Speaking on The Big Interview with Graham Hunter podcast, Pardew recently “refreshed” on why he left Newcastle United to become a Crystal Palace manager. It’s almost a years since he left now, but somehow he still keeps coming up with reason for why he chose not to be an NUFC manager any longer.
“There was no way I could say my spirit was high at Newcastle at the end – it wasn’t.”
“They’d the fans had banged me down, banged my spirit down. And a lot of my management is about my spirit and my front foot, let’s come on, we can do it, we can over-achieve – that’s what I’m about.”
“Of course this environment at Palace is perfect for me, I knew it would be perfect for me.”
“I tried to put on that pitch at Newcastle an entertaining team. At times, it wasn’t, for sure.”
“At times we struggled, we lost players to injury, we didn’t invest enough.”
“For all those reasons we had some sticky periods.”
“But in my last game there I knew there was a possibility this might open up to me this place (Palace), and we (Newcastle) played Everton and we won, we were ninth in the Premier League.”
“I looked at the Press the next day and the social media – because social media is a massive part of the feeling of the group, it really is, you can’t get away from it I’m afraid. It’s the same here (at Palace), social media plays a big part now.”
“So I looked at it (after the Everton game) and it was like: ‘We’re under-performing.'”
“I thought we were over-performing in the end so really I knew it was the best time to give them (Newcastle) a new start and me to move on.”
On Cabaye
“Coming to this place (Palace) and where we are right now, it’s very attractive to players and easy to sell to them,” Pardew continued.
“Cabaye was easy; I’m the manager here, I make all the big decisions with the owner, who has tremendous faith, he was with me when we met Yohan. We have a fanbase that’s right behind us. And we love them for being noisy.”
“It (Palace) has great attributes for a professional football; access to home from London is easy whether you live in Buenos Aires or Windsor.”
It’s evident Pardew thrives in his current environment with Palace, you saw that when he took over last season and you see that at where Palace are in the table right now. However, it has an uncanny resemblance to how he started his tenure with NUFC. Time will show if he’s walking down the same path now, as he did then.