ALAN PARDEW said he was astounded when Mike Ashley, Newcastle United’s owner, offered him a new eight-year contract as manager stretching until 2020.
“When it was first suggested by Mike, I was a bit shocked,” said Pardew who nonetheless signed swiftly on the dotted line.
“To try to foresee what’s going to happen in the next eight years is difficult – and to be given that length of contract, well it hasn’t really sunk in yet.” Only Pardew, Ashley and their lawyers know the precise contents of that agreement and the various exclusion clauses.
Yet if the deal may potentially not be quite as binding as advertised, it offers Newcastle financial protection should rivals attempt to poach their manager while also sending a message that a once volatile club are now a model of stability.
Newcastle’s manager may not have been able to sign all the players he wanted during the summer but the trade-off is that he now has a higher level of job security than most of his peers. So, too, do his coaches John Carver, Steve Stone and Andy Woodman, who also signed eight-year deals.
Asked about the owner’s demands, Pardew replied: “Win every week.” He was only half joking. “Regardless of my contract, there’s always pressure when you are in charge of Newcastle, in Mike’s mind it’s, ‘You’d better do well’.”
Even so many will be surprised if he is still in office come 2020. “I have entered contracts in the past and I haven’t seen them out, so I can’t say I’ve been totally loyal on that front,” said Pardew, who upset Reading fans when he left for West Ham.
“Sometimes in the past I’ve put my own personal ambition in front of what was best, maybe, for the club I was at. But you get older and wiser and I would like to say I’ll see this contract out.”
Guardian Service
