Is Alan Pardew a robot?
Pardew vs. the Turing test
Crystal Palace won on Saturday for the first time since Sept. 24. They had slipped down to 17th ahead of the match, above the relegation zone only on goal difference after six straight defeats, including a 5-4 away loss to Swansea in which they led by a goal heading into second-half stoppage time.
The Eagles have been bad this season — really, really bad — and bad in mostly indefensible ways. This is not a newly promoted side trying to hang with the elite. This is an established Premier League club whose starting XI is filled with players who have a proven track record of at most success and at least competence in the top flight, a club who could afford to spend $40 million this summer on a center-forward who has averaged a goal in two games almost his entire career.
This means the reasons Crystal Palace have been bad have to do with things unrelated to talent, things like focus and intensity and organization and overall attention to detail. It can be tricky to really figure out who to blame when those qualities go missing, but a good first guess is always the manager, especially when the manager has a track record, as Alan “The Silver Eagle” Pardew does, of leading his teams on exactly the sort of useless, heartless runs of form Palace have been on since the middle of last season. In short, Alan “The Ermine Idiot” Pardew has a long, unflattering history that suggests the responsibility for Palace’s failures this season rests squarely on his shoulders.
And yet, at the conclusion of Palace’s 3-0 home win against a Southampton side that almost literally scored their first goal for them, Alan “The Grey Goose” Pardew had this to say to the BBC:
“There was a lot of pressure today, and I’m glad we responded. I thought our fans were brilliant, I thought our team was brilliant and even our chairman, who I thanked at the end … he’s been brilliant this week because he’s had to defend me to our investors … we have investors, and they’re not all completely knowledgeable about football and … not easy to, kind of understand six defeats, so he has to defend me and I just wanted to say thank you for that.”
The chairman-thanking he was referring to came after Palace’s third goal, for which Christian Benteke was left completely unmarked in the middle of Southampton’s 6-yard box. As is his wont, Alan “The White Wizard” Pardew turned toward the stands, located Palace chairman Steve Parish, and pointed at him as if to say, “do you remember the six game losing streak we were on? Well you can forget that now, because we won at home against a profoundly underwhelming Southampton team who even at this stage of the season have almost nothing to play for in the league, and also look at me, just look at me, acknowledge me, drink me in, Alan “The Chrome Coconut” Pardew, king of the ******* world.”
I have come to a new and unexpected conclusion about Alan “The Ivory Imbecile” Pardew after that. The conclusion is that I think he would fail the Turing test. To confirm or deny this, we must break the quote down, line by increasingly smug line, and asses whether the Palace manager is, in fact, a machine.
There are caveats, of course, like that there’s video evidence Alan “The Hoary Moron” Pardew is a person, and that my understanding of robotics is about as bad as my understanding of synonyms for the words white and/or gray is now good. But a lack of competence has never stopped Alan “The Chalky Hawk” Pardew, and it’s not going to stop me.
“There was a lot of pressure today, and I’m glad we responded.”
This is the sort of inoffensive and platitudinous and, dare I say, robotic line you’d expect from a manager in this position. It tells us nothing, which is exactly what it’s designed to do, and so in its own, strange, robotic way it’s very human, too thoughtlessly calculated to be the work of a line of code. Verdict: Not a robot.
“I thought our fans were brilliant, thought our team was brilliant and even our chairman, who I thanked at the end.”
This is where it starts to get weird, but only very subtly weird. The shout out to the fans and the players is similar to the first line in that it’s there simply as filler, a way to make it seem as though he’s providing information when in fact he’s simply providing noise in the shape of information. This is further complicated by the fact possibly every professional manager ever has said this exact thing, which either (a) raises a question about the potential robot-hood of every manager ever or (b) raises a question about whether anyone, given time to think about it, would program such a boring scripted response.
And then he mentions “our chairman, who I thanked at the end,” and there is a shift in tone toward something more sinister, something, for lack of a better term, mind-control-y. As if he’s trying to suggest the decision of “our chairman” not to fire him over the previous, extremely hideous couple of months was a worthy one. Non-emotional, mind control tactics are certainly robot-like, but the concept of gratitude displayed in the final line is too thick with humanity to tip the scales. Verdict: Not a robot.
“ … he’s been brilliant this week because he’s had to defend me to our investors … ”
This is a the sort of obliviousness to subtext I would expect from a machine. Alan “The Frosty Fool” Pardew seems honestly to believe he needs to explain to us why he’s grateful to his chairman, as if the six defeats in a row, or the six league wins in 33 matches in 2016, or the 26 goals conceded in 14 games this season, or the poorly choreographed touchline dances weren’t enough to tip us off. Verdict: Robot.
“… we have investors, and they’re not all completely knowledgeable about football and …”
He seems here to be on the outskirts of some kind of logical reasoning. That is, he appears to be trying to argue, without ever managing it, that he’s right, that he never deserved to be fired and that what he’s thanking his chairman for is standing up for what’s just, namely, a good man/robot doing a good, honest job. These are grand concepts — responsibility, justice — for a machine mind, but the key point is Alan “The Iron Giant” Pardew seems not fully to understand them. He understands their shape, that they require explanation, but apparently not that not every explanation’s a good one.
The logical leap from the fact the “investors” don’t know what they’re talking about to the fact they would’ve been wrong to fire him is simultaneously too logical — because it assumes people have to know what they’re doing to do the right thing — and not logical enough — because it fails to acknowledge the many, many reasons (as outlined above) Alan “The Burnished Buffoon” Pardew deserves to be fired, the knowledgeability of the investors notwithstanding. Verdict: Not a robot.
“… not easy to, kind of, understand six defeats, so he has to defend me and I just wanted to say thank you for that.”
If robots can own smoking guns, then this Alan “The Rimy Replicant” Pardew’s. The “kind of” is a stroke of genius from whoever programmed the Palace manager; the way it so subtly suggests he has to think about the right words, the best way to suggest the investors are idiots without actually saying it, and the fact he ultimately settles on the worst possible way of doing this.
It’s not easy to understand six defeats, he says, except the thing about that is it’s very easy to understand six defeats. It’s one more than five and one less than seven, and none of them are good. Verdict: Robot.
In conclusion, all things considered, I think there’s a non-zero chance Alan Pardew is a robot, which is way above average among people I’ve seen in real life.
Weekly Awards
The Jesus Navas Award for Terribly Good Crossing: Jesus Navas
After the way Manchester City’s match against Chelsea ended, with Sergio Agueros flying all over the place, it was easy to forget City were the better team for much of the contest, and would probably have won had Kevin De Bruyne not hit the bar from 2 yards out early in the second half. As it happened, that miss came on the end of a Jesus Navas cross, the same Jesus Navas who has made a name for himself in his first three years in England primarily for his borderline pathological inability to beat the first man with a cross. Navas has looked better this season, as most easily evidenced by the new approach he took Saturday to failing to beat the first man with a cross. It was Navas who played the ball Gary Cahill turned into his own net to give City the lead. The question, of course, is this: Given Cahill was, in fact, the first man, but also given the cross did, in fact, end up in the back of the net, did Navas’ cross actually beat the first man?
The Peter Schmeichel Award for Best Save: Jordan Pickford
Sunderland played well at home against Leicester, well enough to take a two goal lead into the 80th minute before Shinji Okazaki got one back, which is about as well as the Black Cats can reasonably hope for these days. From there, it was all defending all the time, as Leicester huffed and puffed in their efforts to blow the Sunderland house down. They got their opportunity in stoppage time, when the ball dropped to Wes Morgan about 8 yards out. The center-back drilled his shot toward the top corner, only for Jordan Pickford to stab out a strong left hand, sending the ball clear for a corner. It was a wonderful save from Pickford, who at 22 years old appears to be the heir apparent to the career black hole that is the England No. 1 job.
The Massimo Taibi Award for Worst Save: Fraser Forster
Lucas Leiva had until this weekend held the award for biggest gift of the season for his monumentally bad pass to Jamie Vardy during Liverpool’s match against Leicester at the beginning of September. Fraser Forster took that mantle emphatically on Saturday, not simply missing the ball as he attempted to clear from inside his 6-yard box, but actually flicking the ball with his right foot out of the reach of his left foot, allowing Christian Benteke to score what has been described (possibly accurately) as the easiest goal he will ever score. It was a horrible mistake, the sort from which there is nowhere at all to hide, and nothing really to say but, “oh well, better not do that again.” Which, to his great credit, is more or less exactly what Forster said after the match. Either way, he’ll be playing Lucas in the League Cup semifinal in January, so maybe they can agree some sort of truce.
The Chris Kamara Award for Fighting Like Beavers II: Bournemouth
Bournemouth were beaten after only 22 minutes against Liverpool. And then Callum Wilson pulled one back from the spot, and Bournemouth were back in it. And then Emre Can restored the Reds’ two goal advantage, and Bournemouth were beaten again after only 64 minutes. Then all hell broke loose, Loris Karius repaid Artur Boruc’s very avant garde first half goalkeeping performance with a little experimentation of his own, and next thing anyone knew Nathan Ake was leaping into the stands to celebrate the Bournemouth winner. The result raises familiar questions for Liverpool, who can perhaps take heart from the fact they didn’t lose for three months the last time these questions were put to them so seriously, but the result may also settle another question: the Cherries are surely the most likable team in the Premier League. Eddie Howe’s side were terrific, and well deserving of their first ever win against a top four side.
The Alan Shearer Award for Hat-tricks: Alexis Sanchez
Alexis Sanchez scored a hat-trick of astonishing quality against West Ham on Saturday, even if the Hammers were forgiving opponents. The first was, all things considered, the best of the three. His first touch, which took him past Arthur Masuaku, was the sort of thing Theo Walcott would probably dream of were he capable of conceptualizing that level of close control, and the finish, drilled hard and low past Darren Randolph, was made to look laughably easy. But there is much also to be said about Sanchez’s third goal, which was offside, but also involved such delightfully controlled one-egged step over as to render that totally irrelevant. His second would’ve been the best goal in maybe 50 percent of the matches this weekend, and I couldn’t care less.