Crystal Palace are expected to talk to Alan Pardew this week as they make an ambitious attempt to lure him back to the club where he excelled as a player.
The Newcastle United manager has been installed as the firm favourite to succeed Neil Warnock and refused to answer questions about the link before his side’s 3-2 win over Everton on Sunday and did not appear for the post-match press conference.
Given his team had won to halt a run of four successive defeats, it was a strange move that will fuel talk of his departure.
It is understood that Palace have identified him as the man to take over from Warnock, who was sacked on Saturday, and believe that they would be able to buy him out of his long Newcastle contract for £5 million
At the very least Pardew must be thinking about any offer given his situation on Tyneside. Few Newcastle supporters would be sorry to see him leave and he has a strong emotional attachment to Palace, where he spent his best years as a player.
Pardew has been regularly linked with the Palace job and while he has always denied he is interested in public, privately he has admitted it is something that appeals to him because of the emotional attachment he has to the club.
It may seem like a strange swap, given the respective resources of the two clubs, but significantly few Newcastle fans would mourn his departure and many would celebrate it. Pardew is well aware of the animosity towards him on Tyneside after weeks of protests calling for him to be sacked in the autumn.
Although the win over Everton halted a run of four successive defeats, the most painful of which came at home to local rivals Sunderland last weekend, Pardew is not liked on Tyneside after several months of poor results in 2014.
It is easy to see why he would be tempted to leave of his own accord rather than wait to be pushed. Interestingly, Pardew has also been repeatedly ignored when it comes to his views on player recruitment and last week made it clear he expects Newcastle to sign another centre forward in the January window. His desires have not always been the same as the board’s at St James’ Park.
Pardew sent his assistant manager John Carver to do his post-match media duties. That is not unheard of, although the timing of it raised eyebrows, particularly as his team had just won and moved back up to ninth in the table.
When asked directly whether Pardew had told him why he would be filling in, Carver said: “No. He just said ‘will you go and do the press for me’. That was it. I was actually eating a pie at the time.”
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