Beren

Loving the Marv. One of my favourite players in terms of style. In my head, he's our Iniesta :lol:

Welcome back - sharper than I expected him to be!

Benfiquista - do you think you would have lost if HBA had played 180 minutes?

Came in after being public disrespected (IMO) and did a great job (relative to his skill level!). Model pro that doesn't deserve half the personal abuse he gets. Also, pure comedy gold for that shot :lol:

Love it

Conversion rate isn't nearly good enough but we can't expect a Shearer/Ba every time. He's a good player and he never gives up We need more consistent service for him next season and better competition up front.

Fair play to the Benfiquista fans on here (or whatever they're called ), a much deserved victory for your team. Unfortunately, I think you have far too many cheating cunts in your team to like you guys that much, but it can't be denied that you play beautiful football and the overwhelming majority of your fans are great As for us... well, brave effort in the second half. Left wondering what could have been had that HBA shot stayed under the bar. Very sad to go out obviously, and with it the last fun part of the season. The rest is just trying to stay in the division - which we should be okay with. In terms of players, lovely to see HBA back - Marv too. Such a smart player with such great awareness, maybe better awareness than anyone else on our books in fact. A shimmy and a layoff here, and the pitch opens up for us. He knows when to hold on to the ball and when to release it. Massive shame we only got to see that for the last half hour, which inevitably brings us to Pardew's gameplan... ...I said before the game I'd wait and see, and to be honest, we executed his gameplan perfectly. To the letter. I've no doubt he'll come out in his interview and tell us about how proud he is of the effort of the players. This match confirms to me (though I had little remaining doubt) that this is the very peak of his powers. What good Pardew has been achieve here so far is his glass ceiling. The barrier he cannot break. The scrappy "stay in it" and nick something at this level is the best he can get out of our squad. And it's not just because we're facing Benfica - a quality side it must be said - because this season's European adventure has not been a swashbuckling adventure. We've ground and ground like Rafael Nadal the whole way through, eking and clawing results with defensive football. That kind of football can only take you so far, and Pardew took us as far as he possibly could with it - and in some respects, deserve some credit for it. If we had a manager who could unlock the qualities in our squad (which we saw glimpses of at the end, when the mere presence of HBA or Marveaux on the ball had their diving twats scurrying back to hide behind their goalposts) and put us on the front foot in games more often... well... who knows where we could go. Williamson deserves credit for a reliable performance too, though he won't get any.

G'wan Jonas!!

Deflected up cross, not even on purpose from Shola God I love him.

See

Cisse should concentrate on his own game.

Willo :lol: What a guy

Danny Simpson throw-ins = take it away from my area of responsibility someone

Benfica, get ready to get a lot of freekicks awarded to you

And off he goes :lol:

There are far worse performances out there.

No, just people entrenched in their views because they had a pop at him before the match. Rather continue defending their stance than objectively comment on what they see. He's been fine, developing nicely. Playing in an unfamiliar position and created two goal scoring opportunities from the right wing. More than Obertan would have

Haidara, Krul and Jonas have been great. MYM has had a few brainfarts, but been good too.

Depressing to hear that McLaren can identify problems which your manager can't.

We're going to burn him out if we continue to use him like this. He can offer so much more than just being a bulldozer (even if he is fantastic at it).

Jonas, warrior

Fucking awful from Cabaye.