Alan Pardew gives us his view of the 1-0 home win over West Bromwich Albion...
Alan Pardew"I think this might have been the first time people came along here today expecting to win. There was a different mind-set from the start. The TV man was showing every replay of our misses on the screen and that reinforced the frustration in the crowd. I got a message to him to stop that immediately because there was a bit of an atmosphere – a bit of sighing.
We were absolutely magnificent first half and perhaps we deserved to come in leading. I think I counted about thirteen chances which at this level is a hell of a lot. It didn’t come though. Then the second half West Brom changed it. They tightened the pitch a wee bit and we didn’t have as much joy. We got the goal at a good time for us and then we had to show the other side of our game. If the first half was about our pace the second half was about our character and we had to did deep. They brought on some senior pros and they were launching it into the box. We got our heads on it, we got in the way and the goalie’s made a couple of saves.
It’s a big big win for us. I look at the league table and to have 18 points from 11 games is marvellous. It’s a fantastic achievement and full credit to the players.
The clean sheet was important today – we hadn’t had one for three or four games though perhaps we deserved one against Middlesbrough. The two centre halves today were absolutely terrific. Gabbidon was first class. I thought he put in an international class performance.
We’re not exactly sure about Shaka – he’s has a bit of a bang in the head but we’re more concerned about Nigel. He’s turned his ankle. Christian came on and he’s not really the ideal sub for Nigel – obviously he does more Hayden’s role so it disrupted thins a little bit but he still did a marvellous job in there for us. Nigel will definitely miss the England (U21) match and is doubtful for Tottenham at the moment.
I had to apologise to Teddy after the game. I wanted to give Nigel a boost by letting him keep the captaincy and I, er, forgot to tell Teddy which is a bit worrying! Teddy just brushed that aside and got on with what he’s good at which is playing the game. At the end he was the last person I was thinking of subbing. He was organising and making sure we were up for the battle.
We had a few chances on the break and I was disappointed that we didn’t break that high line down.Their goalie swept up well. You could look at their goalie’s performance and say some of his kicking was erratic on the back pass but I thought he swept up a lot of potential danger.
I felt sorry for Marlon today -I thought Marlon’s chances today were difficult ones and he put in a good performance today. He’s getting frustrated because he desperately wants a goal. Teddy showed great touch by letting the ball slide off the outside of his boot – a great goal.
I’m not surprised at where we are – there’s a great spirit in the team. That number of points after getting promoted is a great achievement though. It was a big big game for us. Our fans have been saying we’ve got Tottenham and Man Utd coming up and we must win and we’ve done that. That’s what a good team does. I need to highlight that because of the crowd today. I just felt that they were expecting a win today and we can’t afford to have that attitude for anyone we play here – it just took away from the exuberance of the team The crowd were helping us at the end and we need that. I want to underline that the crowd play a key role for us and we can’t go into matches expecting wins ‘cos it ain’t going to happen.
We’re now off to Spain for a team bonding trip. In the old days that might have meant a few lagers but it ain’t gonna be like that this time. We’ve got a few things planned for them and we’re gonna try and keep that spirit going because that spirit is a team’s biggest asset. We’ve got a strong spirit and sometimes we’re not going to be technically as good as other teams but our spirit pulls us through. Our character helped us today when West Brom came at us late on.
We learned our lesson from Man City in the second half. When there were spells when West brom came at us we didn’t overplay. It’s a balancing act in not taking extra passes and doing something to create a second. We didn’t fall into that Man City trap of inviting them onto us when they were having a good spell."
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