^{_{I gave Elano my Porsche and now I want it back!}}

rourkey (27/10/2006)

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I secretly want us to get beat on monday (heavily) to induce the sackig of SP!! sorry!
Even if we win we'll lose the next two!

Poor old Alan Pardew. Five months after so nearly landing the FA Cup off the back of an excellent first Premiership season, he's under pressure he could not have imagined back in August after a run he would not have believed.

The Evening Standard, among many, is reporting that defeat at home to Blackburn on Sunday will cost Pardew his job. I pay particular attention to the Standard's report because the journalist is Ken Dyer, who's close enough to West Ham to have been one of the people in Glenn Roeder's private office when he suffered his collapse in 2003.

Dyer is a Hammer through and through, as I learnt working at the Standard - a paper with enough claret and blue in its blood that when the club were relegated they forgot to move them off the Premiership coverage schedule. The threat to Pardew is real, even if the details may be slightly more hazy than Dyer makes out.

Perhaps the board are divided on the issue, with the different camps leaking different stories. But someone is telling Dyer what he's writing.

Elsewhere in the Standard, David Mellor, the former MP, former Fulham fan and former music-hall joke, was speculating that the man in trouble should be Rafa Benitez. Other names mentioned by Mellor were Iain Dowie, Glenn Roeder and even Stuart Pearce. What unites all but the last of these figures is that none of them should be even considered for the push at this stage of the season.

Pardew has not become a bad manager in a few weeks. West Ham's troubles started not with the former Reading man but with the loss of Dean Ashton before a ball had been kicked this season. That was followed by the arrival of two players in a deal he had nothing to do with and the whole season has been played out against an unsettled background.

Perhaps a new board will come in eventually and the axe will fall, but what manager would sensibly take a post at a club in such times? Pardew is the man best suited to stop the drift at a time of uncertainty. Sven-Goran Eriksson is many things, but I didn't have him down as crazy, which is what he would be to go to Upton Park right now. Pardew may lose his job on Sunday evening but it will be a mistake if he does.

Dowie has a poor top-flight record - but the first team he managed there had been dragged up to the Premiership by his skills in a season when relegation looked far more likely than even a top-half finish. Now he has taken over at a club that last had a new manager in 1991. What calibre of replacement will come to The Valley if they sack a manager as promising as Dowie after three months of action?

Roeder is not helped by his performance in front of the cameras. He always looks nervous, even when things are going well. But Newcastle are in both cups - their only realistic chance of ending their long, long wait for a trophy - and six points off eighth spot. Last season Roeder worked wonders in the Premiership, doing enough to earn a full season.

As for Benitez, I remember the patience shown by the Liverpool board to Graeme Souness, Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier, who endured far deeper and sustained barren spells - Souness and Evans won two trophies between them in six full seasons and the current coach of Lyon won just a solitary League Cup in his last three years, slipping from second to fifth then fourth in his last three Premiership finishes.

It is inconceivable that Rick Parry and co are even thinking about ditching a European champion and reigning FA Cup holder at this stage. On past form it will take two seasons of failure for them to act - and there hasn't been one season of failure yet. In light of the record of the manager and the board, I can't help wondering if those Reds fans calling in Mailbox for him to go are supporting the wrong club.

Mellor, of course, is just making mischief and his column, as always, brings to mind his unwanted appearance on Chris Morris's brilliant TV news parody, The Day Today. Over a picture of the waffling one spouting forth, the voiceover said simply: "Journalist David Mellor added little of interest."

Which leaves Pearce - and a deal of regret for me. Manchester City's position is better than that of three of the clubs mentioned and, relative to expectations, better in the Premiership than Liverpool's. The problem for Pearce is that, unlike the others, this is a bad start to a season coming on top of a bad whole season.

I've admired the way Pearce has conducted himself, with humour and dignity, throughout his time in charge. The heavy, if not quite sufficient, punishment meted out to Ben Thatcher was an example to other managers (one sadly ignored by Martin Jol, who should be outlining publicly the penalty paid by Jermain Defoe, if any).

But the current struggles come off the back of one win and nine defeats in the last 10 games of last season and Saturday's hammering at Wigan was a heavy blow to morale. I want Pearce to survive and thrive, but another bad month or two would be a sustained spell of failure.

If Pearce does go, then I hope that Pardew, Dowie, Benitez and Roeder will all still be in their jobs when it happens.