Season 2010-11

Give Me Five

The rollercoaster ride continued as fans experienced a real season of ups and downs. The highs of thrashing the mackems and Villa, intermingled with home defeats to the likes of Blackpool and Blackburn. On their day the team was proving capable of giving anybody a match, a thoroughly professional win and clean sheet at the Emirates proof of that.

Newcastle’s unpredictability was undoubtedly summed up by the home game with Arsenal, four down in the first half followed by an unbelievable fightback to clinch a draw.

The message from above was that Newcastle United were going to have to live within their means and rumours persisted of instability behind the scenes. Newcastle United again lurched into impending chaos as they sacked Chris Hughton while respectably mid-table, replacement Alan Pardew’s track record left many fans bemused as to the change. On the plus side Pardew creditably kept the side on an even keel and saw the season out, though the shock sale of Andy Carroll undermined the manager after his assurances that the striker was going nowhere, proved to be worthless.

The £35m received for Carroll was an eyewatering amount but did it now mean that Newcastle were once again in the role of a selling club, the search for bargains is all very well when it unearths a diamond like Tiote but is it a blueprint for running a successful Premier League club? Plus of course the ‘£35m question’ was would the money be made available to the manager….