Pardew to Remain Newcastle United Manager for 2013-14 Season

Colin Young of The Daily Mail is reporting that Newcastle manager Alan Pardew's summit meeting with owner Mike Ashley and Managing Director Derek Llambias is completed, and that the pair have "given assurances that [Pardew's] job is safe." This is in contrast to reports from several sources claiming to have inside knowledge of the organization, who over the course of the last 2-3 days indicated that Pardew had already been sacked.

As it turns out, the meeting was solely about formulating a strategy for the upcoming transfer window and was never about Pardew's job status, according to George Caulkin of The Times:

Since QPR,mood music from #Nufc absolutely consistent - full support for Alan Pardew, who has himself said "100%" confident of staying on...

— George Caulkin (@CaulkinTheTimes) May 23, 2013

That remains the case. Told this week's meeting wasn't a summit about Pardew's position. Yet none of that has stopped rumour-mill ...

— George Caulkin (@CaulkinTheTimes) May 23, 2013

... not all Twitter-fuelled, which is interesting. Part of that may be because it's impossible to completely 2nd guess Mike Ashley. #Nufc.

— George Caulkin (@CaulkinTheTimes) May 23, 2013

So here's your semi-annual lesson on the transfer window: If the person tweeting (or posting on a forum, or whatever) doesn't have any reason to be accountable for their words, you had better have a very good reason to believe them, and that reason should not be that you want whatever they've said to be true.

As for Pardew, he'll have another season (or at the very least a part of one) to right the ship. Based on his comments in the press over the last week or so, we can expect that he petitioned Mike Ashley for enough funds to bring in a quality striker and some experienced depth (with a possible emphasis on English players). Whether or not Ashley has granted him that freedom is another story. As Caulkin rightly points out, there's no use guessing what Mike Ashley will or won't do.