Spurs v Newcastle Pardew – “Blame Me”

After yesterday’s bad day at the office Alan Pardew was as usual quick to try and shield his players from much of the criticism by laying the blame at his own door.

“They’re a very, very good side. They’ve played as well against us as anyone and I’m sure with the firepower they’ve got, they’ve got a great chance of the title.

They were very good and we had a problem today. We’ve got three of our first-choice midfield out and that was just too much.

But a lot of the blame lays with me, we probably had too many offensive players on the pitch.

The mood Tottenham came out in, we just got exposed time and again. I blame myself for that defeat.

But we’ll bounce back, you’re going to get well beaten somewhere along the line and we got it today, but we’ve reacted well all year and we’ll do the same.

We’re in a great position in the league, it hasn’t done our goal difference any good today, but we’re one point behind Arsenal and Chelsea and we hope to build on that”.

I can understand why the manager speaks as he does and good for him and his man management but I don’t think he did too much wrong in his team selection or tactics with the players available.

The player that a number of fans would have liked to see was Ben Arfa but that would hardly have been a major boost to our defensive capabilities!

Other options are thin on the ground with Abeid untested and I don’t think Shola would have got many votes!

I think our best chance to get anything was by scoring goals, Ba and Cissé are arguably our two best players so leaving one of them on the bench would have seen Alan Pardew getting some stick!

Alan Pardew has what he has to play with at the moment and he has to try and get the maximum out of certain players who just aren’t up to the standard.

He can hardly come out and say Williamson, Perch, Obertan, Guthrie, Simpson aren’t good enough, or at the very least have to play at their very best every week to not look out of place.

I didn’t see a lack of effort yesterday, just a lack of class in some of our players. I can’t have a go at them for that.