Wullie

it must be down wind of a landfill site? Down wind? Surrounded by, more like.

How can a place be such a fucking shithole that even an enclosed sports stadium is covered in litter? Disgusting tramps.

Hughton

Genuine

Aye good on him.

Police have charged the guy that did it.

Surprised Nike need showing that they can have a sign up on the outside of a football stadium but obviously they do. Now they've seen it, that money should be coming in any day now.

Fucking horrible cunts.

Even amongst the wealth of totally pointless football statistics, a crossing percentage has got to be up there as the most utterly meaningless.

More goals than any other midfielder too?

We've barely played 4-5-1 at all tbh, don't know where he's coming from there.

Knew this was coming. Fuck.

Aww man i'm absolutely gutted for Tiote.

Probably the worst thing that could have happened for us. Mick will go this week now and we'll have to face the new manager boost again. Typical.

Cannot wait to get these cunts back at SJP with a full XI. Fucking scummy arseholes, the lot of them.

I think to say he would never have played professionally is overstating it but he's an incredibly poor footballer in terms of what he can do with the ball at his feet, which is surprising when you consider which academy he came up through, and right to the top of it too.

Having two full backs who cannot cross, one because he's on the wrong foot and the other because he's just shit at it, is a massive hindrance to us. Basically makes the overlap tactic null and void.

It would have given him much needed football time with the other players, something Obertan has had more than enough of. Agreed but it's a bit of a moot point. We didn't lose because of the decision to start Obertan instead of Ben Arfa but we may as well have brought him on at HT to give him some time on the park. I just think when you drop HBA to the bench, it's a tacit admission to the opposition that you're frightened of them and that sets the tone. I have no doubt we were in the dressing room talking about the threat of Bale - I want them in the dressing room talking about the threat of HBA and what they're going to have to do to combat his ability, maybe even have Bale dropping a bit deeper to double up, which helps us defensively if anything. Any manager seeing Obertan on the team sheet has one less item on his team talk because they know he poses no threat whatsoever.

He behaves a bit like a manager who hasn't had a pre-season with his players and is trying things during the season which suggests he doesn't really know his players. I've noticed him reacting but can't figure out what he's trying to do. Yeah I tend to agree. One thing I always liked about Hughton, and I don't want to go on about him again, was that he nearly always picked what I thought was the right team and even when the result or performance ultimately didn't go our way, I could always appreciate what he'd tried to do. When we did get it wrong, or when something went right (Joey Barton on the right, for example), he always seemed to learn from that and take it forward. Too often Pardew leaves me scratching my head - not always for the worse however, I was bewildered by the Man Utd team selection and we pissed it.

One thing that does puzzle me about him, is that he seems to change his mind about players at the drop of a hat. There's usually a consistency there with managers but Pardew seems to take a fancy to players for a week or two then you never see them again. Abeid played against Blackburn ahead of both Gosling and Ryan Taylor, I thought he was superb, not so much as seen since, with Perch promoted into his role. Ryan Taylor had also completely dropped out for a while before Santon came in - now he's one of the first names on the team sheet again and in a different position. Obertan had gone completely out of the picture prior to the Blackburn game to the point where he wasn't even appearing off the bench, now he's back in the first team. Vuckic was flavour of the month for a few games, started at Anfield, then vanished before being sent out on loan despite numerous absences in central midfield, where he'd previously appeared. Maybe it's a good thing that he's not set in his ways or tries new things but it always seems to me a very curious approach for a manager to take.

When he scored against Blackburn, my missus stood there with a face like thunder while I jumped up and down in the pub because "you're happy now, but wait until he's back in the team and Ben Arfa's on the bench and then tell me you're happy he's just scored" I told her she was being ridiculous.

We didn't go to try and defend against them (as we did for example at Liverpool) but nor did we go to attack them. To be honest I'm not even sure what our gameplan was or if we even had one. Maybe it would have become clear if we'd managed to go longer than two minutes without conceding the first goal. I feel he definitely struggles tactically on the road. We've probably picked up more points than we usually do so maybe that's unfair but we've generally looked a bit shit and struggled to hang onto the ball even in games we've won - Blackburn and Wolves spring to mind as being exceptionally lucky. The one expection to the rule was Stoke, where we were genuinely excellent.

I don't think he'll start, he'll be lucky to play.

I don't understand how you can do that without comparing to the alternatives. What was disciplined about Assou Ekotto being allowed to amble into our area while the bloke who should have been tracking him was stood thirty yards behind him?