Saints’ Web of intrigue could come from the pen of David Simon
A bizarre bank holiday weekend which featured the most one-sided away game many Saints fans can remember drew to a close with the surprising news that Alan Pardew had been sacked as Saints manager. Bristol Rovers frankly looked beaten before the first whistle and predictably succumbed to a heavy defeat. A ruthlessly efficient Saints side seemed back to somewhere near their best, and only Adam Lallana’s increasingly worrying injury came close to urinating on our pommes frites. Yet on the Monday morning word gradually began to seep out that Nicola Cortese had conformed to his capricious media image and done away with Pardew. As the news spread and atmospheres soured at various family barbecues, Cortese seemed to have hardened supporters’ hearts hardened faster than ten frozen beef burgers could harden their arteries.
For football supporters these events present an opportunity to take sides, which is something that followers of a sport defined by fractiousness seldom choose to avoid. As evidenced by radio stations like Talksport (the spiritual home of the bizarre rant), football fans tend to see every story in black and white. Which, of course, most situations aren’t. Football presents as many villains as it does heroes (if not more in these days of multiple camera angles, intrusive media coverage and speedy judgement), and like an episode of The Wire, it is rare to find anyone completely good or bad. The use of The Wire as a metaphor seems fitting in this context. Journalists are fond of describing any football news story that carries even a hint of drama as a “soap opera”, yet this particular narrative is a sprawling epic, with complex, three-dimensional characters who al appear to be straddling morality.
In this particular series, an ambitious businessman new to the convention-ridden football industry arrives at the helm of a beleaguered institution that has generated more headlines that its loyal followers would like. With the backing of a benevolent but shadowy benefactor, he immediately appoints a once highly-rated manager who has something to prove after a period of failure and some damaging gossip and controversy. After a shaky start, results pick up, and hope is renewed. Yet soon the rumour mill suggests that all is not well. The impatient businessman is accustomed to getting what he wants, and quickly. Meanwhile, there are whispers that players and support staff find the manager difficult to interact with. Then the twist- the reclusive financial backer tragically dies. There is little word emanating from the club, but much tittle-tattle amongst the chattering, concerned supporters. Then finally, when everyone least expects it, the manager is unceremoniously dumped, with only the vaguest explanation of why.
The drama has been written in a way that encourages us to support the deposed manager and condemn the supposedly Machiavellian CEO. Yet one suspects that there are several more episodes remaining in this season alone, and possibly even a few key scenes that will be forever left on the editing room floor. I wanted to work in a line about the DVD commentary to this piece, but I’m on the brink of running out of steam…
So- for this “viewer”, it is sad to see Pardew, the great auteur, depart. He consistently provided a complicated and often hard to follow plot with some welcome comic relief. In his final interview as Saints manager he became amusingly flustered when he couldn’t remember against whom we had recently conceded a goal from a set piece. I wonder if Nicola Cortese was listening to that.
Pardew is a slightly odd, almost robotic man with some exceedingly gauche tendencies. His early days at West Ham were characterised by PR gaffes and he was sent on a course in which he was schooled in dealing with the media, yet a few years later he was again in hot water after his infamous “raped him” comment on Match Of The Day 2. It was the remark of a man who simply doesn’t understand social mores. As Saints manager he was always careful to make positive statements about the supporters but gave some amusingly awkward interviews to the local media in which he would often either come close to losing his temper or simply talk in a series of laboured metaphors (something this writer can, of course, identify with) or baffling non sequiturs. Occasionally his pronouncements were so bewildering that one was left wondering not only what he was talking about, but also whether or not he was actually a real human being. His monotone voice and refusal to make eye contact made it almost possible to believe that he was in fact the prototype of some sort of managerial android- a work in progress that was being road-tested on the south coast, away from the greater scrutiny he was under at in our nation’s capital.
If indeed he was an artificially intelligent being, he was, it seems, less subservient than his master hoped he would be. Like HAL in Space Odyssey, it seems that Pardew had a few differences of opinion with his master. Cortese has been portrayed in both the local and national press as a despotic tyrant with a Napoleon complex who has gone out of his way to run roughshod over various football conventions. With the way football and the media work, it is difficult to know what to believe about Cortese and his relationship with Pardew. Yet one thing we do know is that the increasingly reclusive chief executive likes success, and wants it quickly. For all the speculation about personality clashes, it still seems almost inconceivable that Pardew would not still be employed by Saints if he had managed to navigate us back to the Championship last term. That he did not do so disappointed Cortese, and he wasn’t shy about telling us.
The allegation that Cortese waited until the cherished Markus Liebherr died before sacking Pardew seems uncharitable- some have even claimed that Liebherr had wanted to fire Pardew at the end of last season and that Cortese went into bat for the former Palace midfielder. As is so often the case with regard to Southampton Football Club, we will probably never know the full story, unless perhaps Pardew has an autobiography ghosted for him one day, and even then it’s hardly likely to be a balanced account. The latest labyrinthine plot in the increasingly fraught history of Southampton Football Club won’t end here, viewers. Will a vengeful Pardew return to haunt us? Who knows. I still think the Cortese character has good in him- like many well-written characters, there is a dichotomy at his heart. His ends seem altruistic, yet his means invite outrage. Even as he is demonised, it remains to be seen whether he will turn out to be hero or villain.