Pardew will have nowhere to hide if things do not improve at Newcastle

Less than a month into the new season, and all the anger and frustration that was evident in the closing months of the previous campaign has reappeared with a vengeance. The key difference this time around, however, is that Newcastle’s embattled manager will find it much more difficult to deflect the criticism that will continue to come his way unless his side’s fortunes dramatically improve.

As Pardew himself admitted on the eve of the opening game, “I’ve got no cause to moan now”. Whereas in the past, Mike Ashley’s self-imposed financial constraints and tendency to sell key players against his manager’s wishes could be cited as mitigating factors, Pardew’s current difficulties, with Newcastle still to win a league game this season and lacking depth at either end of the field, are largely of his own making.

It is possible to quibble about this summer’s net spend at St James’, with Ashley effectively having reinvested the money that was received from the sales of Yohan Cabaye and Mathieu Debuchy, but a willingness to spend more than £35m on nine players still stands in marked contrast to the frugality of previous windows.

Crucially, this summer has seen Pardew much more heavily involved in all facets of the recruitment process. There has been no overarching director of football driving things, instead Pardew, Lee Charnley and Graham Carr have formed a transfer team that has worked together closely to identify targets and negotiate deals. Pardew even went as far as congratulating all three on their joint efforts when he was reflecting on his summer business.

So with that in mind, the Newcastle boss can hardly complain when he has been left with a squad that is lacking a recognised goalscorer – Emmanuel Riviere had a brief purple patch at Monaco but does not have a career history of scoring lots of goals and has not looked like a predatory centre-forward in his first four games – and boasts only three experienced centre-halves.

Pardew must have known the limitations of his budget from the start of the summer, so why didn’t he place a much greater emphasis on signing proven attacking firepower when he knew he had lost Loic Remy, Shola Ameobi and Luuk de Jong, and was also aware that Papiss Cisse would miss the opening two months of the season?

The injury that could keep Siem de Jong on the sidelines until Christmas is a cruel twist of fate, but Newcastle were always going to be susceptible to such a problem given their lack of attacking depth.

Similarly, given Fabricio Coloccini’s injury record in recent seasons, the Magpies can hardly bemoan their luck if another setback to their Argentinian skipper leaves them scrambling around for defensive cover in the next two or three months.

Newcastle desperately needed to recruit a striker and a defender on the final day of the transfer window, but in the end the deadline arrived without them having signed either. Having congratulated himself on his successes in the early weeks of the window, Pardew can hardly absolve himself of blame now that the final squad looks dangerously unbalanced.

Transfer deadline day was the catalyst for the latest outpouring of frustration of course, and again Pardew was at centre stage.

In previous years, the decision to dispense with key players was taken solely by Ashley. Cabaye and Andy Carroll both departed because Ashley received an offer ‘he couldn’t turn down’.

That was clearly not the case when it came to Hatem Ben Arfa and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, who both left on deadline-day without being replaced.

Pardew ultimately concluded that Ben Arfa was unmanageable, but while his team-mates’ urgings for him to be dropped must have made life difficult, could you imagine Sir Alex Ferguson allowing his selection decisions to be determined by the whims of his players?

Yanga-Mbiwa’s attitude was never the problem – Pardew simply concluded that the Frenchman wasn’t good enough – but the decision to loan him to Roma was always going to be a risk when Newcastle’s central defensive resources were stretched anyway.

Perhaps Pardew will get away with it. If Newcastle get a positive result at Southampton tomorrow and then beat a Ben Arfa-less Hull in their next home game, they will be well positioned in the table and the mood in the stands will be becalmed.

If things don’t go to plan, however, Pardew will find himself in the firing line. And unlike last season, he will have no one to hide behind if the mood turns sour.

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ENGLAND’S emphatic victory over Switzerland on Monday provided a much-needed boost in the wake of this summer’s miserable World Cup showing, but in the context of the wider qualifying campaign for Euro 2016, it has merely served to highlight the folly of Michel Platini’s decision to extend the tournament to 24 teams.

After one game of a ten-game qualifying section, England already find themselves in a situation where five or six more victories will almost certainly secure an automatic place in France.

Given that six of their remaining matches are against San Marino, Estonia and Lithuania, how on earth is interest going to be sustained until next autumn?

Platini is constantly championed as the best alternative to FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, yet in one fell swoop he has wrecked a competition that was functioning perfectly well without his interference.

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GIVEN that they don’t have a game until Sunday, you would have imagined Newcastle Falcons’ players would have spent Monday and Tuesday night relaxing. Instead, 60 of them were scattered around the North-East running coaching sessions for the junior teams of 17 local clubs.

England international Kieran Brookes headed to Consett with Rory Clegg, Tom Catterick and Zach Kibirige visited Yarm and Mark Irving and Scott Lawson dropped in on Houghton.

One can only imagine the delight on the faces of the youngsters, most of whom were aged between 12 and 14, they encountered.

It is a fantastic initiative, and while the excitement generated by next year’s World Cup will be important, it is Newcastle Falcons’ community involvement that continues to nourish grassroots rugby in the North-East. They should be heartily congratulated for their efforts.