Cronky

Eh? By asking to play in Cisse's position to the detriment of the team? Wrong by being joint top scorer of the league as of last week. Given their current form and if we are to play 4-3-3, I'd much rather have Demba as the focal point and Cisse on the left and the opposite was true last season when Cisse was on fire. It's simple really, the on form striker gets to play in the middle, that way the team benefit from an inform striker, has higher chances of scoring and introduce some healthy competition between Ba and Cisse. my point is: cisse play central striker or he doesn´t play. Its the only position he can play imo. To put him on the left or right is a joke....might as well but willo there (that could actually be funny). We have better options than cisse on the flanks. all im saying is ba can actually do a decent/good job on the LW and improve us atm where cisse can only play one position. Im only arguing this coz it would make us better in some matches to play both at the same time and not side by side on top (which isn´t the answer). I agree Ba was better at LW than Cissé is. Cissé gives the impression of not having much to his game other than movement and finishing, which is only suitable in a central striking role. I just don't think Ba was anything special at LW. Some seem to think he was actually an asset, but I'd rather have Ferguson, Marveaux or Sammy out there. Among Swedish journalists there is this widespread myth about Ba having so much success and getting loads of assist from LW last spring. I remember him having about one assist and being subbed in most games, often looking disappointed and angry. He transformed those reactions into good performances after the summer. My point from the start was this: Pardew will face an even more difficult situation the day he accepts and realises that Ba and Cissé together are not for the benefit of the team. The question is who he chooses in the long run and what reaction we get from the other one. For sure, it's not an easy situation, but I can't see the need to introduce extra complications. They each bring a different package to that striker role, so he should just pick one or the other, depending on the opposition and the position in the match. If one or the other doesn't like it, then they can go. It doesn't look like he can please both. The ill-judged attempt to butter up Ba in the summer by giving him a public pledge that he'd pick him down the centre 90% of the time has only created another problem IMO - ie Cisse's morale and form has been affected. Sometimes you need to take a step backwards to move forwards. At the moment, Pardew seems to be going round and round in circles with this issue.

He's really struggling at the moment. I'd agree that he's a specialist finisher, but even if we play him in that advanced position, there will still be times when he'll have to hold the ball up for his team-mates, or even move wide to create space. It's not realistic to think otherwise. His role in Liverpool's goal bothered me. Jonas passed to him in a lot of space and with an opportunity to turn and move forward with the ball. Instead, he just knocked it straight back to Jonas, who was under pressure from two or three opponents. For sure, Jonas's second ball was crap, but Cisse had passed the responsibility to a player who was in a much weaker position than him.

Contact with the ball doesn't mean it wasn't a foul. That's the crucial issue. He just nicked the ball but caught Sammy on the follow through. That's what caused Sammy to lose balance and tread on the ball. Otherwise he'd have kept possession, and usually refs call that a foul. Either way, we can't blame Sammy.

We shouldnt. He stood on the ball..................... It looked to me like the defender had caught him first and he lost his balance.

Cisse was turbo-shit out wide. If we're going to play him, it has to be down the middle, with support. Sammy made another good impression. We don't have any better alternatives, so regardless of his inexperience, he should start. We should have had a penalty when Sammy was brought down, but we can't complain about the sending-off. Colo couldn't handle Suarez all game and frustration got the better of him. Pleased with the point though.

We didn't in the last two games. Okay. For 'persist with' substitute, 'have another try with'.

Good to see Anita there. Against a side with little aerial threat, there's no need to pick Simpson. Disappointed to see us persist with Ba-Cisse though.

The quitter.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/how-terry-storm-led-to-chelsea-pursuing-mikel-monkey-claim-8280550.html Interesting article by Mihir Bose (usually reliable) in the Independent. Basically saying that Chelsea felt they had no choice but to put forward the complaint once it had been made by Mikel, due to their legal obligations as an employer, and the need to show that they were not lax on racism issues following the Terry episode. An implication of the story is that the club itself may have had doubts about pursuing the complaint for one reason or another. The offending word does seem to be 'monkey', but if they are making a complaint then it rests on them establishing that Clattenburg was using the word in a racist sense, rather than in the other sense of 'mischievous' or 'cheeky'. So why have they termed the language 'inappropriate' rather than 'racist'? To me, there's a tacit admission in there that there's another possible interpretation, in which event they've weakened their own case. It also looks like part of their case is the suggestion that Clattenburg may have covered up his mike to prevent his assistants from hearing. With cameras all over the place and lip readers on call, that seems a very stupid and unlikely thing for the ref to do. It's even harder to believe that Clattenburg covered up both his mouth and his mike.

This seems to be the general argument, but I find it just as unlikely that Chelsea would go through all this chaos knowing the repercussions if nothing racist was said. Seems a lot more likely to me that one man, in a charged environment would snap for a moment and say something, as opposed to all the people this had to clear at Chelsea, to even make the decision to report it, all being sure something happened that didn't. It's strange, i don't recall Fegie coming out in defense of John Terry. For sure, Fergie should keep his nose out, but I suspect he's voicing the general feelings of many professionals within the game. There seems to have been a lot of backpeddaling since the initial story broke. Firstly, Clattenburg isn't being accused of racist language - it's 'inappropriate' language, whatever that might mean. Then the accusation concerning Mata was dropped. The story I've read is that a lot of the players weren't happy about any accusation proceeding, but by then a lot of momentum had built up. Chelsea then called in lawyers to check out what elements of the accusations were likely to stick, and ended up with their eventual final complaint. That doesn't feel quite right to me. There's a fine line between getting advice from a lawyer and using legal advice to devise the most powerful version of events in order to 'win'. I think many people in the game suspect that Chelsea have crossed that line, and that's why they're uneasy. At the end of the day, referees and players have to work together, and there has to be a bit of trust and 'give and take' for the relationship to work.

Normally, their passing game is much better than ours, but for some reason I feel a tad optimistic. I don't think the Anfield fear-factor should be there for us any more, and if we can keep things even into the second half, their players will feel the pressure.

Refs are fairly lenient but I still think too many of those sorts of pens get given. He was very close to the opponent and it looked like an instinctive gesture to protect his face, rather than an attempt to make a bigger obstacle to stop the cross.

If an opportunity comes up for him to join a club that pays more, he'll take it IMO. Pardew seems to be trying to butter him up, in the same way as he did with Barton. I'd question whether that's the right approach, in a team game.

As I understand it, Mikel didn't hear the alleged comments. They were heard by some other player or players. That led to Mikel storming into Clattenburg's dressing room after the game, which in itself is an offence. It seems to me that the point was then reached whereby either Clattenburg or Mikel would end up in trouble. If so, I imagine it would then be difficult for the players who 'overheard' the comments to retreat by saying that they weren't completly sure that they'd heard what they thought. They would have to back their man. It all looks dodgy. They've already decided not to go ahead with complaining about the alleged comments about Mata, on the grounds that the evidence wasn't sufficiently clear. I'd be surprised if, by contrast, there's no doubt at all about the 'Mikel' comments.

Would you have him back? And for what price? No. Left back isn't a priority and he's a bit over-rated anyway. PS - Why would they be after Walcott? Don't they think that Sterling is good enough?

I like the front four, but I'd go for Perchy in CM and Anita at RB.

Not in the first half it didn't. They were utterly shocking. This is truly classic Arsenal, when the evidence starts to stack up that they're in decline, they manage to frantically paper over the cracks just in time. I would have banked on Villa even to have managed not to spunk away a four goal start at home to that side tonight. That's how poor they were. Arshavin in that first half gave the most un-interested, not fucking bothered, fuck-you performance I think I've ever seen. Well the other half of the story is that after going 4-0 down, they scored 7 goals to 1, away from home against a much more experienced side. That suggests a bit of quality in the ranks. Arsenal's game is a bit knife-edge, and unless they play with confidence and commitment, it doesn't happen at all. In the first half, they lacked that spirit and their defence was exposed. After that, they developed confidence in their passing and movement, they dominated possession and Reading got few opportunities. Considering it's a young, second string team up against a Premiership side, that's quite an achievement. Wenger has pushed back the boundaries of what young players can achieve, and he doesn't get enough credit for that. The media seem to join in this chorus of derision about Arsenal's so-called 'failure' to win a trophy, but they should be giving them enormous credit for remaining so competitive when they're competing against clubs with much larger budgets. Gnabry and Eisfeld caught the eye last night as very good prospects.

Looks like some more good young players coming off the Arsenal conveyor belt.

I wouldn't agree with everything Little Lunch Box has said, but the basic point is valid. Wenger wants a striker with pace, movement and technique. Ba's chief asset is his strength, and he's just not what Arsenal are looking for. Having said that, Wenger is still left with a problem, because I suspect the kind of striker that Wenger wants is out of reach, given Arsenal's limited budget. Early days, but I don't think Giroud is the answer.

Because it's not in Pardew's nature to play a pass and move game. He's come from low profile teams where the long ball is used effectively to punch above their weight similar to Sam Allardyce. He does try and incorporate some passing, but it's mostly just impressive talk. It doesn't look like we practice it on the pitch at all, and under the slightest bit of pressure it's Shola up front and long balls to the big lads. He doesn't really believe in the passing game IMO, and looks unsure how to implement it. It looks to me that players like Cisse and Marveaux are getting stick on here when more than likely the style of football is more suited to the Sholas and Martin O Neill type of players. Agree with all of that. Pardew sticks to what he knows which is percentages. Players moving around or going forward too much and losing position in a passing movement worries him. Our players try as much as possible to hold thier zone and their core position and then reboot. This keeps the team profile solid and hard to score against (that's the theory anyway -MON - Allardyce and Moyes - but he's changed the last couple of seasons). I suspect he's been pawing at statistics too much which often don't tell the full picture. Often 3/4 touches may lead to a goal (like the kick from Krul goal on Sunday) and nobody has to have deserted their positon (Shola just moved in a bit). He looks at mistakes (goals conceded when there is a corner up the other end and the breakaway). Ironically these kinds of stats are the surface of the game but now with prozone and so on they have become the new gloss. Tbf to Pards he's a bit like an unpolished Mourinho who has had his fair shair of very static and defensive formations (remember how Chelsea used to lob it to Drogba a lot?) Just that a lot of Mou's overfocused research (see all his assistants and their number crunching - Clarke etc) is gilded with teams full of stars. P like Mourinho is only interested in winning football. Even now two sprinters wait on the half way line (Benzema and one other) while the whole team defends. P still really wants Carroll as the focus, that should tell you everything. I hope you're wrong, Parky. At the moment, I'm not sure whether Pardew is getting the best out of the particular players at his disposal (and let's face it, overall, he's not been doing a bad job, given that he took us to 5th) or whether his tactics are limiting the players. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt atm and saying it's the former. Our movement up front is restricted because we have to choose between three Number 9-type strikers, with no-one with the pace and energy to act as a good, creative link from deeper. In central midfield, we have a defensive player and a playmaker, which to me is never an ideal combination because they tend to operate side by side (remember Parker and Emre?) and we don't have anyone who's good at getting forward down the centre. Everything is dependent on the wings, or on hitting the front men early. I think things are improving, albeit slowly, and I'm encouraged that we're apparently looking at a box-to-box midfielder. And if Sammy develops at a decent rate, the withdrawn / wide striker issue might be solved.

The accusation refers to 'inappropriate' language, rather than 'racist', which sounds a bit mealy-mouthed. As if they know that the remarks weren't racist, but could be seen that way if taken out of context. (eg calling someone a 'cheeky monkey') If Chelsea have gone down that route, then they should be ashamed of themselves. They really are a shit club.

They can't give it to Messi every year. It's about time Iniesta got it.

Just watched the 60 minute highlights, and I think this is a good point. It didn't look to me like it was just a matter of us playing badly. They're a good side whose position in the league isn't a false one.

I don't know Sissokho, but we could do with a midfielder who could really attack the box. Cabaye is more of a playmaker, and Gosling doesn't look like he'll make the grade. Our best sides have had a striker who can roam around to link with the midfield (Beardsley, Bellamy) coupled with a midfielder(s) who can get forward into the box (Lee, Speed/Dyer). At the moment, we don't really have either, and our movement is very poor. If we can fill those situations vacant, we can make some real progress.

Nope. I'd say McFaul and Given are the best we've had, but Tim is their equal at least. Given his age, we can expect him to surpass them.