He got a lot of players playing above themselves and got them big moves on strength of it.Exactly .. Take Papis Cisse for example....hardly world class as he career has clearly shown but for a couple of seasons Pardew got the absolute best out of him....he even made Steven Taylor look almost decent !!!
None of those like cisse as you mentioned really hit those heights again becoming bench warmers and eventually dropping down to their natural level which certainly wasn’t top 5 in an elite league.