toontownman

I hope he's paying us. Soz if you've already commented but what are your thoughts on his performance yesterday? I have already commented. Thought he was f***ing awful in the first half, embarrassing at times, 2nd half he was more than respectable, bordering on me saying he had a good 2nd half, but I won't say that about him. I feel exactly the same way about your post. I must have been watching a different game, thought he was easily one of our best players in the first half, absolutely everything was comi g down the right. I can understand frustration due to his lacking final ball and taking on players, It's clearly a confidence issue as he is already leaps and bounds better than his first game. His short passing and link up play was very crisp and he looked eager to make things happen. Can certainly improve but as someone said frightening potential if he works out some of the kinks. The right was certainly working better than the left. Santon should rectify that.

Have to bear in mind we have had a luxury of fixtures to open the season, which has given us some much needed time to gel as a team. The ease of our fixtures has also led to the great press hype of our rise, although they will be the first to put the boot in and write about implosions when we hit our run of fixtures against he top four. I think we are in good stead, again without the luck of the fixtures we could have a a different story and set of views on pardew. He is building a nice freeflowing attacking side which will only get better. I'm still surprised people doubted that given his sides at westham and charlton. We are seeing his reluctance to rush people back from injuries or throw people into the premiership until they are ready. Which can work both ways as it will pay dividends here while we are still picking up points but ultimately failed for him at west ham. Frustrating as he'll though given k want marveaux, hatem and santon in the team. Bigger tests lie ahead but great start for him, his staff and players. We still need to sharpen up in defence attack and possession (mainly tiote, Simpson and raylor) but the squad is shaping up nicely. If we can maintain top 6 somehow until January we have a huge chance to attract players to push us on even further.

3 points closer to saftey! Thats what counts. Didnt get to see all of the game so I will hold off on ratings until later. Some sexy stuff in the making though. Huge boost for Ba to build upon. Hatem seemed to be trying too hard to do everything himself to impress us when a simple pass could have put people straight through or better built attacks, but great to see him back. Raylor did better than I expected, actually made tackles. But did give away the goal we conceeded.

What about the 25m we get for Santon, Colo and Saylor?

Like the guy. He has been fantastic for us, far surpassing my expectations but both he and Shola have to be moved on and replaced next summer. I have no doubt he former will. Shola we are lumbered with until retirement.

Fuck that, we better be replacing in January. Thats replacing not getting rid. Competition will do him the world of good. I would probably prefer to see us buy a LB (Cissokho preferably) and switch Santon over to the right.

Not been so excited about the potential of our team for a very long time. We have some very talented players and if we can take our momentum through to our upcoming fixtures and pick up the points we could find ourselves still looking pretty come January 1st. Granted we wont finish top 6, maybe not top 8 or 10 but the fixture list has been kind in a way that we can potentially still be in the top 8 come January, which will give us a fantastic opportunity to strengthen the team and really try and sustain our position. Players will see the potential and our league position and that would be a huge pull. Whether we invest of course is a completely different matter. We could certainly have the chance to do that though thinking positively! A high quality Striker and RB would be fantastic. LB, CB and DM cover wouldnt go a miss either. On a downer, just imagine how we would be looking had we kept Enrique, Carroll and Barton. As mentioned i think we are surviving and flourishing quite well without all three and Nolan. The danger is reading the press hype building us up without looking at the fixtures that we have had. In all honesty we have done well to be where we are but I would also expect us to be in the same place. The worst is still to come fixture wise and the press have predictably built us up so when our tough patch hits we will go into meltdown.

Wasnt expecting him to get a start here, thought he might come of the bench. Very pleased he not only stayed on the pitch the entire game but gave a good account of himself. Interesting to see what we do with him from now on. Wonder if we do see him potentially filling in for Tiote after christmas, should he continue to improve of course.

Get in.. last 16. Home draw please avoiding the top 4!

CAPTAIN COLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Fucking SHOLA. Should never wear a black and white shirt again. All he can do is give the ball away.

Be lucky to hang on until penalties to be fair. We will completely shit the bed from now until the end of the game.

For fucks sake. Well thats that. Never fucking winning on penalties.

Wow sounds like Ferguson is making Raylor look like Stuart Pearce.

Get in Simpson you lucky lucky bugger!

Amazing how conditioned we have become to the luxury of tv coverage at our fingertips. Remember living off a combination of ceefax updates and listening to the radio awaiting the updates around the grounds during their main coverage game. In a way its a surprise all the games arent screened for the Carling cup. Im sure they will in time. Live in hope the individual teams websites can get the rights down the line. Its madness we dont use our website to screen reserve team and youth games live or even repeated in full. I would definately sign back up if they did that.

Aye since he signed a new contract , he looked lazy like a mule... You mean he has been something other than that before? In all seriousness I don't think he has been any good since that purple patch enduced by Kinnear... and even that was short lived due to injury. I think I am fully exhausted berating/hoping he fulfils that flashes of talent he had and resigned to keep the goofy, lethargic enigma until he retires. He shouldnt be anywhere near that first team, but he is still here due to many reasons. - No one wants to take him off our hands and he is happy to get paid here. - Given our depth I don't think we had much choice but to keep him around. - He doesnt kick up much of a fuss if he is benched. - He has always trained well (apparently), so is a good role model, - Being around will help Sammy through is another reason he got another contract. All that said its shocking he should ever start ahead of Ba or Best tbh and he looks even slower, clumsy and demotivated than normal this season.

Still surprised if Ben Arfa starts. Gutted if Gosling is out. Think we will go strong: Elliot Simpson. Saylor Colo. Ferguson Loven Guthrie. Gosling. Marveaux Ba. Ben Arfa/shola

Think we will go almost full strength. Pardew wants this cup. Ferguson at LB would be nice though. Obviously would like to see gosling, barfa, sameobi and abeid but I'm not sure the latter will feature.

We probably played our best football of the season and played the ball along the ground for most of the time. We did go route one a couple of times and so we should, just not all of the time. Cabaye could have had 3 and we didn't have a poor player, unlike against QPR when most were poor. Think about how bad we were against QPR, we were as good against Villa as we were bad against them. No idea if they were poor or if we just made them look that way, I guess we were just that good and they couldn't get the better of our midfield. It's easy to say they were s**** but we deserve credit for that, if they were. well thank fuck for hearing that, my pvr only recorded the second half so I had no clue how we played in the first. We should have won easily in the second half, they were there for the taking. I figured it was the same frustrating clueless perfomance. We seemed to have zero ideas coming forward although cabaye did very well. Sounds promising on the first half performance though. We give attackers so much space and backup all the way until the box, where colo and Taylor get quickly turned which is a worry.

Would be relatively happy with four weeks, thought it would be much worse.. still might be, but early signs look good. As a couple have mentioned, Ferguson or Kadar need to be given a chance against Forest. Four more weeks of Raylor would be horrible. Sure he is out of position and maybe he will start getting his head around it over the next couple of weeks, but he is still clumsy, slow and shite bar his set pieces once in a while.

Nice. P.S. Sameobi's legs are horrendous in that pic, he is going to get broken in two on the pitch.

Agreed, yet on the evidence that he played 70mins and still doesnt fully speak English I would say he is most probably starting from the bench on Saturdady.

Best striker at the club? Worked his ass off today, shame there was no service. I am not convinced with his work in the air but I think he has to be our starting striker going forward.

With Binnsy there, would definately like to see this. KRUL SIMO SAYLOR COLO SANTON CABAYE TIOTE JONAS GOSLING MARVEAUX BEST Surprised we didnt see at least a cameo from Santon today though. Not convinced Pardew is ready to start him next week but I bloody hope he changes his mind this week if so.