season or two from now, once again wondering whether the stars will ever align.

Three Points: NUFC 2-1 Chelsea...Cissé Scores Twice (Again)

For the fourth straight season, Newcastle beat Chelsea in the league on Saturday. (It's actually five straight years with one win over the Blues if you count the (then) Carling Cup win in 2010.) How did the Toon upend the previously-unbeaten league leaders? Here's my take.

Built to frustrate the big boys: I said this just a few weeks ago, but matches like this are made for Alan Pardew's approach. Newcastle didn't totally cede control of the match to Chelsea, but it did largely focus on the counterattack. And with a track record like the one Pardew's Newcastle has rung up in this fixture, why change things? Expect more of the same in three of the next four matches: Saturday at Arsenal, in the Capital One Cup quarterfinal against Spurs, and in the Boxing Day trip to Old Trafford.

But sandwiched in those matches, of course, is the home derby, and this is where Pardew doesn't seem to be able to adapt his tactics. As we saw against West Ham and Burnley, he can't figure out how best to attack teams that are on par or weaker than his own. And if this club really has aspirations of something greater than a high-midtable finish (I'll let you decide whether it does or not), it has to figure out how to win more of those sorts of games.

Jack flashes some attacking ability: One key to Saturday's win was the play of Jack Colback, in particular his willingness to get involved in the play when Newcastle found itself around the Chelsea penalty area. Though my co-blogger Phil criticized his close-range miss, it was still encouraging to see him get in that position, as well as involve himself in one of the goals. If Pardew is going to stick with Colback and Cheick Tioté as his two deeper-lying midfielders, Colback will need to jump into the attack with more urgency.

Cissé/Perez...the new Cissé/Ba dilemma? Those of you who have been around for a couple years remember the persistent issue that Pardew had with accommodating both Cissé and Demba Ba. While the club mostly excelled with a fluid front three of Ba, Cissé, and Hatem Ben Arfa at the end of the 2011-12 season, Ba never enjoyed spending much of his time as a wing-forward, even though he played in a similar role while at Hoffenheim. The following season, Pardew really struggled to fit both players into the same XI, as he couldn't balance the midfield and defense with the two up front together.

The manager hasn't had to make a decision like that again...until now. Ever since Ba wrested control of that competition in late 2012, he's basically only had one striker either available or in form at a time. But that's not the case at the moment, with both Cissé and Ayoze Pérez making a strong case to lead the line. So what's Pardew to do? In my opinion, it's worth trying Pérez on the wing with Cissé in the middle for a full match to see what happens.