Alan Pardew does not really do sheepish but if and, almost certainly when, he comes face to face with David Meyler on Saturday Crystal Palace’s invariably assured manager will surely look a little uncomfortable.
There might be a slightly awkward handshake and, perhaps, a rueful smile as Pardew returns to the scene of the ‘crime’ and relives the awful afternoon of 1 March 2014 when he inexplicably head-butted the Hull City midfielder.
Then in charge of a Newcastle United side 3-1 up at the KCom Stadium – the visitors ended up winning 4-1 – Pardew took exception as Meyler brushed past him in the technical area, hoping to take a quick throw-in.
Affronted, he squared up to the Irishman, his forehead making clean, if hardly robust, contact with Meyler’s face. Profusely apologetic, Pardew was fined a collective £160,000 by Newcastle and the FA, banned from the touchline for seven games and accepted still ongoing counselling from Jeremy Snape, a sports psychologist.
Saturday marks his first return to Hull’s home since a ridiculous, entirely uncharacteristic incident which arguably reflected both immense frustration with working for Mike Ashley, Newcastle’s owner, and the job insecurity that went with it.
A sense of deja vu will swirl in the east Yorkshire air as Palace’s manager again finds his career at the crossroads and, just as back in 2014, Hull strive to remain in the Premier League.
The parallel lines do not end there. Almost three years ago Pardew was struggling to cope without Yohan Cabaye, the £20m playmaker Newcastle had recently sold to Paris Saint-Germain; now he must decide whether to recall an underachieving Cabaye to Palace’s midfield.
Although Newcastle finished the 2013-14 season 10th, their campaign featured sequences of extremely disappointing results and increasing hostility from a mutinous Tyneside public.
Behind the scenes, Pardew’s relationship with Ashley had never quite recovered from a bitterly regretted aside following Newcastle’s dalliance with relegation the previous spring when he claimed that, as an owner, the sports retail tycoon had “underachieved”.
Given the considerable fallout from that comment, it was surprising to hear history broadly repeat itself last weekend. Following six straight defeats, last Saturday’s 3-0 win against Southampton should have pacified Palace’s influential American backers but in unwise post-match comments Pardew referred to “serious investors at the club who perhaps don’t know a lot about football”.
That appeared a criticism of the major shareholders David Blitzer and Josh Harris who, a year ago, each purchased an 18% stake in Palace to match that held by Steve Parish, the chairman. Although Pardew and Parish are close, he still needs to convince the two key Americans that he remains the right man for the job.
Parish has since insisted the manager’s words, although “not the smartest”, were aimed at other minor shareholders but Blitzer and Harris are acutely aware of Sam Allardyce’s availability for hire.
Accordingly victory at Hull seems imperative for Pardew and may entail further reversion to the pragmatic, counterattacking-based, tactical default mode which has often served him well and prompted victory against Southampton. Again, there is a certain symmetry with his Newcastle days, where sticky spells frequently coincided with attempts to introduce a more expansive passing style.
The return of Joe Ledley and Damien Delaney against Southampton signalled a back-to-basics approach and it will be interesting to see whether the now available Cabaye replaces Ledley. Perhaps coincidentally, the Frenchman did not start three of Palace’s four League victories this season and was substituted in the other.
Hull, although only three points behind Palace, are second from bottom and the manager, Mike Phelan, has his own midfield dilemmas for a game likely to unfold against a soundtrack of dissension horribly familiar to Pardew from his St James’ Park days.
“Allams out” is a common refrain but, much as Hull’s Egyptian owners want to sell, serious buyers are elusive. Moreover their failure to properly strengthen a newly promoted squad prefaced Steve Bruce’s close-season resignation and has left Phelan managing what many regard as a hopeless cause.
The bulk of the former Manchester United No2’s skinny summer spend was invested in recruiting Ryan Mason from Tottenham Hotspur for a club record £13m but Mason has disappointed and may forfeit his place to Meyler on Saturday.
Tom Huddlestone, like Cabaye at Palace, can dictate games but the former England international’s latterly indifferent form has seen him regularly relegated to the bench from where he surveys a side very low on attacking firepower and overly dependent on Robert Snodgrass’s creative incision.
Richly gifted, Snodgrass offers Phelan reason for optimism and, like Meyler and Pardew, is one of football’s great survivors. Whereas the Hull pair have overcome horrendous, career-threatening, knee injuries – indeed Meyler’s attempt to avoid jarring his knee partly led to that fateful collision with Pardew – Palace’s manager proved an expert at dodging dismissal during the low points of five largely successful, always challenging years on Tyneside.
As the second anniversary of his defection south to Selhurst Park approaches it would be ironic were his final act as Palace manager to take place at the ground which staged a moment that indelibly stained his CV.
Allardyce would be unwise to count on it. Pardew has extricated himself from tighter situations than this and history suggests he is capable of body-swerving any bullets aimed by Blitzer and Harris.
