Charlton

There’s managers, and there’s Pardew

Within days of our deciding to capture passing idiocy in football Arsenal played Charlton at the WengerDrome on Jan 2 2007.

Charlton were managed by Alan Pardew, late of West Ham, a man who had caused M Wenger to lose his temper and resort to a push in the technical area following the WHU / Arsenal game a couple of months earlier.

Ever since that match the story had circulated that Pardew had not sworn at Wenger or anything like that.  Rather he had said something so unbelievably stupid that Wenger was completely flummoxed and failed to grasp that Pardew meant whatever he said seriously, rather than it being some deep rooted jibe.

Nothing emerged in the public domain to reveal the truth of this story, and even our own famed “Insider Information” team found nothing.  But we looked at the forthcoming Charlton game with interest.  Was the rumoured Pardew inability to distinguish fact from fiction going to resurface?   His total inability to develop WHU into a competent Premiership team after the satisfactory 2005/6 season suggested something might happen.

And happen it did.  During the game van Persie won Arsenal a penalty.   While some five yards or more from the ball van Persie was obviously pulled down by a Charlton player, and the ref gave the penalty and the player walked.

There was no doubting the offence – it was obvious and blatant, and to his credit Pardew did not suggest that the pulling and pushing had not taken place.   But then he went into Neverland, and claimed van Persie was off-side.

Now everyone knows that the offside rule has been changed many times (in the first League season you needed 3 players behind the ball to avoid being offside) and the current interpretation of the law says, very clearly, that a player only becomes offside when he touches the ball.   (This necessary change came about after the previous rule which stated you could only be offside if in an offside position and interfering with play was brought into disrepute by managers claim that “if he is not interfering with play how come he’s on the pitch”.)

But to the Pardew it seems that such changes in the law are mere detail, nothing to do with reality, and he claimed van Persie was offside and thus no penalty should be given.

Let’s get this clear.  The law clearly says a player is not offside until he touches the ball.   Van Persie was not one or two yards from the ball, but at least five yards from the ball when knocked over.  Pardew didn’t argue on this.   He argued that even though van Persie was nowhere near the ball he could still be offside.  In other words here he was, pretending to be a Premiership manager, and not even knowing the laws of the game.

His claim, made on Sky, clearly took the commentators by surprise, and there was genuine embarrassment in the studio as the usual guests were invited to comment on Pardew’s comments.  With some delicacy they did point out that Pardew didn’t quite understand the laws of football.

What they could also have said is that he had clearly never watched Henry play, for since the law change Henry has made an art of walking back from attacking positions very slowly, in what Pardew would ludicrously claim was an offside position – but a position that is never indicated by linesman or ref as offside because he doesn’t touch the ball.

So it seems more than likely that Pardew did indeed say something utterly silly to M Wenger, and we can only hope that M Wenger realises from now on that what may appear to be a clever piece of irony from the Pardew is more than likely a dumb piece of commentary based on ignorance.