Cronky

Oh well. A day when none of the results that I wanted came out. When the dust settles, it's been a great season with the promise of more to come.

Quite amazing that he's let his team down yet again - he's lucky they haven't been relegated. He did this with us three years ago when he decided that taking out Alonso was more important than helping us to fight relegation. Incredibly selfish.

Martinez linked with the Liverpool job today, with Dalglish kicked upstairs to the Boardroom. That would be a worry, because I think Martinez could be just the right man for that job. Hopefully it's too sensible an idea for the owners to bite. Mind you, if Dalglish has to go, he has to go completely.

I was living in Manchester as a kid when City last won the league in 1968, and it jars a bit whenever that achievement is compared with what is happening now. That City side was built up from nowhere - the captain Tony Book even came from the non-league. There were some very shrewd signings but no big money ones. It was a great achievement by the management to get promotion and then only two years later completely upset the established order of the day. This feels entirely different. I'm sure most City fans will feel great if they pull it off, but I can remember watching Chelsea lift the title under Mourinho and not feeling that anything had been achieved at all. Even if you can't share the joy, you can recognise the achievement usually. Not this time. What is worrying about the scale of City's spending is that they are able to take players away from their close rivals (Tevez, Nasri, Adebayor, Toure), so they're directly weakening the clubs around them, as well as strengthening themselves.

He didn't have the jargon right, but he talked some sense tbh.

One of the things that Scholes does so well is that lofted, golf-shot like pass from the centre midfield to the wide players. It just lands at the player's feet every time. We usually end up having to play three or four passes to achieve the same result - although obviously it's nowhere near as effective because the defence has plenty of time to move across or close us down.

Interesting. The relationship between spending on transfer fees and achieving success is there, but it's not a particularly strong one, with us, Arsenal and Everton near the bottom, and Stoke, Sunderland and Villa near the top. My hunch is that it shows that blowing a lot of money on one or two players, in the hope that these particular stars will haul you to the next level through individual brilliance, is a flawed strategy. Spending big will only work if you apply it across the entire team. Bit like you're only as good as your weakest links. In terms of a correlation with success, the most signficant statistic is supposed to be the wage bill.

Not sure about that, he's been pretty much ever present under Pardew. That's more by default than anything. I'm 100% certain we'll sign a right back during this coming window, whether Simpson stays or not. I agree that we'll sign a right back but I don't think it's been by default at all that he's kept his place. We know he likes Perch at full back, we know he likes Santon there, Gutierrez there, even Ryan Taylor there, we've gone through nearly half a dozen players at left back yet on the other side, despite all of those players being naturally right sided, Simpson has remained a constant, even in the cups. I know you don't like him as a footballer but what he has been very good at in general this season is exactly what Pardew likes from his defence - keeping a solid shape and knowing where to be positionally. Our defensive record is one of the best in the league if you discount the two or three aberrations we've had on the road. We've kept more clean sheets than we have for a long time and Simpson, along with Krul, has been a constant factor in that. Good post. Yeah, it's a fair point. Simpson isn't any good going forward and he usually prefers to stand off his opponent rather than take the risk of putting in a challenge, but you can rely on him to be in the area where he should be. Pardew likes that, and it's easier to be bold when you're not the person whose neck is on the line when you don't get results. The other thing with Simpson is that, being a part-time centre back, he's reasonably good at defending the far post, or at least better than our alternatives. I do wonder whether part of Pardew's hesitation with Ferguson is he doesn't want opposing strikers targeting a midget full back at crosses. That's a bit of a sucker punch. But having said all that, a full back who can support the attack can really add a lot to a team's performance, and we need an upgrade.

I wasn't anti-Pardew, but I didn't think Hughton should have been sacked. He had the support of the players and the fans, and any new manager was going to be walking into a very hostile environment. Obviously it's turned out to be a bold but ultimately very good decision. This was Ashley coming into his own as an owner who shaped, rather than followed, events. I still wonder though what would have happened if we'd lost that first game to Liverpool, which could easily have happened, given the way the match unfolded. Pardew had the priceless bonus of a good start.

It felt like we were in pole position, and then Wigan came in at the last minute. There was some kind of disagreement between Llambias and the agent. I suspect the agent was trying to start a salary auction between the clubs.

Let's bear in mind that West Brom and Fulham do have a habit of producing unexpected results against the bigger sides. It only needs one of them.

There's big pressure on Arsenal and Spurs, so I can see one of them slipping up - either Arsenal losing or Spurs drawing. Having beaten Chelsea away, we'll believe that we can do the same at Everton, so yes, you can see it happening.

Krul and HBA are the ones that I'd really fight tooth and nail for. I don't think we've seen the best of them yet, so it's hard to put a value on them. We've put a lot of work into them and have only just started to reap the rewards. Cisse has been great but we may already have seen his best. He probably comes into the 'every player has his price' category.

I'd like to retain him, but ideally as a squad player, because of the number of games we'll have to play. Whether he'd be prepared to put up with moving down the pecking order is another question. I think he'd want to leave. I'd like to bring in a striker with more pace and movement.

If I was to pick out a weakness in our performance, I'd say neither of the strikers held the ball up well, and they didn't really link up together. Admittedly they were up against a good defence, but if we're going 4-4-2, I think ideally one of the strikers needs to be good in the more withdrawn role.

There have always been flaws in Jose's game, and occasionally they get exposed. The first Chelsea goal was typical of what can happen. He looked indecisive, ended up in the wrong position, then didn't bring his man down early as he should have done. His confidence and concentration can be wayward. He's a decent player, and I'd like us to have kept him, but he's far from the complete defender.

Yeah, something's clicked in this lad's head. He doesn't look afraid any more.

A great effort. There was a gap between the sides, but nowhere near as large as at the beginning of the season.

I'm glad we don't have to face Micah Richards. He scares the shit out of me. Their movement will present us with all sorts of problems, but I've lost count of the number of times this season I've looked at the team sheets beforehand and worried unnecessarily. So give it your all lads. Don't come off with any regrets.

He seems to have shed his inhibitions and is now throwing his weight around with his previous gusto. I actually think impact sub is his best position at the top level. I'd take him to the Euros on that basis. For me, our best number 9 at the moment is Welbeck.

I read the other day that Mourinho likes to have as his number two someone who has deep roots with the club, and Pardew is a big fan of Mourinho's ideas. It's bound to add an extra dimension to the atmosphere around the training ground.

He's a player who thought he'd made it and didn't have to keep trying. He'll now realise that things have moved on without him and he's slipped down the ladder. Hopefully that'll be the kick up the arse that he needs, though we're in uncharted territory. Young players do change their attitude sometimes, and I hope Ranger can do it because he's got the talent to be a very good player.

If these gates are an important cultural icon, why did he take them away and put them in his back garden in the first place? Another one who can get off his high horse.

Cisse has started to remind me of Denis Law. Most of you will not have seen Law, but he had this ability to adjust his body and improvise first time shots from balls that would come to him from any direction or height. He was a brilliant improviser, and Cisse has that same ability. Both of them were decent headers of the ball as well. Cisse's slim, wiry physique is also similar to Law's.

One of my pet irritants is pundits saying that a striker 'should have made the keeper make a save'. No, the striker should aim for the edges of the goal so that the keeper can't make a save. Not necessarily, a shot across the keeper so he has to make a save and it may fall into the path of another attacker would be more useful than knocking it just wide of the near post for example. I think you’re making a very different point there. If a keeper saves a shot at his near post, the ball’s likely to go out of play. If he saves a shot aimed for the far post, the ball’s more likely to remain in play. The point about aiming for the corners of the goal rather than the middle still stands. Your point relates to which corner to aim for, when shooting at an angle.