Pardew`s a Deserved Winner

Take off those yella and green spectacles and you`ll agree that Barclays have got it bang on with Manager of the Year. Alan Pardew has been superb from start to finish. Toon were unfancied at the beginning of this season but he`s built a side, with some magnificent signings, that can grind out results and punish teams with style. Everyone`s been expecting them to fade back into mid-table but it never materialised. It wasn`t an easy job to take either as Hughton had more than his fair share of fans and sympathizers.

There will be many calling it a travesty and more of that "everyone`s against us". If it was a Manager of the Last Three Years, you`d think he`d be a shoe-in and, granted, it`s difficult to avoid harking back to the two previous seasons and influencing manager of the year with it. It`s easy to forget that Toon were in the Championship while we were in League One.

That City have been fairly anonymous- if a little leaky- this season is testament to Lambert`s fine work, but to win Manager of the Year you need to do something spectacular. Like getting on the cusp of the Champions League ahead of two or three of the big, erm, four-ish. I would even expect Lambert to have come in third behind Rodgers. They`ve beaten more of the big teams than us, and play that football that turn pundits into blinkered drooling wrecks. We`re a little to pragmatic for that.

If it`s taken on this year and this year alone it`s impossible to look past Pardew.

It was probably Lambert`s best chance of being Manager of the Year, with us at least, as a similar finish next season won`t make the same waves. I`d bite your hand off it was offered now, mind. He`d have to do a job as good as, well, Pardew to win it next season. And if he does that it will probably be goodbye from us.