Jonny Evans also expresses concern over danger of Cisse and Ba
By Dan Silver
Sir Alex Ferguson may still be fuming over Robin van Persie’s ‘near death experience’ but Newcastle boss Alan Pardew has warned there will be two angry managers at Old Trafford on Boxing Day.
The Newcastle boss said: “I’m not happy either. Although we have won, the away form hasn’t been great, so there will be two teams with a little bit to prove, two managers smarting a little bit with their teams.
“It will make for a really professional game. Sometimes on Boxing Day, you can get a loose game – I don’t think this will be.”
The Van Persie incident understandably made headlines, although Pardew believes Ferguson’s outspoken comments were made in the heat of the moment.
He said: “Retrospective action is important because as we saw with [Everton’s Marouane] Fellaini the other day at Stoke, children shouldn’t be seeing incidents like that on TV.
“I think the one with Van Persie was perhaps not as bad as Alex at first imagined. Sometimes from the sideline, it looks a lot worse at the time.
“I’m not sure whether there will be action taken for that, but certainly elbows and off-the-ball incidents, that’s a good feature that the FA have brought in.”
United were far from at their best at the Liberty Stadium with strikers Van Persie and Wayne Rooney suffering a rare off-day, and Pardew is wary of the potential response.
He said: “I remember [Fulham striker Dimitar] Berbatov not playing particularly well the week before we played him, and he probably put in the performance of the season for him against us.
“It happens. You want to roll into teams when they have off-days, that does help.
“Swansea, I think, did that, Manchester United did have an off-day and fortunately for them, they got a point out of it.
“What we have got to do is try to make it another off-day by making it equally difficult for them to play.”
The win over QPR eased the Magpies’ immediate fears of being dragged into the relegation zone, but with a trip to Arsenal to follow their date at Old Trafford – where they have not won in the league since February, 1972 – and Everton’s New Year visit to St James’ Park, they know they will have to be much closer to their best to build on a valuable three points.
Pardew said: “When you looked at the programme at the start, you could see that this was a tough run for us, and it’s even tougher now with the results we have had and the injuries we have sustained.
“But I am actually going into it more buoyed than I have been at probably any other period of the season.
“We have definitely picked up, we look a little bit more resilient. We got a very important clean sheet on Saturday and I think we will be in good heart for what is one of the toughest games of the programme, Manchester United away.”
