Three years can feel like a lifetime in football. Just ask Alan Pardew and Tim Sherwood. The Crystal Palace and Aston Villa managers meet at Selhurst Park on Saturday with their sides following up victory on the opening day of the season with a narrow defeat against one of the big fish.
Both have been fully occupied during a busy first summer at their respective clubs, having been appointed during the last campaign with the threat of relegation looming large but now find themselves touted as potential candidates to succeed Roy Hodgson as England manager.
Back at his spiritual home in south London, Pardew was supposed to be entering the third year of his eight-year contract at Newcastle had things turned out differently. Unshackled from the constraints of operating under Mike Ashley’s profit-first, results-second transfer policy, the 54-year-old former glazier has been praised for his shrewd dealings this summer having persuaded Yohan Cabaye to swap Paris Saint-Germain’s plush Camp des Loges training ground for an altogether more homely backdrop in Beckenham.
Likewise Sherwood, who never seemed comfortable working under Tottenham’s director of football model featuring Franco Baldini and the iron-rule of the chairman Daniel Levy, has been handed the opportunity to pursue his own transfer targets this summer for the first time in his managerial career. That has seen the arrival of 10 players so far, with a very clear policy based on youth and promise – preferably originating from France’s Ligue 1 and with the first name Jordan.
Sherwood’s time at White Hart Lane was, despite his insistence that he was “open-minded” about his ability to work with Baldini, severely hamstrung by the profligacy of his predecessor, André Villas-Boas. The departure of Roberto Soldado to Villarreal this week meant that of the post-Gareth Bale splurge of seven signings, only Christian Eriksen, Nacer Chadli and Érik Lamela remain and Sherwood was not allowed to make a single addition in the only transfer window when he was in charge.
Turned down by Levy when he applied for the director of football’s role himself in the summer of 2012, it was probably no surprise to Sherwood that he was not trusted to spend money. But after guiding Villa to safety and the FA Cup final last season, it has been a totally different story under Randy Lerner.
The Villa chairman seemed to have lost his enthusiasm for the club under Lambert and had been looking to sell up. Yet the arrival of, among others, Idrissa Gueye (£9m, Lille), Jordan Veretout (£8m, Nantes), Jordan Ayew (£10m, Lorient) and Jordan Amavi (£7.7m, Nice), plus last week’s acquisition of the sought-after Adama Traoré from Barcelona are signs that the American is fully behind his manager’s approach to target emerging talent following the departures of Christian Benteke, Fabian Delph and Ron Vlaar.
The distinctively Francophone nature of the majority of new arrivals – something that Pardew was only too familiar with at Newcastle – could turn out to be a blessing or hindrance. On the one hand, there should be fewer problems in settling into a new environment, although there is also a danger of cliques developing if results are bad.
Pardew’s approach at Palace could not have been more different from two of his predecessors Tony Pulis and Ian Holloway. As the club prepared for their first season back in the Premier League, after winning the play-off final in 2013, 14 players were added to the squad during a frenzied 10 weeks, including the France defender Florian Marange. He had his contract paid up within two months of signing, having being left out of Palace’s 25-man Premier League squad, while of the others to arrive, only Dwight Gayle, recently told he is free to leave by Pardew, Marouane Chamakh and Jason Puncheon, who came on an initial loan from Southampton, have made a significant impact.
This time the approach has been far less scattergun. While Cabaye’s sale to PSG in January 2014 prompted Newcastle’s disastrous run of 15 defeats from 21 fixtures, persuading the France international to team up with him again at Palace after failing to settle in his homeland must rank as Pardew’s best transfer coup.
Similarly the arrival of the goalkeeper Alex McCarthy from relegated Queens Park Rangers, Patrick Bamford on a season-long loan from Chelsea and the Mali winger Bakary Sako on a free transfer from Wolves were long-standing Pardew targets who look capable of improving a Palace side that finished 10th last season, equalling their second highest-ever finish in 1992.
The chairman, Steve Parish, remains heavily involved in the club’s transfer dealings and was keen to press ahead with the £8m move for Connor Wickham from Sunderland after trying to sign him when Pulis and Holloway were at the club. However, it’s clear that Pardew is revelling in his new-found freedom, even if, like Sherwood, he will be only too aware that there will be no hiding place if it all goes wrong.
