Flip

Sill remember them being screwed over the Ba deal. Got only 500k in the end. But they sold Luiz Gustavo for like €17m or so, I guess that adds up. Luiz Gustavo isn't a €17m player.

Götze? Wow. Just missed an open goal completely. Unbelievable. He missed so many chances. Mourinho at Trolli Arena

2-0 to Bayern too. I hope the Bundesliga gets at least a third team to compete with these guys next season. Bayer Leverkusen and Schalke can hopefully become more consistent. Would love to see Werder and Hamburg becoming decent footballing sides again.

2-0 Gundogan. Dortmund just all over them. They're horrible Greuther Furth like.

Nice goal by Gotze.

Greuther Furth - Dortmund right now. No surprise to see that Greuther Furth are terrible considering their position and total points this season.

This really

8 goals in 30 Premiership games this season, 13 in 41 overall. Is that enough for you from a lone forward? How many of those were as the lone forward? probably like 10 How many of those were as a right winger? Probably like 5 How many of those were as a forward, be it a lone forward or as part of a front 2? Probably like 25 8 goals in 30 is not enough, whatever way you look at it, for your only striker in a 4-3-3 in a team aiming for European qualification. I find it funny that the people who are most critical of Pardew are the ones who are most forgiving when it comes to Cisse's underachievement this season, considering the fact that if Cisse had anywhere near the same chance conversion rate as last season, we would be comfortably sitting in the top half of the table. On your last point, the reason you should be critical against Pardew is because you have to be a pretty rubbish manager to not get a player like Cisse to score. Loads of us were saying in the first half of the season that we should be playing to his strengths, which was pretty much the opposite of what we did. We have started doing it a bit since Ba left and to no one's surprise both us and Cisse have improved. We have improved lately, but that's probably as much to do with our January signings hitting the ground running as it is with Cisse playing up top on his own. Of course Cisse has also improved as we have started playing to his strengths as you say. I'm not denying any of that; on the contrary, I have praised him in recent weeks for getting us the goals that win games. What I am doing is expressing a (valid in my humble opinion) concern whether it is enough. If you play a 433 and your sole forward has a 1 in 2 goalscoring rate (and that's being very generous as his goalscoring rate for the entire season stands at 1 in 3.8) based on a below average conversion rate, and then you combine that with there not being that many goals in other areas of the team (especially with HBA injured), then you'll be lucky to score a goal on average per game, which will see you draw or lose more often than not. The 433 may suit Cisse down to the ground, and indeed a number of our other players, but I'm worried about the number of goals we score in that system with Cisse (in this season's form) as the focal point. In there is the key point that what matters is the team winning games, not how many goals Cisse is scoring. Many seem to be saying that the way to improve is simply to get the rest of the team to make more chances for Cisse. A striker in his position should also be taking part in the creation of chances, and we may be able to land a striker who offers a better overall package. For most part of this season we have lacked a link between striker and midfielders. How deep do you want him to fall? For me Cisse's lack of goals have been more down to the manager than him or his teammates. Like Tooj has consistently said, we are terrbile in the transitional phase, both offensively and defensively and Cisse needs to fall down the whole time to help out. Until Sissoko arrived we didn't have a link between midfield and strikers as Cabaye was playing to deep and Tiote is a headless chicken. Asking for a better striker will cost us £15-20m something I'd rather we put into a good left winger who will create something himself a la Benny and Marv. As well as CB if Colo goes. Outside the top 6 there aren't many strikers who are better than Cisse.

This. Fucking shitness of a saturday.

Easily gone from the worst to best thread in the football part in the space of half a day or so.

That's just wrong tbf. Oh maybe just seemed to happen a lot....in any case can't have helped his return. According to Football-Lineups, he's started out wide four times this season. Most of the time he's been up top with Ba or on his own. Won't stop people from using it as a convenient excuse for his underperformance in the first part of the season. Except those stats don't tell the whole story. He might have started 4 on the right, but one of those were when Ba left and Shola started up top. I swear to god there was more than three games where Cisse was drifted out wide and played there for more than 70% of a game. He's not had the best season, but he's not our biggest problem and your timing is terrible as he had one of his better games this season for us against Benfica. He's coming into his own and has been the last month. As for his conversion rate, he's not the worst in the league and he has missed a fair few chances this season but he's also been very unlucky at times. It's a confidence thing and when Ba left and he got to play centrally again consistently he's been better. If you don't see it, it wouldn't surprise me as you believe the dutch and portuguese league are similar.

Stu I got to tell you HTT got you there HTT posting tl;dr is the funniest thing on here yet.

In the end this is football guys you will never win if you don't try to score goals. It's really as simple as that. Pardew tries to go for the draw way to many times. From now on we have nothing to lose, why not just let the team play offensive football for 5 games and see how that pans out? Maybe we'll beat everyone by three goals? I have to much faith in the abilities of Siss, Cabaye, Debuch, Ben Arfa, Gouffran, Cisse, Marv offensively to believe we can't outplay 75% of the teams in the league. It's time for Pardew to stop being a defensive coward and go for it.

Really? i couldn't care less as long as we win if i'm honest. I thought the smily made it obvious that I wasn't being serious.

Every time we play a good side would be by answer I hate winning by the odd goal

? Give it a rest, you're dull now.

I love Oakie. :lol:

? Give it a rest, you're dull now.

This is me. I also want him to learn from his mistakes because I like Pardew no matter how much I hate his philosophy. I just don't trust him, I don't think he has the ability, but I'd love to believe that he is a good enough manager for us, which for me he hasn't proven.

I don't know what Pardew has or hasn't said but that really is a one sided outlook. Can the opponents not score after the 70th minute? As it was the game was over when they scored because we had absolutely no chance of scoring twice in the remaining time. That wouldn't have been the case if they'd scored during the first 70 minutes. It would have been a tough ask but it was a possibility that we could have come back, we didn't have that option later on. you actually realy think we could attack like the last twenty mins for a full 90? seriously ? edit- almost every pro ive heard today say this tactic was the correct approach btw. of course you disagree with them all simply because you dont like the manager. Please tell me what pro's. Because I was looking on the Premier League TV (called that here in Sweden at least) and there no one was praising the approach. I think the players did exceptionally well, but I thought we shouldn't been so cautious in the first half. Should've attacked from the off and used the backing and atmosphere to get us an early goal and shake them up a little, instead we let them settle in and pass the ball around a bit too much for my liking. I don't like the way we were set up, Bigi didn't offer anything on the right and Siss - Cabaye sat super deep with Anita. It was like we had won the first leg.

Just did the predictor thingy and got them going down with QPR and Reading. Fuck ye you mackem cunts. Got Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea all finishing on the same point too, and us finishing 10th (although I was extremely optimistic about our results). A win in the weekend and I can definitely see these guys going down.

Except three of those goals have come in the Europa League. It's all down to Ba leaving and Cisse playing upfront. Ok, Gouff and Sissoko... tbh its all about Ronny Johnsen leaving... Agreed. Fucking Ronny Johnsen man.