His team finished last season in a dismal run of form. Fans called for the manager’s head and, when he survived, it was seen as a cheap measure. A money-conscious owner did not want to fund a pay-off.
Supporters chanted his name on Saturday, but with a difference. The suffix had changed. Instead of “Lambert out”, it was “Lambert, give us a wave.” Paul Lambert obliged. His Aston Villa team were recording a victory at Anfield that took them to second in the table.
A new season has brought a new start for the Scot, but not for a counterpart.
Last season, Villa and Newcastle were the Premier League’s two biggest clubs outside the top seven. Villa finished the campaign with seven defeats in nine, Newcastle with seven in eight. Like Lambert, Alan Pardew clung on to his job.
And there the similarities end. A few hours before Lambert’s remarkable renaissance was celebrated, Pardew was condemned. Newcastle’s 4-0 defeat at Southampton was still more damning than the score suggested. It was a spineless surrender where the United defence served as the supply line to the Southampton forwards, creating goals with their errors.
Yet minds were made up before then. A flag bearing the message “Sack Pardew” was unfurled as the players warmed up. Others – the most memorable reading “Pardew, you Muppet” – had also been prepared. This was no knee-jerk reaction to a thrashing, but a response to a dismal 2014.
The facts should suggest Pardew’s position is untenable. Newcastle lost 14 of their final 20 games last season. Adding the four matches this season, they have taken 18 points from a possible 72 in 24 matches. Their recent record is even worse, with five points procured from 12 matches. Whichever way you look at it, that is relegation form.
Pardew’s fate probably depends on whether demotion is deemed likely. Besides the wretched results, his unpopularity stems from the perception of him as the front man for a hated regime. At some clubs, the manager tends to be sacked when the fans turn on the board. He is fed to the wolves. Yet it is hard to think of anyone as impervious to public opinion as the reclusive owner Mike Ashley.
Time and again, he does what he wants, regardless of what others think. The defining theme is that Ashley, for all his idiosyncrasies, is a hugely successful businessman. He is guaranteed to act only if he thinks Newcastle are in grave danger of relegation and he needs to sack Pardew to protect his investment.
The accusation is that Newcastle have lost their soul under Ashley’s ownership. Certainly ambitions have been downgraded and priorities changed. Success-starved fans tend not to be excited by examples of prudence on the balance sheet.
Once big spenders, Newcastle turned in a profit while recording a top-10 finish last season. Their summer expenditure of £30 million (Dh179m) is not a case of Ashley’s largesse, but simply a case of reinvesting the proceeds from the departures of Yohan Cabaye and Mathieu Debuchy. Tellingly, the oldest of the recent additions are 25. There is potential resale value once these imports prove that they can play in the Premier League.
But the reality is that the financial model can work only when the football team secure results. Newcastle’s new-look team are yet to win a league game. The gifted Siem de Jong is injured, the striker Emmanuel Riviere looks out of sorts, the mercurial creator Remy Cabella is starved of support and the Dutch defender Daryl Janmaat is part of a defence that has leaked seven goals in two games.
It is a transitional time, whereas the 53-year-old manager has the need for immediate results to quell speculation about his position. His problems predate the close-season influx. Newcastle have been spiralling downwards since Cabaye’s January sale.
The breakdown in the relationship between Pardew and the other French flair player, Hatem Ben Arfa – now exiled to Hull on loan – deprived a club with a tradition of attacking football of their most watchable individual.
Pardew has been unable to halt a slide that has spanned the calendar year and even Newcastle’s best result in that time, March’s 4-1 victory at Hull, is remembered for him butting the City midfielder David Meyler.
It might have brought immediate dismissal at another club but Ashley works to his own rules. He is the wild card in the equation. To say how long Pardew will last at Newcastle is to second-guess Ashley. But it would not be long anywhere else.
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