At 3.30pm on Tuesday 11th March, news broke that Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew will serve a seven-match suspension with immediate effect after he admitted an FA misconduct charge following his much-maligned “head-butt” incident in the previous weekend’s fixture versus Hull City. The FA commission also ruled the first three-matches will act as a full stadium ban with the remaining four a touchline ban, with Pardew also fined £60,000 and warned as to his future conduct.
We gauged the public reaction on Twitter using Pitch Social Insight, our bespoke social media monitoring tool.
Average positive sentiment around “Alan Pardew” dropped over 5% from a weekly average of 58.4% to a 24-hour average of 53.1% on Tuesday, the day the announcement was made. Positive sentiment for Pardew was already plummeting in anticipation to the announcement, but dipped to an average low of 33.8% on Wednesday morning after the news had been fully digested (down 25% on earlier in the week). This would suggest that on overall consensus the fans disagree with the punishment that has been distributed by the FA.
