Alan Pardew likens the task of reconstructing Newcastle United to assembling a piece of flat-pack furniture. “It takes time,” he says, with feeling. “My wife’s Swedish so I’ve done a few of those Ikea furniture packs and I know you’ve got to do lots of little bits to get to the end. If you get the first little bit wrong, the second bit doesn’t work. If you get the second bit wrong, the third bit definitely ain’t working and the table top is wobbling.”
As a largely dreadful 2014 for Newcastle draws to a close, Pardew’s patient fusion of imports such as Rémy Cabella and homegrown youngsters including Rolando Aarons promises to result in a formidably pacy, unexpectedly exciting, team.
Three straight wins – against Leicester and Tottenham in the Premier League and Manchester City in the Capital One Cup –have not only begun erasing relegation fears but stripped the wind from the sails of Tyneside’s “Sack Pardew” campaign.
While there is some way to go before the hearts and minds of many fans are recaptured, Pardew is preparing for Liverpool’s visit on Saturday lunchtime confident his players remain behind him.
Had Newcastle’s squad wished to force Mike Ashley, the club’s owner, to sack the manager, defeats could have accumulated. Instead they began fighting for points.
“I think we’ve put some blocks in place that kind of give us something to hinge onto now,” says Pardew, who sensibly bodyswerved a question relating to the enduring sturdiness of the furniture adorning his family home: “I’ll be careful there. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”
For the moment at least, Newcastle’s new foundations have helped create a universally prized commodity. Momentum has been a word absent from the club’s vocabulary this calendar year and Pardew is delighted to have rediscovered it. “I’ve always thought momentum is the key to success in professional sport,” he says. “We have great momentum at the moment. There’s no way we could have won at City if we hadn’t won at Spurs.
“Winning and momentum are massive things. I watch Andy Murray playing tennis and this is a guy in form, reaching shots he shouldn’t reach and going for shots he wouldn’t normally go for. That’s a guy with momentum and that’s where we are a little bit.”
Even so the temptation to buy into the theory that Newcastle’s season has swung from disaster to triumph remains easy to resist. Twitter chatter may have shifted from predictions of Pardew’s impending sacking and the team’s potential relegation to looming cup glory but few at St James’ are fooled.
“I’ve said to the squad that probably on social media and everything, it’s now going to be: ‘We’ve got the best young players in the country and we’ve got a great chance of winning the cup’,” says a manager finally coaxing France’s Moussa Sissoko to play somewhere near his full, incisive, intimidating, midfield potential. “Yet really and truly we’ve had two great results away from home and that’s it. Let’s just keep things in perspective and fight like hell against Liverpool. A fourth straight win would lift us into an acceptable position given our outlay and squad. It would get us back on an even keel – but that’s all.”
Pardew looks considerably more relaxed, younger even, than in recent weeks but he does not feel it. “I’m very tired,” he says. “I was always confident I could turn it round but you still hinge on critical moments.”
His lack of complacency is emphasised when he issues a reminder that football is entering “the dark month”, aka November’s sacking season. Right now, Newcastle are a promising construction project but fragility lingers and their manager refuses to underestimate the challenge presented by a stuttering Liverpool.
A good friend of Brendan Rodgers – once his youth coach at Reading – he believes the Liverpool manager’s controversial signing of Mario Balotelli will soon be vindicated.
“I think Balotelli’s a great player,” Pardew says. “When the really big games come along, he has delivered. It’s probably the other games that are an area he needs to improve on. But we’re a big game, we’re on the telly, he’s under a lot of pressure, so I’m very wary of him.”
