Six straight defeats, 14 of the last 19 games lost, a falling-out with his star player and fans calling for his head. All in all, the horizon looks a little bleak for Alan Pardew right now. So what has gone wrong?

Yohan Cabaye has left a chasm

The France midfielder was more than Newcastle's playmaker, more than Pardew's on-pitch brains, Cabaye proved hugely influential in the club's largely francophone dressing room. Much as he linked passing moves and drifted between the lines on the field, the man who left for Paris Saint-Germain for £20m in January was the glue that held the dressing room together. Players listened to him and he was able to mend fences when his compatriot Hatem Ben Arfa ruffled feathers.

With Cabaye on his side Pardew was gradually making controlled passing Newcastle's priority; without him he has felt compelled to adopt more direct tactics – with disastrous results. Since January the team have played one- or at best two-dimensional football bereft of imagination, invention and incision.

What happened to the idealistic disciple of pass and move called Alan Pardew who once made Reading so easy on the eye? Where has he disappeared to? Not for nothing have Newcastle fans invented the term "Pardew-ed", in other words to have all the creativity and verve drained out of you. Not for nothing did Gus Poyet tell his Sunderland players they would pass Newcastle off the park when they won 3-0 at St James' Park in February.

Hatem Ben Arfa has been alienated

The days when Pardew compared his No10 to Lionel Messi are long gone. Newcastle's most gifted, creative individual was left out of the squad for the trip to Arsenal following rows with his manager. When Pardew has selected him lately other players have complained, citing their disgust at Ben Arfa's failure to track back.

The sometime France international is not perfect but the agitated barrage of instructions opposition coaches invariably blitz their players with whenever Ben Arfa steps off the bench emphasises his potential for damaging opponents. If he has struggled to regain maximum fitness following a hamstring injury last year, Pardew has arguably not helped his cause by fielding him in wide positions rather than in the classic No10 role behind a striker or strikers which probably suits him best.

However, that would have involved re-constructing Newcastle around Ben Arfa and Pardew clearly does not trust him sufficiently for that – not to mention being unwilling to upset certain senior professionals. When Ben Arfa bodyswerved a warm-weather squad bonding break in Abu Dhabi in the New Year there was a sense of trouble ahead.

Mike Ashley has let his manager down in the transfer market

Joe Kinnear's unfathomable appointment as director of football last summer has hurt Newcastle. Badly. During the two transfer windows in which JFK was operational the club failed to make a single permanent signing with only Loïc Rémy (last summer) and Luuk de Jong (in January) arriving on loan from Queens Park Rangers and Borussia Mönchengladbach respectively. It has left the squad short on quality and depth while lacking competition, pace and, above all, creativity. Improvisation is horribly thin on the ground.

There are too many French players

Pardew has long appealed to Ashley and Graham Carr, the influential chief scout, for a more balanced mix of nationalities including a few extra British players as well as some over 26. Newcastle's owner does not like to sign more mature professionals as their sell-on value is limited but Pardew could definitely do with the odd Frank Lampard figure. Similarly, the Gallic market is seen as representing excellent value for money but nine French players and three more who speak French as their first language in the first-team squad is hardly conducive to a clique-free dressing room.

Allowing French players to go to Paris for treatment was a mistake

Newcastle allow their French contingent to visit assorted orthopaedic specialists in Paris while also receiving treatment for certain injuries at Clairefontaine. Just lately Pardew has struggled to contain his frustration when Rémy, Mathieu Debuchy and Moussa Sissoko proved in no rush to return to action on Tyneside following treatment for fairly routine complaints. Newcastle's manager suspects staying fit for the World Cup rather than helping their club may be at the forefront of their minds.

Meyler headbutt has had an impact on results

The seven-game touchline ban (including a three-game stadium suspension) served by Newcastle's manager has not done the team any favours. Pardew returned to the sidelines at Arsenal but six of the previous seven games resulted in defeats. Missing his technical area input is one thing but did the David Meyler incident against Hull City cause Newcastle's players to lose respect for their boss? It certainly appears that way.

Lack of ambition

Newcastle's board have made it clear that domestic cups are not a priority and the current decline began around the time they lost at home to Cardiff in the FA Cup third round in January. Before that, excellent results were set against a backdrop of Ashley's desire for the club avoid Europa League qualification – the owner believes it increases costs radically in exchange for limited profits – meaning Pardew regarded a potential fifth-placed finish as a possible poisoned chalice. The pre-season target was a top-10 finish and the sense that everybody would be content with that seemed to filter through to the players many of whom effectively downed tools some weeks ago.

Strikers are firing blanks

While Newcastle have conceded more than three times in 11 games their goals-for column makes pitiful reading since the turn of the year. Rémy is a fine striker but, merely borrowed from QPR, he looks to have lost interest lately. Meanwhile De Jong is not good enough, Shola Ameobi willing but injury prone and Papiss Cissé, now a long-term absentee with a broken kneecap, had been strangely out of sorts for some time. Kinnear's failure to close a permanent deal for at least one striker last summer has returned to haunt Pardew. It speaks volumes that Shola Ameobi's goal in the recent home defeat to Swansea was his toothless side's first in five games.

Fabricio Coloccini no longer captain fantastic

Once Pardew's big ally and often the team's best player, the Argentina centre-half looks a shadow of his former imperious self. Longstanding personal problems dictate he is desperate to return to South America and seems set for a summer departure. Without Coloccini at his best, encouraging them to play from the back, Newcastle are diminished. Radically.