Match Day Thread NUFC vs Arsenal

@I am Groot returns completely rinsed by wor Dazza.

He doesn't want you pulling those stats out of the average league finish. That's without getting into the subjective stuff like how much better we were to watch under Pardew.

 

Rafa's PL can be separated like this:

Games Wins Draws Losses Win %
Premier League 86 27 21 38 31.4%
Championship 46 29 7 10 63.04%
FA Cup 8 3 2 3 37.5%
League Cup 6 3 1 2 50%
Total 146 62 31 53 42.47%

Double the laughs for me Grooty Boy. Never let it be said you wouldn't make a good politician. Your ability to manipulate facts needs some work though. Its not even close and it becomes harder to maintain your level the longer it goes on and Pardew managed twice as long as Rafa. He finished on average higher, had a higher win percentage, spent his money better, had higher quality players as a result, and also played far better football. Literally the only criterias where Rafa could claim to be better is defensively and in terms of professional conduct.

Almost a full 7% less likely to win in the PL than Alan Pardew. Is there a more damning sentence?

All this money we are spending, do you think it would be fair to suggest Rafa had no intention of staying at Newcastle, ****ed off to China for the money and played all you dafties like a fiddle?

 

I'm sure someone will be along soon to mistakenly claim its all skewed by his season finishing 5th - so I'll stop that person embarrassing themselves now (I am looking at you Groot). I'm afraid even if the 5th season was a fluke, Pardew still has a greater win percentage than Rafa. Even at his worst over 38 games having to contend with Europe games, Pardew was 29%. Just 2% lower than the great Rafa Benitez. Take the 5th season out (which is ridiculous obviously but I'm trying to find something for poor Rafa here), Pardew still had a win percentage of 33%. Again higher than the great Rafa Benitez.

 

Keep me right but why are Rafa’s stats in the Championship irrelevant? It’s not as though we retained all of our PL squad when we were relegated. Therefore, it’s like for like, PL stats when we had our PL squad and Championship stats when we had our Championship squad. Logically it all evens out in the long term.

You just don’t want them as it doesn’t suit your agenda.

You seem to be as obsessed with Pards as you allege others on here are with Rafa. Never forget there are lies, damned lies and then statistics and then there are “Pouchies”.

A factor between the managers is how much were they allowed to spend as that impacts on the potential quality of the players available to each manager.

Net Spend +£12.0m 2011/12 – Alan Pardew

Net Spend +£13.3m 2012/13 – Alan Pardew

Net Profit -£19.4m 2013/14 – Alan Pardew

Net Spend +£18.8m 2014/15 – Alan Pardew

Net Profit -£28.4m 2016/17 – Rafa Benitez

Net Spend +£23m 2017/18 – Rafa Benitez

Net Profit -£22.6m 2018/19 – Rafa Benitez

Pards was able to spend significantly more money than Rafa at a time when you got more player for your pound. Pards should therefore have had the better squad and should therefore have a better win percentage than Rafa but his win percentage was worse.

You can laugh as much as you like but the stats don’t support you or your attempted wumming.

 

Beelin’

 

Pouchy May be Carver?

 

Comparing Rafa to Pards is like comparing vintage wine to a a steaming pile of dog turd.

I wasn't Rafa's biggest fan as many will know but let's be serious here people!

A trophy-laden manager who is tactical genius and hailed as such by some of the best footballers he's coached and invited to the elite coaching conferences with the worlds best or a manager who's won the FL Trophy,, shags players wives, nuts players on the touchline and call's OAP's ****s!

https://media0.giphy.com/media/xT1R...90b76115d49707066655232327b991e&rid=200w.webp
https://media2.giphy.com/media/BKFb...90b76115d49707066655232327b991e&rid=200w.webp

 

As always the truth is somewhere in the middle. Pardew gets too hard a review by Newcastle fans whilst Rafa gets lauded more than he should. There's 3 reasons I can see why that is the case.

1 - Silverware elsewhere (speaks for itself)
2 - Public image. Pardew didn't exactly cover himself in glory whilst with us, his headbutting of Meyler was shameful and not the only incident in which he let himself down. Rafa represented a forlorn hope by NUFC fans that we are still a club in the higher echelons of the game - we aren't by the way.
3 - Progress. Rafa came into a sinking ship and turned us around (not in time to avoid relegation!), he has left us stronger than he found us and with little outlay. Pardew came into a better set up (Hughton shouldn't have been sacked) but had us playing excellently (there really is no denying it, that season we finished 5th is the best we've played since Bobby Robson, it was exciting football) but it fell away and we were in drastic decline when he left.

I'm not buying into a Pardew love in as I've no doubt he would have got us relegated but he was responsible for the most entertaining football in years. Rafa was a safe pair of hands, dull though most of the time.

 

Can't be arsed to look it up but what was the net spend under Rafa and Pardew ? Under Rafa it was negative I think. Under Pardew I believe it was positive and he had the good fortune that Andy Carroll emerged from the academy to pump £35 million into the coffers.

Not slagging Pardew or idolizing Rafa, just trying to compare apples with apples.

 

Ah the net spend bogey. Rafa had a Premier league squad and spent 80 million plus on new players, and over 160 million for something like 28 players in his time here. It will take Brucie a while to clear out a lot of them.
Incidentally, Rafa also brought something like 64 players whilst at Liverpool for 6 years. Who can ever forget that he wanted to replace Xabi Alonso with Gareth Barry.

 

The same Gareth Barry who went to Man City and won the league instead?

The issue was that he ended up with neither and had to make do with Alberto Aquilani...

 

If we had a PL squad then why were we relegated? We were relegated because that squad wasn’t good enough for the PL.

From that squad we then sold Sissoko, Janmaat and Wijnaldum and also released Tiote.

He then bought primarily Championship players to get us out of the Championship which we did at the first time of asking. Not pretty but he did it.

Rafa made a profit on his transfer dealings here. Thereby suggestive in general terms that the squad last season wasn’t as good as the one that was relegated when he first arrived. It clearly isn’t that simple but in general terms it’s logical and applicable.

It doesn’t matter who he has or hasn’t bought elsewhere. All I’m interested in is what he did here. Cue the “he bought Joselu “. Do you really think Joselu was on any list until we got to a minute to midnight scenarios?

I’m more than happy to try and educate Pouchy but if you want to join in then I think I’ll need to start charging.

 

So hang on, you can't work out why Rafa's championship record would somewhat skew his overall record? Go on then I'll help you because I do tend to take pity on the bird with a broken wing. You see the championship is a lower and easier division. Pardew would need to have had a season down there, but unlike Rafa he never was in charge of a relegated Newcastle.

As for spend lets at least be accurate with our information. I note you have left out Pardew's first half season including the window for some reason, I assume this was just an honest error... I'll helpfully add this in.

Net spend -31.5m 2010/11 - Alan Pardew
Net spend +£9m 2011/12 – Alan Pardew
Net spend +£15.4m 2012/13 – Alan Pardew
Net spend -£19.9m 2013/14 – Alan Pardew
Net spend +£25.8m 2014/15 – Alan Pardew
Net spend -£33.4m 2016/17 – Rafa Benitez
Net spend +£23m 2017/18 – Rafa Benitez
Net spend +£10.6m 2018/19 – Rafa Benitez

So...drum roll please...their net spends were:

Pardew in profit to the tune of 1.7m
Rafa spent 200K.

I know this is another tough beat for your boy Rafa. However I am sure you will big enough now we have all the facts laid out, that Pardew did indeed do better at Newcastle than Rafa. @Freddd - there you go matey.

 

Unfortunately history doesn't really back up your assertions Haslam.

1. This is irrelevant when assessing Rafa's time here though I accept you are right it could be a reason the fans don't really do fair assessments. I'm not sure why this is ever brought up in relation to his time at Newcastle. Unless we are talking about vanity of having a manager who once won some trophies?
2. No arguments here, 100% correct, Benitez's one area where he did get the better of Pardew was behaviour and professionalism. By quite some way too.
3. Not sure how you think we were in drastic decline? We were in great shape when he left. We were exactly half way in the season and we were sat in 8th. The only bad season we had in the league was the year we were in Europe after the 5th place finish. A failure to invest after qualifying for Europe was the reason, our small squad suffering the same fate as others who get involved in the Europa League. It didn't help we went all the way to a European QF.

I note you seem to think he'd have relegated us too. I'm not sure how you could come to this conclusion. He was here 5 years and never came close. Even the year we came 16th, we were 5 points clear. We finished 10th the following season and were in 8th when he left. His first half season saw us finish 13th and then the season after he had us 5th. His average in the league placing wise was 10.5. Not really the look of manager heading for relegation.

 

What is it with you lot and derailing threads? Going to start a thread about trains and see where we end up.

Only one person to blame for all of this regardless... #AshleyOut

 

Someone has to keep the Rafa Knob Polishers under control mate. I can't have them running around presenting factually incorrect information. Its not right. Now we've proven Pardew did a better job than Rafa quite categorically, I'm sure everyone can move on. It actually freaked me out looking into that. Lets be honest Pardew is hardly a top manager, so for Rafa to fall so far short of the bar he set is quite surprising really.

 

Back on track:

Referee: Martin Atkinson
Assistants: Lee Betts, Constantine Hatzidakis
Fourth official: Darren England
VAR: David Coote
Assistant VAR: Nick Hopton

 

My assertion which you believe isn't backed up is that we were getting worse and I think we were heading for relegation eventually under him. In his last 30 or so games I'm pretty sure we failed to average a point a game ( I'll go back and check later) so it's not exactly an outlandish belief or lacking substance. We had a fantastic run of 5 wins on the bounce that seemed to come from nowhere and that form seemed to promptly disappear again - under him the rollercoaster really was more pronounced and he did a good job overall.

 

Genuine thanks for doing the research.

What you have left out of the equation is that Pardew had a £35 million asset appear from the academy while Rafa had no such luck. Pardew's one negative spend season was because of this. Adjusting for that, Pardew consistently had funds to spend. Rafa consistently didn't.

 

RAfa doesn’t head butt people either @Warm Pouch