Rich

Think it will be announced today.

“I thought Cheick Tiote looked more like his old self." Comments from pre-Maritimo in November last year: “Cheik Tiote looked like his old self, and I thought Vurnon Anita did well too." Needs Philosoraptor.

No shit. You not think we all are slightly worried? You can be slightly worried without throwing negative comments every time Pardew speaks, looking at every line word by word, for one sentence he might have slipped up on. Soon as that is found, the rest of his interview is irrelevant even if he’s right because he is wrong about that one sentence so he gets crucified. Every time without fail. Can you have a triple tag team? Is that allowed? Yeah man, quite a common thing.

Here comes the other one, class.

How the fuck the pair of you can be arsed is beyond me. Just find it hard to take people being so willfully thick, that's all. It's not even about defending Pardew, it's just common sense. Nothing he says matters now, because even if he comes out with something completely standard and/or sensible everyone is waiting to dissect it line-by-line with a load of weapons-grade bollocks. Given that, yes it's pointless joining in with this thread. Guilty as charged on that one. Aye, this is pretty much what I was getting at. It's a laugh, though, isn't it? For a bit, anyway. Like reading the papers with your tea and crumpets. I'm not at that stage yet, sadly. I'll wait it out.

dis guy

How the fuck the pair of you can be arsed is beyond me. Just find it hard to take people being so willfully thick, that's all. It's not even about defending Pardew, it's just common sense. Nothing he says matters now, because even if he comes out with something completely standard and/or sensible everyone is waiting to dissect it line-by-line with a load of weapons-grade bollocks. Given that, yes it's pointless joining in with this thread. Guilty as charged on that one. Aye, this is pretty much what I was getting at.

How the fuck the pair of you can be arsed is beyond me.

Think this needs a tag to Ian.

have a word he was shite As much as people probably won't admit it...Warren Barton is the best right back we have had in last 20 years.... Dear me.

I'm pretty sure we've seen it already.

My God, what's the point of living ...

I thought Mourinho would gamble on him considering the fairly easy start Chelsea had Could've been a good opportunity to get him up and firing, but then I suppose that was the logic behind Torres playing too.

Honestly thought he was one of the better performers against City, although he switched off badly for the opening goal (tends to be a problem with central midfielders in general though, not just Sissoko). Needs to play the Diaby/Diame/Yaya role, basically, as a driving force from central midfield. This is what I assumed he was bought for in the first place. If we're going to go down the 4-4-2 route it could work, if we play a version similar to the one City now use in particular. He needs to reduce the frequency of his bursts, though, and play a more tactically astute game overall. It will come.

I'll try and bring it back to topic by pulling this back up regarding Vuckic, think it's pretty much spot on.

If he is indeed Yanga, then probably quite a bit.

http://i512.photobucket.com/albums/t322/WrestlingLife826/Stunner20.gif

These are grown men.

What do you people want? Do you want Lambeezy back? DO YOU?

Seems to be fit again, judging by his Twitter. Suppose he's fallen behind Dummett in the pecking order now, though.

Can't have stability without ability. http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/McCoy_ISWYDT.gif

May be churlish to say, but might have helped if he'd come into a team confident off the back of finishing 5th.

I'm not sure how Coloccini was one of our worst, in the first half I thought we only had 3 players and Coloccini was one of them along with Krul and Ben Arfa. Aye, criminal to see his name alongside those others. Taylor was the worst, with Debuchy not too far behind. If Taylor didn't club that dude, would Debuchy be the worst? Because Debuchy was the worst. Taylor's performance was compounded by that moment, but lest us forget that he should have probably had a penalty against him (like Debuchy) before that. While his defending on goal #1 was equally as bad as Debuchy's and his defending on goal #2 was even worse. If we're just basing it on first half, Taylor was the worst. I think I'm too used to Taylor's shit play to really see how bad it was today. I've seen Debuchy have pockets of play where he looks like he shouldn't be out there, but never 90 sustained minutes of just fucking garbage. I was one of those defending Debuchy initially last season due to his mid-season arrival into a fucked team, but today did not help my case at all.

The simplicity of that set-up was perfect for Pardew. Defenders who were just expected to defend; natural width (none of these fancy wide-forward types); one defensive midfielder and one creative midfielder; and two forwards who could thrive on crosses and direct play. Simple and thus effective for a manager who isn't smart enough to handle the more complex set-ups that he tries to think about these days. Unfortunately I don't think we have the squad to play that kind of thing now, either players have left (and not replaced) or have gone downhill rapidly. This is the problem with keeping Pardew and yet not backing him in the transfer market. He's shite, you've got to allow for that. Yup. The downside to the continental-moulding of the squad is that Pardew has no clue when it comes to the modern continental systems that these players are used to playing. They don't fit into his preferred traditional 4-4-2 system, and he isn't flexible or clever enough to create a system that suits them. The scouting process over the last few windows was designed to bring in bargain-bin players without any real consideration of where they'd fit, and the hope was apparently that Pards would just make it work, but unfortunately he isn't capable of that. Either the bargain-bin approach needs to change, or they need a premium manager to make it work. I have seen some evidence to the contrary in regards to this point, which makes it all the more frustrating. I'd also take more 4-0 away humpings if it gets you posting more. Maybe. Not really.