So, about that four-man West Brom taxi hijack in Barcelona…
It sounds like an absurd slice of Barclays because pretty much every element of the fantastical story is: the main cast of Gareth Barry, Jonny Evans, Jake Livermore and Boaz Myhill; the compelling haplessness of Alan Pardew as the managerial replacement for Tony Pulis, with caretaker stints from Gary Megson and Darren Moore either side; the escalation of a 5:30am McDonald’s run; the sheer crisis-laden, cracked-badge adjacency of it all.
There was even an integral VAR-based subplot, with ramifications for what is currently Manchester City’s last officially nefarious Premier League title.
West Brom were in turmoil in the winter of 2018. Against the backdrop of the sudden death of the legendary Cyrille Regis, the Baggies found themselves rooted to the bottom of the top flight, their chairman and chief executive were both sacked, and John Carver was their assistant manager.
Pulis, presumably busy compiling a passing knowledge of every employee at the club, had been shown the door in November. West Brom were 17th, a point clear of the bottom three. Megson steadied the interim ship, then handed the reins over to Pardew.
“I hope to free up this team a little bit more if I can,” he said upon his appointment. If anything, he freed it up too well.
Not on the pitch, of course. This was a cursed Pardew and Carver collab in 2018, with an eclectic squad including James McClean, Ahmed Hegazy, Salomon Rondon, Matt Phillips, Grzegorz Krychowiak and Allan Nyom. It was doomed to fail.
The new manager’s wait for a first win lasted nine games, and not coincidentally after drawing League Two side Exeter in the third round of the FA Cup. That triggered an Invincibles run of three wins and a draw in four matches, but equally consigned West Brom and Pardew to a farcical fate.
That fourth match, an FA Cup win over imminent Champions League finalists Liverpool at Anfield, was jinxed in itself. Only the sixth English club fixture with VAR in use suffered multiple delays – which Pardew blamed for a couple of first-half hamstring injuries – with Jurgen Klopp claiming the officials “cut match time because there is something else to broadcast” on his lifelong nemesis of a channel, BT Sport.
And West Brom essentially won by accident, ruining a warm-weather team-bonding trip to Barcelona in the process.
A planned week-long excursion became a quick turnaround: a flight out on Tuesday morning (obviously having been thrashed by Manchester City on the Monday night), then back on Friday afternoon for an FA Cup fifth-round tie they had not previously accounted for.
“In hindsight, after the incident, would I have gone? No,” Pardew said after their return. “But before, if I knew there was not going to be an incident, would have I gone? Yes I would.”
The Incident evokes thoughts of mysterious sitcom subplots, of unspeakable but legendary university debauchery, of regrettable experimentation with certain foodstuffs. A joyriding Gareth Barry with Jake Livermore on aux, less so.
“We had a night out,” Chris Brunt later recalled, “did a bit of training on Wednesday, which wasn’t great, and then [Pardew] said, ‘The night is yours – don’t be doing anything daft’.
“Whenever you go away in that situation, something daft happens.”
And when told ‘the night is yours’ by a sun-soaked Alan Pardew at the peak of his powers in Spain, some take that to mean a midnight curfew-shattering taxi to McDonald’s in the early hours, a request for the driver to collect their food, and an apparent panic induced by an impatient queuing motorist which can only really lead to an attempt to move the vehicle, an accidental turn onto a busy dual carriageway, a detour back to a five-star hotel and the abandonment of the commandeered car, presumably with the Double Sausage and Egg McMuffins intact.
The police were called but no charges were filed. The taxi was returned to its rightful, indignant and quite tired owner within three hours. The predictably dubbed ‘Cab Four’ were given a wonderfully Football Manager-flavoured fine of two weeks’ wages after an internal investigation.
Pardew, who had been robbed on the Tuesday evening after leaving his jacket in a bar, could barely contain his exasperated rage.
“This is obviously not ideal. It isn’t what we wanted,” he said, as if having spilled his morning coffee, likely before apologising for his language.
But West Brom could not let the drama envelop them; that unforeseen FA Cup game was on the horizon almost as soon as they landed back in England, and Premier League survival remained an admittedly distant objective.
The Incident was to be a teaching moment.
“Obviously I was furious with what happened,” Pardew said after the Baggies were knocked out of the competition by Southampton. “But at the same time I’ve got to stay faithful to the players and give them a chance to remedy the situation,” he added, having started the shamed Barry and Evans, with back-up keeper Myhill on the bench and Livermore injured.
Evans was at least stripped of the captaincy. For that one game before being immediately reinstated.
As Pardew said: “I think God teaches us to forgive. On this occasion I wouldn’t say he’s been forgiven. But he’s paid a price.”
The pre-trip Liverpool win was to be Pardew’s last. A run of nine straight defeats immediately thereafter made his position untenable and he was mutually consented by April. Moore, his replacement, won the Premier League Manager of the Month award, as well as three of his six matches.
One of those victories, away at Manchester United, mathematically confirmed City as champions and delivered Pep Guardiola his first Premier League title, the sham nature of which can only really be matched by that comically disastrous West Brom mid-season break.
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