ALAN PARDEW

“Before the cup final, my daughter had said to me, ‘Dad, there’s this new dance’. That must have been in my head. But yes, I regret it…”

Interview Chris Flanagan

When you look through the list of Premier League Managers of the Season, very few of them started their career dangling from the side of a 600-foot tower.

Alan Pardew had a rather different route into football than Pep Guardiola, Antonio Conte & Co, but it didn’t stop him ascending to three stirring FA Cup finals, not to mention becoming the only Englishman to win both Premier League and LMA managerial awards at the same time. He was even linked with the England job in 2016 – all from his unlikely beginnings as a glazier.

“I did a few landmark jobs in London when I was 17 or 18, like the NatWest Tower, the Sea Containers building and the GPO Tower [now the BT Tower],” he explains to FourFourTwo. “I did a piece of glass hanging out of scaffolding on that bloody thing. That was a bit hairy. I’m OK with heights, but then you need to be if you’re going to be a glazier.”

Once he had finally broken out of non-league, Pardew reached the top flight as a player and later managed in the Premier League with five different clubs, before becoming the technical director at Bulgarian side CSKA Sofia last November. His coaching ambitions are far from over, but first he’s ready to answer your posers about an eventful four decades in the game…

TEAMS (PLAYER)

1980-81 Whyteleafe

1981-83 Epsom & Ewell

1983-84 Corinthian-Casuals

1984-86 Dulwich Hamlet

1986-87 Yeovil

1987-91 Crystal Palace

1991-95 Charlton

1995 Tottenham (loan)

1995-97 Barnet

1997-98 Reading

TEAMS (MANAGER)

1999-2003 Reading

2003-06 West Ham

2006-08 Charlton

2009-10 Southampton

2010-14 Newcastle

2015-16 Crystal Palace

2017-18 West Brom

2019-20 ADO Den Haag

What’s your favourite memory from your days playing in non-league?

Lucien Okill, via Facebook

I didn’t get into the professional game until I was 26, so all of the things I’ve taken from the game were embedded in non-league – the discipline of a full day’s work, then training. Playing for Yeovil, I’d drive for two and a half hours from central London, play a game and drive back home in the middle of the night, then be up for work the next day.

At Corinthian-Casuals we had a great FA Cup run that launched my career – we played Bristol City in the first round. I was a late developer physically, but at 21 or 22 I got my strength and my game quickly improved. I thought the ship had sailed – that I had no chance of becoming a pro – but I managed to get into the England non-league team and eventually Crystal Palace came in.

Is it true you had to take a pay cut to join Crystal Palace, even though they were in the Second Division?

Nicholas Day, Maidstone

That’s 100 per cent true. Ron Noades invited me to the stadium to sign and I was overjoyed – then he slapped the contract in front of me and I was like, “Hold on a minute, you do know I earn more than this?” He said, “That’s what we’re going to pay you – you’ve got to take the chance. If you do well, I’ll look after you.” To be fair, he did, but I didn’t have an agent and I remember going home thinking, ‘Hmm, have I just done something stupid there?’ Looking back, I probably did the right thing in signing!

How did it feel to score the winner (below) as Palace beat Liverpool 4-3 in the 1989-90 FA Cup semi-finals?

Sharon Morton, Tulse Hill

That game was extraordinary. It was like, ‘Oh God, we’re going to win this!’ Then, ‘Oh no, we’re going to lose this, it’s gone’. Then, ‘We’re back in it!’ After I’d scored, I looked at the clock: there were five minutes left and I couldn’t move – we were dead. The thought of getting the winning goal spurred me on to run around a bit more!

It made my name and made me sort of an iconic figure with the Palace fans – I still get people saying, ‘I was there’. We had lost 9-0 at Anfield that season. After that game, we were all sitting in the bath, distraught, and I said to John Pemberton, ‘I can’t believe it – 7-0’. He said, ‘Are you kidding me? It was nine’. The goals were going in and it was just a whirl. I couldn’t believe it.