The College Dropout

Great goal by Bent btw

Many people did. He's obviously very talented.

Brilliant move for him and Liverpool, that. He was always gonna be a class player given a proper opportunity. Yep. Given a run of games he would score. He scored at Bolton, scored at Chelsea under AVB. Credit to Rodgers for building a system that gets the most out of his best players.

Cisse doesn't score. Rarely assists. Link-up play is awful. Can't win headers. Can't hold it up. Can't stretch opposition. Doesn't create space for others. He's meant to be this top finisher. In close to 50 league games he has 8 goals. I'm not sure but HBA, Cabaye, remy & Gouffran must have that money goals or better in that time. Fucking horrendous.

Been shit for donkeys. Darren Bent 2 Cisse 0

Remy? The lad that has scored more PL goals for Newcastle than Cisse in 2013 and scored at Everton? That lad?

They'll be tired at the weekend though. You just watch. It is a tired line of talk. We won our group in this thing last season, quite easily in fact. Move back the Wayne Routledge revisionist history talk. They are also winning/getting points in the league games after. Without making a ton of changes. I don't see how the two are correlated at all. Pardew made changes, but we won the European matches, so what exactly is the issue? Do people think Swansea are picking up more points because they are playing closer to the first team in Europe? I don't know, I just see this point about Pardew resting players in Europa League last season come up fairly often, and I don't understand the relevance or criticism. We didn't go out because of resting players and I doubt playing the full first team throughout would improve our result in either competition. You're rambling and talking nonsense. Swansea are getting results in Europe and the league (focus on the league here) without dramatic rotation. It's a mockery of Pardew who played two different sides yet claimed our players were tired. Their league points total is decent considering they've played Spurs, Manchester United, Liverpool & Arsenal already. Saw them against Crystal Palace, and granted CP were shit but Swansea played superbly. The first point made was "they'll be tired at the weekend". Don't know why your rambling on about EL group matches.

Mainly because he looked like he was on the way down.... was performing extremely poorly for the last 18 months to 2 years of his Milan time. I myself thought he was done, i don't think anyone saw the Rejuvenation at Juventus which happened. Milan's problem was more not even attempting to replace him rather than getting rid of him in general. They wanted to go in another direction at the time. Didn't they replace him with someone even older - Van Bommel? Think it was more a style thing than anything else.

They'll be tired at the weekend though. You just watch. It is a tired line of talk. We won our group in this thing last season, quite easily in fact. Move back the Wayne Routledge revisionist history talk. They are also winning/getting points in the league games after. Without making a ton of changes.

Yes. Yup. He was actually close to quite a few goals from that position too, he just missed the chances. Aye, we also kept clean sheets and Cisse scored whenever he felt like it.

How exactly have you guys come to that conclusion? We've played a similar system this season with a striker more suited to that position and we are still terrible. Had Ba been there I doubt he would've scored the 13 league goals and we would be relegated.

Do people really think we would've been better last season had Ba stayed on the left last season? Honestly?

Sturridge get 28 of my 47 points. Wow.

Mapou did it 3 times though... not saying he is a coward.... but he does look like a coward sometimes

We had a very different aide with an entirely different style of play that managed to win something 8 out of 11, six matches in a row, and beat Chelsea (away) and Liverpool in that same season. Stop referencing things from this time like they actually have any correlation to now. The vast majority of those players are still here as well. I hope this reply makes sense to someone.

Agreed.

Krul's been pants recently but my God what a terrible post.

I could go on all day about that side's simplistic greatness. Including having strikers that can win a header/hold up the ball. But moreover - that side was organised and worked very hard to a man. Real spirit. That's gone.

Yanga-Mbiwa and Colo dealt with Benteke very well though. Shame neither of them could mark him when he scored. At the time people didn't understand how pathetic this was.

True. Although with Santon always being so far up the pitch - it's a recurring positional problem.

They know the basics. Do they? For each goal I wonder what MYM was thinking when a) doesn't go to close down b) loses the ball under no pressure c) runs away from danger.

Fuck me Arsenal are on fire

Colo was useless. MYM was only worse because some of his mistakes where confusingly stupid. But at that level of shit it doesn't matter.

Can't say we've ever been great at closing down under Pardew. When we defended well we defended deep, compact and largely focused on retaining shape - 2 banks of four. It's very difficult tmaintain 2 banks of 4 if you're closing down all over the gaff. Our closing down was better then than now obviously. We played like he cared then. There's simply no desire. As useless as Ryan Taylor was at LB, he wouldn't give up.

Closing down is not such a problem when you're a compact unit. We where a compact unit at the beginning of the season we finished 5th.