Alan Pardew is no longer West Bromwich Albion manager.
Pardew left the Midlands club on Monday morning after failing to make a positive impact during his short reign. West Brom are rock bottom of the Premier League with 20 points from 32 games, 10 points from safety after only winning three league matches all season.
Despite finishing 10th last season, the rot set in during the final weeks of the campaign under Tony Pulis. West Brom reached 40 points, meaning they would avoid relegation, and their form fell off a cliff. They only earned five points from the final 12 games of the 2016/17 season and suffered seven defeats in their last eight games, drawing the other fixture with Burnley.
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The Baggies won their first two games of this season, but then went 10 Premier League matches without a victory. Pulis was sacked in November, with many West Brom fans unhappy with his style of football that saw the team win just once at home in eight months.
Gary Megson was named caretaker manager and the players seemed to respond to him. Megson was West Brom manager between 2000 and 2004, helping them earn promotion to the Premier League in 2002, and he oversaw two positive results as caretaker boss back in November. The Baggies earned a 1-1 draw against Tottenham at Wembley and then a 2-2 draw with Newcastle.
However, the club opted to appoint Pardew as manager and the team didn't win a Premier League match until January when they recorded a 2-0 win over Brighton at the Hawthorns.
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Under Pardew, there was no "new-manager bounce" - the upturn in form a new manager can often bring to a struggling team, the way Carlos Carvalhal has overseen a dramatic improvement at Swansea City. Pardew reportedly blamed Megson for his tenure failing to take off.
According to
Alyson Rudd, writing in The Times, the former West Ham manager told Megson during a phone call that he had "denied him his 'new manager bounce'" because he had recorded two positive results before Pardew arrived at the club.
Megson earned two points from two games in the dugout this season. Pardew earned eight points from 18 games. The former Crystal Palace manager has won just two of his last 29 Premier League matches as manager, losing 20 games during that spell.
So, it seems slightly misguided for Pardew to blame Megson's positive impact on him getting off to a poor start as Baggies boss. Statistics suggest that he was the wrong appointment, regardless of how the caretaker manager had performed.
The Times' report depicts West Brom as a club in crisis. They're about to relegated, the club is in debt, board members have been sacked, there's disharmony in the dressing room and there was a high-profile breach of curfew during a training camp in Barcelona.
According to the report, dressing-room unity was "undermined" by Nacer Chadli refusing to attend a pre-season boot camp in Austria, and by the arrival of Grzegorz Krychowiak on loan from Paris Saint-Germain. The Polish midfielder is reportedly on wages higher than many in the squad (£110,00-a-week) and brought with him a "PSG attitude."
Pardew wasn't responsible for all of West Brom's troubles, but it now seems he was the wrong man to unite the club. Chris Brunt questioned his tactics and The Times' report claims the atmosphere at the training ground had become "uncomfortable." Pardew leaves with the worst win percentage (5.6%) of any permanent West Brom manager in the Premier League.
