Pardew’s reasoning for Swans Defeat – acceptable or laughable?

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 28: Papiss Demba Cisse of Newcastle United is congratulated by team-mates on his goal during the Barclays Premier League match between Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion at St James’ Park on October 28, 2012 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

On the back of the second straight home defeat to Swansea City, Alan Pardew came out and had this to say about one of the things that had been brewing up after the mid week internationals.

The Newcastle boss later said:

“To have Papiss taken away from us was hard. It was not like we took him off after 89 minutes. He went off with a bad back. We did everything we thought was right and we were waiting until 1-45 pm to see if we could play him. 

“It was a blow for the players in the changing room. There is no other way I could dress it up, but they tried to cope the best way they could with it. You take Suarez out of Liverpool or Torres out of Chelsea it would be tough to take.

“You just try to keep a calm head. We had to accept it, there was no point panicking. We had to get the mentality of the group right for the game, which I thought we did.” “You can bet your life our players would have been thinking if we had Papiss we might have won.”

Now I can understand that it was a blow to the team and probably did affect the players’ mind set, but to come out and pin it totally on that incident is totally laughable in my opinion.

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 11: Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew looks on during the Barclays Premier League match between Newcastle United and West Ham United at St James’s Park, London, United Kingdom.

Come on Alan, would it have helped if the players would be thinking they would have won if Papiss Cisse had been present? Would you have given the same excuse if Cisse had gotten injured in the Warm ups? Players have been known to withdraw from match day squads later than 75 minutes before the start of the match.

Also, you are not helping the players who were on the pitch that day and tried their best.

What makes matters worse listening to Alan is that Cisse has looked a pale shadow of a player who in the second half of last season scored some jaw dropping goals, but has only scored one rather lucky goal in the Premier League and even that too was a bit lucky. Pardew then goes on to compare Cisse in our team to Fernando Torres at Chelsea. I can tell you, Alan, that taking Torres out of Chelsea wouldn’t be tough at all.

For me, Alan got his tactics all wrong and Swansea City were by far the better team and were unfortunate not to have scored more than the two goals they did manage to score. He says we played 4-3-3, but it never looked that way. In the first half, it looked to be a 4-4-1-1 and in the second a 4-4-2, both of which are not our best options.

I think Pardew needs to get his act together and comes up with better arguments in his favour as this one totally fails to even get off the ground.