ATB

Not my favorite player as he disappears in games all the time. But he still has to play, he is the only player that can do something against low defense.

Yesterday was the first time I was frustrated with him, he made so many bad decisions in the attacking play and looked as he wanted to be the hero. Marv should have his position in the final third.

Silly posts.

Despite he's obviously naturally gifted its the simple things like giving a simple pass when it would be easy to dribble or shoot is what impresses me.

 

He plays the game like a seasoned pro.

 

For me thats whats make great players. Just do the simple things. Seriously, his short passing most be the best in this team, attacking wise.

 

Based on two games?

Yes.

We should upgrade the coaching staff with more competent people.

Despite he's obviously naturally gifted its the simple things like giving a simple pass when it would be easy to dribble or shoot is what impresses me.

 

He plays the game like a seasoned pro.

For me thats whats make great players. Just do the simple things. Seriously, his short passing most be the best in this team, attacking wise.

Well played today Pards (and I would have said this even if we wouldn't have won). Good starting XI, noticed it wasn't working so changed things at HT and we came out all guns blazing. Good substitutions as well, brave bringing young Adam on instead of Shola. Anzhi made it difficult for us after they got a man sent off, and Eto'o scared the s*** out of us so we couldn't push forward too much.

Sure, but we just don´t create anything. 11 vs 10 for 30 minutes and I think they created more.

Just so bad.

Played 20 minutes and is already the best player in the team

 

Really, really hope he gets to play more now this season.

 

DAVE.

If all of our players had his "pass and move" we would have won this game easily. Will be really good this lad

Played 20 minutes and is already the best player in the team

Really, really hope he gets to play more now this season.

Too many floaty slow balls into general areas. Need to work better positions. Was it like this against Stoke?

Yep

Come on Anzhi hasn´t started that well. We just let our self down all the time.

We are so bad to create anything. Just long balls at a lonely Cisse.

What chances of England losing there 4th spot in the champions league? Surely the coefficient is getting rather low now?

 

short term? No chance you would need to drop to 4th in the rankings but long term it could happen if results dont improve.

far, far, far away. It´s not that Italy are storming either.

Martins

It's not exactly a crime to win a football match because your good players did something good.

 

I agree we looked disjointed in attack at times though.

And my second point is that it happens to often to just be a bad day

Agreed. Stoke are good at defending. And that's what they done. Our class won us the game.

Yes, and not the team performance. Thats my main point.

Tron just said it, at home against Stoke he chose to start Jonas and Tiote and not play Marv or Anita. Credit him all you like but if he didn't make these bullshit fear-based calls in the first place we might not be in holes that we have to dig ourselves out of.

 

Results make people forget, not me. We were seconds away from 31 points with 9 games to play. Looks a lot healthier this morning but bearing in mind the opposition and importance of the game yesterday I found his approach baffling. Took them to score before we remotely livened up, albeit they were s***. But we were at home and needed the points more than them.

 

But for all this supposed negativity we dominated the game. Check out the stats on possession, shots, corners etc. That doesn't show a side sitting back, it shows a side taking the game on. My take was not that we were negative but that we could not convert our pressure into goals against a side who don't aim to do much other than sit back and adopt "spoiling" tactics. Possibly Marveaux for Jonas from the start might have given us a bit more creativity but Marveaux had game time in Moscow and was poor imo.

Individually we are a much superior team then Stoke. That we won "the stat" doesn´t makes us having a good game. How many clear cut chances did we have? Not much considering the possession and shots we had, and thats what´s important.

We played at home against Stoke that has won 1 or 2 games away the whole season and is a team that will just defend. We have class, class players and still can´t create anything in the final third. But hey, we are great. Pardew is great. We will win PL next season.

Hate this "hypochondria" that everything we do is great and anything others do such. Rodgers has been laughed at all season over his "we won the possession". Now I see a lot of us used it as a argument that we played well "we had 58 % of the ball"

Just pointing out that everything should always be so shit with this league. It´s not.

Did you quote the wrong person?

No.

Yet we're sitting 13th. Incredible

 

Just goes to show how poor much of the league is, and just how bad you have to be to in genuine relegation trouble.

the most boring comment that goes around here. Maybe we just have a good squad that should have been higher up? Maybe the league is quite even.

He´s a finisher, we are not giving him any.

If that's what passes for a good performance these days then that tells you all you need to know. We were clearly the better team but you'd see more spark at an ME disco.

 

My thoughts exactly.

Agree. I´m dying here trying to understand how happy most in here are after that shit display.

Good substitutions today.

 

But as Beren said in the match thread, the gameplan is a horrible one that is more hopeful than anything, and as predicted it wasn't until we went behind that we actually started to attack Stoke with a bit of intent. Which is actually pretty shocking given that this was a home game against a mediocre Premiership side full of cloggers at a point in the season where relegation is still a big worry.

 

We won and imo it was a good performance.  We controlled it and we should have buried more of the chances that came our way.

We barely had any.