No time like the present for Pardew
ALL being well, Alan Pardew will return to the scene of his greatest pl ay i ng triumph tomorrow. This time, he is the manager. At Villa Park in 1990, wearing the red and blue striped shirt of Crystal Palace, he scored the dramatic extra-time winner in the FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool.
Credit to Pardew because he intends to take the team against Aston Villa provided the announcement confirming that he is the new Palace manager is made t oday. That is certainly the intention.
It would be easy to swerve this one, to sit i n the stand alongside co-chairman Steve Parish and club ambassador Mark Bright.
Instead, he intends to be there for the game, most likely in the dugout, for the first of 19 matches that will decide whether Palace stay in the Barclays Premier League.
Good on Pardew for that. He takes over a team who need organisation, f ocus and discipline after Neil Warnock was sacked following the 3-1 defeat at home by Southampton on Boxing Day.
Yesterday, Warnock gave his first interview since leaving Selhurst Park and he couldn’t resist throwing a few grenades at Parish.
‘I would have liked the chairman to tell me they had a chance of getting Alan Pardew and would I mind stepping down,’ he told talkSPORT.
‘When I was clearing my desk, Ronnie Jepson said “Gaffer, they’ve got someone else”.’
His assistant called that right. Pardew was always Plan A, the man Parish wanted when Tony Pulis walked away two days before the opening game of the season. At the time, the former Palace man wasn’t ready.
On this occasion, he is and his brief, beyond survival, is to build a team who can compete in the top half of the Premier League.
In an interview given by Parish last week, the ambitious Palace co-chairman admitted that he also craved a cup run.
Palace will turn their attention to the FA Cup on Sunday when they go to Dover in the third round, but the priority r emains t he Premier League.
The circumstances will be very different at Palace, where the stadium has changed little since Pardew left for Charlton in November 1991. Back then, the team trained at the Imperial Sports Ground in Mitcham, and they have conducted a tour of south London in the intervening years before ending up in Beckenham.
Yesterday, Warnock complained about the infrastructure at the club and claimed the training ground was below par for a Premier League team. It has been interpreted at Selhurst Park as a bit of bitching, particularly after he claimed he took over a club in chaos. Last season Palace finished 11th, which Warnock insists was ‘lucky’.
Pardew will also have his work cut out rebuilding the confidence of Palace’s forward line after Warnock’s criticism of them in recent weeks. There will be money to spend in the transfer window and he will have a greater say i n recruitment, a refreshing change from t he limitations of working for Newcastle owner Mike Ashley.
Parish has overlooked Pardew’s disappointing spell as manager of Charlton in 2006. He could not halt the slide and they fell out of the Premier League after winning only five games with him in charge.
At Palace, he will need to win a few more than that.