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Hughton Out, Pardew In, Ashley Insane: The Week in View

Published by Ian John on December 10, 2010

The big news of the Premier League week, Wayne Rooney hit the bar. No, this wasn’t in the Salford based hotel to chat up a higher class of lady altogether, but he hit the bar with a curling shot in United’s 1-1 draw with Valencia. Cue, much celebration amongst United fans about his return to form.

In reality, Rooney is looking much sharper now and seemingly on his way back to his best. Which is a good thing for United as Chelsea’s lack of form continues and Dimitar Berbatov had one of those nights where he would not have scored if they’d have played any amount of additional Fergie injury time.

The real news of the week though came from the frozen north, from Newcastle, where Mike Ashley, tired of actually doing something half decent for his club, decided it was time to throw a Dennis Wise type of spanner into the works and sacked Chris Hughton.

Now, Hughton is the manager who took over when they were relegated from the Premier League. He has spent very little in turning the team around, reduced the wage budget and got the best out of players like Joey Barton, who many thought a lost cause and turned Andy Carroll into an England calibre centre forward. He earned them promotion at the first attempt and comfortably so, he’s hammered Sunderland 5-1 at home, defeated Arsenal at the Emirates, Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in the Carling Cup and Newcastle are comfortably mid table in their first season back.

In Ashley’s world, this translates as reason enough to earn him the sack.

It is a quite ludicrous decision. Alan Pardew has been installed as the new manager and Newcastle fans would be wrong to blame him for the debacle. Instead, Ashley has decided to dispense with Hughton, despite all his achievements and reward Pardew, who now is the proud owner of a five and a half year contract, simply because we are led to believe Pardew is more ‘experienced’ than Hughton?

Well, in Premier League terms he may be. But he is also more experienced in Premier League terms than someone like, Jose Mourinho, Fabio Capello, Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Mancini not to name a few others. As everything Ashley does at Newcastle, it is a joke of a decision, the wrong appointment and the right man for the job has been sacked unjustly.

I could maybe have understood the decision if Newcastle had a truly exciting manager to bring in. Say someone like Klinsmann perhaps, or even Martin O’Neill, or even as a last resort, Martin Jol. But Alan Pardew? The man Southampton (A League One team) sacked for not being good enough in his last post?

No wonder Newcastle’s players and fans are stunned and that Pardew seemed unusually contrite in his first ever interview as Newcastle boss. It isn’t his fault that he has been placed in this position and he now has the task of seemingly pushing Newcastle on towards the European places as it seems being safely in mid-table during your first season in the top flight, is no longer enough.

For the second time around, Ashley has made a ‘Wise’ decision, that is nothing of the sort.

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