Cronky

It looks like the Senegalese simply didn't believe what they were being told about the injury. Back problems are difficult to verify, and sometimes get used as convenient excuses if a player doesn't want to play, so it's not surprising that there's some suspicion. It's also often a matter of debate whether a particular injury is enough to stop someone from playing. With the England team, some kind of compromise gets worked out between club and country, particularly over friendlies. It sounds wrong that the Senegalese weren't even prepared to enter into a dialogue about this.

Going by the 60 minute highlights - Ba had a decent game, but is he really giving us 100%? The determination that got him the goal seemed a bit lacking at other times. He can do better. Anita and Tiote don't look right together. Ironically, despite having two defensive midfield players, the back four was regularly exposed on the break. It looked to me like people are being way too harsh on the young lads. Fergie and Sammy did okay. All in all, the usual problems were there, but I've seen us play worse and win.

Sammy starting. I think so.

Despite the defeat, I think the nucleus of a class side is emerging. Welbeck, Rooney, Wilshere, Gerrard, Oxlade-C are the top performers, but there's some other decent young talent emerging as well. We need to sort out the defence though.

........which is the heart of the problem. I think it was Fergie who said that a team's strikers are the big factor in how a side is able to play. To get the most out of Cisse, he has to play in an advanced central position, with the rest of the team fitting around that. Ba made it clear that he was unhappy with that and this season has been a pointless exercise in trying to find a way round that. As I see it, we have three strikers who should be competing for one position. Cisse is the best finisher, Shola is the best target man and Ba offers you the best overall package. Shola is adaptable and is prepared to flit in and out of the team in various roles. The other two can't or won't adapt and sadly, in the long-term one of them has to go. I just feel that the problem is acting as a cancer at the heart of the team, not just in terms of playing style but also in terms of morale. I hope Pardew is just biding his time until the opportunity comes to sort the problem out in January, and that his current comments are just politician-style speak.

I wouldn't go along with that. You can make a very good player look ordinary if you give him the wrong role. The crucial point came when Ba made it clear that he wanted to be played centrally and Pardew, in public, gave him a guarantee that's where he'd be 90% of the time. If I were Cisse, I'd be mighty pissed off with that. Maybe Pardew decided that it was easier to upset Cisse rather than Ba, who was willing and able to go to another club. Either that, or he rates Ba more highly than Cisse and is prepared to sacrifice Cisse if necessary. Actually, the most likely picture is that he thought he could use his charm to keep them both happy. Unfortunately, that would never be more than a temporary fix. Either way, no-one should be surprised that Cisse is now looking out of sorts.

On reflection, until Hodgson made all the subs, we looked the better side. For a scratch team, we moved the ball around quite well. It looked promising.

Eh? He gets a lot of stick on here, for some reason. I think he's a great player.

What was wrong with Hart? I've never seen him make so many mistakes. Mentally, he was AWOL all game. Very good performance by Welbeck I thought. Well done, Stevie G, I still believe in you. Great thing about football is you've never seen everything. Ibrahimovic's goal was outrageous.

The lack of eye contact is very striking.

Come on Dave, it's not that outlandish an idea, given all that's happened.

It's interesting because although Pardew presents as a very open and friendly character, in practice I don't feel I've sussed him out much at all as a manager or as a person. I'm unsure whether he's a modern thinker or a traditionalist, an experimenter or a conservative. Beneath the public face, I think he keeps his cards very close to his chest. I don't mind him not being as good as Moyes, because IMO Moyes is the 3rd best manager in the league after Wenger and Fergie. Given the chance with a really big club, who knows what he might achieve.

I'd say we did over-achieve, and that our most valuable player was Krul, who was responsible for converting quite a few potential defeats into draws, and draws into victories. There seemed to be this feeling in the close season that there were a string of players who we had to keep hold of at all costs. In fact, the likes of Tiote, Ba and Cisse - decent players though they are - were being somewhat over-rated and if we'd received an inflated offer for one of them, it would have been smart business to take advantage of their inflated reputations and then strengthen the team in the key areas. Ba I know was on a fixed fee, but if he was going to create trouble about being picked away from his preferred position then it would have better to replace him. There would have been hell to pay with most fans but that's when the manager and the board need to show courage and clear-thinking. With all the fuss from the media and supporters about us finishing fifth, it looks like the manager got a bit carried away himself.

It's annoying that this issue wasn't tackled in the summer. There were some warning signs at the end of last season that Cisse and Ba weren't a great combination, but our best use of resources was for Cisse to lead the line, and Ba to withdraw into a wider and deeper position in a 4-3-3. Ba made it clear he didn't like it and Pardew's response of promising him a role down the centre was not clever. I don't care if Ba is our best all-round striker, it's about what's the best combination for the team. Ba should have been told to lump it or leave. Cisse has been undermined and that carefree confidence isn't there any more. We seem to be batting between all sorts of different attacking combinations, none of which look convincing.

On a couple of occasions recently, the ball has gone out to him very tight on the touchline, under pressure, and somehow he's managed to lift it over his opponents' heads or something with his first touch and put himself in the clear. I can't remember the exact details, but it wasn't something I was remotely expecting to see, given the limited time and space that he had. They were great pieces of improvisation which didn't remind me of any other players I've seen. I hope people know the incidents I'm referring to. I can't describe them well because I'm not sure exactly how he managed it.

He looked a £6 million player last night, and it made quite a difference to our attacking threat, having both full backs eager to try and get forward and make things happen. I think Pardew is reluctant to do without Simpson's ability in the air, but Anita offers much the better package. His defending on the ground is much better than Simpson's as well.

Lovely skills, but too easily bullied off the ball. He reminds me a bit of Modric in his style. However, whereas Modric is able to overcome his physical limitations, Marveaux doesn't.

Yeah, I've noticed he tends to be blowing a bit quite early on in games. Shola has also suffered from stamina problems. It could be a family trait that we just have to accept.

Strange game. They were quick on the break, and we struggled with that. At the same time, they gave us a fair bit of space to build our attacks, and overall we should have won. Some occasional daft decisions by Sammy but overall he showed again he's quite a talent. Like his big bro, he has very quick feet for a tall lad. Bigi struggled to find a role again. I can't see the point of playing him with Tiote. It's not the kind of experience he needs.

It's a bit puzzling that they don't even have that kind of option to bring on from the bench. For all the skill they showed, you felt that trying something different at the end might have worked.

After watching Liverpool on Sunday, it hit home that I was no longer watching a team that were two or three players away from challenging for the top, which has been their most frequent position over the last 15 years. They were just a good mid-table team that were trying to get better. Their problem is that a lot of money has already been spunked on the likes of Henderson, Carroll etc, and they're shortly committing themselves to an expensive stadium re-vamp. There's no quick fix, but I don't think their support has adjusted to that yet.

spooky! i was talking to an ex work colleague who is taking his ref stuff so he can do that aswell as coaching his kids teams and that is what he said, above a certain level (level 3 i think it was) then swearing is to be ignored "to try and keep all 22 players on the pitch" and for them to think that they aren't refereeing a football match but "managing an event" aswell. they are encouraged to let stuff go in order to keep 22 on the pitch as apparently thats what we, the fans, want, instead of wanting to see the rules applied fairly and consistently. As others have said, it's a matter of separating out swearing from abuse. Saying 'that was a fucking awful decision' is different from 'you're a wanker'. One is labelling the action, the other is labelling the person. In practice, I think refs at the top level handle this situation pretty well - I guess they have to, otherwise they wouldn't have reached the top. What must get tiresome for refs is the amount of moaning about decisions that goes on, whether accompanied by swear words or not. It's partly encouraged by the attitude of managers. It looks bad, and it filters down to all levels of the game, including kids.

No.

Yeah, good analysis. They also paid the price for playing midfielders at centre back, with goals coming from a free header at a set piece, and a long ball through the middle. Bits of luck here and there came in handy too, of course.

i did notice Colo charged out a lot during that game to close down the scouse attack, which left a huge gaping hole in our defence many times, whether that was due to his personal faustrations or Pardew's tactics i don't know for certain. I'd say that's his natural style of defending. He cuts out situations before they've developed by moving out early to make interceptions / tackles. He's very pro-active. It's partly out of necessity, because when exposed or out of position, he doesn't have the strength or pace to recover. But he's worked his own particular style to a fine art, and most of the time, it's very effective.