The College Dropout

It's better we don't have a French manager but an English/other one.

I thought he's signed the pre-contract.

Santon is in horrible form and has directly cost us 4-5 goals in recent weeks. Simpson's been pretty steady all season.

He's decent, a good defender. Hasn't been worse than Santon.

Spot on Word.

The best we can hope for is staying to end of season. I don't want to slag him off, he's done it for us. His dad, on the other hand..... Best we can hope for is he honour his contract.

Shola & Saylor have definitely played through injury as well.

We've produced what, 3? PL players in the last decade from our academy. All 3 injury prone.

His contract is worth more than his transfer fee. If he's on 50k p/w that's 2.5m a year. 3 years left, 7.5m

He's not East African like. Whenever you talk in an accent from a different "race" or the predominant ethnicity in a society you run the risk of being called racist. If a black person put on an Indian accent you might think he was being racist. Back to the point. Cisse needs to learn the offside rule. I'm glad we didn't land Remy. I want a striker who wants the ball at his feet not ahead of him. That's why Best/BA worked well. Best liked it into feet then Ba would look to get in behind the defence. Same with Shearer/Bellamy

We had 1 goalscorer and 2 creative players on that pitch. Cabaye rarely plays 90 minutes anyway, let alone after a 2 month absence. Taking off Marv for Perch fully gives Reading the initiative. The crowd knew if Reading scored at 1-0 without Marv, we would struggle to score again. At 1-1 bringing off Cabaye.... the boo's rightly rang out. We wasn't going to score. It's the Marv sub more than anything, it was just that Cabaye's sub was the climax of the situation. IMO Pardew had no intention of letting Cabaye play the 90. And that's okay. But he cocked by subbing Marv and going too defensive too early. The crowd are sick of his conservative nature. Nobody boo'd Perch but the decision. Taking off Marv indicated a change in tactic/philosophy. If this was FM it would be "contain". It's Reading FFS. I#m not a big fan of Sammy but bring him on to keep them on the back foot ffs.

That's it. Thing is last season those early first time shots were busting the net. All players are confidence players really, but you sense that he's especially mojo-driven. If he's feeling lucky, he'll waft his foot at anything and expect it to go in Yep. That was always my biggest concern with Cisse. A lot of his goals where difficult blockbuster goals. Difficult to keep that level up. More tap-ins and bungled in goals please.

Being conservative is an internal thing. External forces will only slightly change that.

Maybe? We don't have better players/team than 3 teams in this league?

Aye, needs time out of the firing line.

We are 2-3 signings away from a team that should really be challenging for Europe.

I honestly don't think the players are the problem. How many teams outside the top 8/9 have players as good as Cabaye, HBA, Marveaux, Krul, Cisse, Santon, Anita, Coloccini, Tiote and previously Ba. These are all good Premiership quality players. Some of them can play for the top 4 comfortably. IMO this is comfortably a mid-table team.

Hilariously, we are one of the smallest teams in the league. I honestly think the only reason we played Ameobi was because he's decent in the air defensively. Yet we pump so many long balls. Every set piece we get, even on the halfway line is pumped into the box.

He hasn't like. Defensively, old Simmo has probably made the least mistakes. Honestly. He has time on his hands but I don't have faith in Santon defensively.

I don't think we could do much worse than the run we are currently on tbf.

Aye, I don't rate Pardew very highly but i'm shocked by some of these results. Wham & Readingnin particular. Fully thought we'd stutter all season and finish lower midtable.

Not signing Ba in the summer or January will have costed them the CL imo. No bite up front.

Been defensively suspect. And going forward not all that effective. Would love a left footed fullback. We genuinely do not have any width on the left nor do we look like getting some. HBA/Marv like to drift in the middle, we need someone on the overlap to spread play. He needs to imrpove his game. Positioning, in the air, delivery from wide.

There's some aspects of his game that I truly dislike. The early, first time shot is up there. So much harder, when he could just take a touch and leave himself with an easier finish. The offside shit is unbelievable. The movement when not offside is immense though.

He's up there in our worries. If he doesn't start scoring soon, we are dependent on HBA or a new signing to keep us up. He's genuinely out of form and has been all season. Big, bad Demba has gone and Cisse needs to pick up the mantle of being THAT guy.