ALAN PARDEW was today announced as the new Newcastle United manager after the sensational sacking of Chris Hughton on Monday.The former Reading, West Ham United, Charlton Athletic and Southampton boss has signed a ludicrous five-and-a-half year deal which is meant to keep him at the club until 2016.
But Pardew arrives amid understandable fan unrest after his alleged complicity in Mike Ashley's decision to fire Hughton.
According to the BBC, Ashley and Pardew had been plotting to remove Hughton for weeks having become friends at one of chairman Derek Llambias' casinos in London.
Media sources suggested Hughton was on the brink in October before a last-minute Fabricio Coloccini goal rescued a point in a 2-2 home draw against Wigan Athletic.
I dismissed rumours of Hughton being fired as paper talk at the time and he then led the team to successive league wins over West Ham United, Sunderland and Arsenal.
Earlier in the season, there had been a 6-0 win over Aston Villa, and away wins at Everton in the league and Chelsea in the Carling Cup.
There had also been some disappointing days - defeats to Blackpool, Stoke City and Blackburn Rovers as well as draws against Wigan and Fulham, all at home.
Newcastle have also only taken two points from their last five games and suffered a painful 5-1 defeat at Bolton Wanderers and a 3-1 loss against West Bromwich Albion.
But Hughton left with his head held high having won the Championship with a club record points total and guided the Magpies to mid table this term - four points off relegation but only four points off 7th place.
Disgustingly, it still wasn't good enough for Ashley and the board released a statement on Monday afternoon, axing Hughton citing his inexperience at the top level.
Yet, despite this call for an experienced head, it is Ashley's mate Pardew who has walked through the revolving doors at St James Park to become the owner's sixth permanent boss in three years.
And so, Ashley opens another chapter in this Orwellian tale which is in no threat of concluding soon.
The choice of Pardew has stunned Tyneside and, indeed, football in general but - as part of the Inner Circle - he was the obvious choice to Ashley.
Expect Pardew to toe the party line as Ashley continues cost-cutting in the transfer windows, just as Joe Kinnear was happy to comply after his similarly stunning appointment in 2008.
It's all just a little bit of history repeating. Or worse, this could be another case of Ashley airbrushing history - just like George Orwell's Big Brother in Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
At one point in the Ashley regime, Newcastle had been looking to emulate Arsenal before that was downgraded to Aston Villa.
With the Magpies sitting 12th in the Premier League at Christmas in 2008 under Kinnear, Ashley wrote in the programme for the match against Liverpool on 28th December.
He asked: "If, like me, you like a gamble now and again then what price a flutter on us reaching that top six?"
Well, you would have got decent odds after the match. Newcastle lost 5-1, Shay Given and Charles N'Zogbia soon left, and United were relegated having had four different managers across the campaign.
Ironically, it was during the relegation season that Newcastle drew up the five-year plan to regain their competitiveness in the top flight by emulating Villa.
A five-year plan? You couldn't make it up - it was like something from the Communist Party in Soviet Russia which Orwell so wonderfully parodied.
Now the five-year plan seems to have been ditched after just two years - with a new Pardew-led five-and-a-half-year plan put in its place.
Just as Orwell's protagonist Winston Smith changed the records at the Ministry of Truth to show that Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia rather than Eastasia, or vice versa, so Ashley doctors the club's history to his benefit.
Meanwhile, half-truths and downright lies are spoon-fed to a largely acquiescent local press at the same time as Ashley shuts off the channels of communication elsewhere.
The tribunal which happened as a result of Kevin Keegan's dismissal concluded that "the club admitted that it repeatedly and intentionally misled the press, public and the fans of Newcastle United".
This latest episode proves that nothing has changed - and it never will while Ashley remains in charge.
Of course, the worst part of it all is that the fans - or, perhaps, the proles as Ashley sees us - are powerless to his whims.
Freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength and Newcastle United are doomed.
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