Cronky

Ba looked ponderous last week, and same again this. Our usual difficulty in keeping hold of the ball is being punished big time this week.

Distant sounds of a bus being parked.

Hart Johnson Smalling Jones Cole Wilshere Barry Gerrard Young Rooney Welbeck Really unsure who to go for as CB, so chose a club combination that's an investment into the future. Young Oxy to make the squad, and possibly the team because I doubt that Wilshere will be ready.

Yeah. You feel that no matter how much we're dominated in the midfield, there's always the chance that one of those two can nick a goal. I feel I can sit back and enjoy the rest of the season. We've got those 42 points in the bag and the rest is a bonus.

Here's hoping this will help him raise his game by that all-important notch. I'm still waiting for the game where he really shows he's destined for the top level. I'm not convinced about him yet.

That's a joke, isn't it? Never in 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 years.

Yes, it's a bit of a worry. They're playing with so much more energy than before. All in the mind, and O'Neill has proved in the past that he can be excellent at instilling confidence in his teams. I thought that he might be over the hill, in the sense of finding it difficult to motivate himself for a challenge like this, when the top jobs seemed to have passed him by. Looks like that's not the case.

I think Capello got it wrong about Terry with the Bridge affair, and he's got it wrong again now. He's paid a big price for it. It's not a bad situation for Redknapp to walk in to. If he fails at the Euros, it won't be held against him, and he'll be a breath of fresh air. Short term, he could do well. Longer-term, I think he may be the latest in a long series of England managers who have been better suited to club football. He's a bit sensitive to criticism, and it'll be interesting to see how he copes when that inevitably comes.

It's interesting that there not long ago so many Arsenal supporters were screaming at Wenger to buy an anchor man in midfield. Wenger knew he had a perfectly good one in the pipeline.

Maybe there are out-takes where he kept saying 'off fuck' and they had to do it again. He may have decided to invest £3 million in the film and made it part of the terms that he'd get a cameo part as well as a slice of the profits. I doubt if it was just for the glory of speaking that line. Still, good story.

I don't understand why managers just don't put a wholesale ban on all their players from using Twitter. So many of them aren't able to use it sensibly, and I don't see a ban as a terrible sacrifice for the more sensible majority. Life is perfectly liveable without it.

Parker isn't my favourite player, but his work in defending was incredible.

I think Spurs will nick it. Liverpool started at a frantic pace and I think they'll blow themselves out.

Aye, always makes me laugh that some seem to make out that goalkeepers making good saves isn't fair or something. Yes ideally they'd have nowt to do, but how many winning teams have wank keepers? Over the season I've heard (not on this forum) that we'd be fucked without Ba banging in the goals. We'd be fucked without Krul's saves. We'd be fucked without Colo's composure holding our defence together. We'd be fucked without Tiote being a beast in the middle. At what point does this individual brilliance saving us from being mediocre make us a reasonably good team? You lot can be a bunch of vultures at times. Okay, it's a valid point that just because a keeper is making a big contribution doesn't mean that we don't deserve the success. The point I was wanting to put across though was that, in terms of the quality of our outfield football, we've been no better than mid-table at best. The other six teams in the top seven are still a class above us in that respect. None of the other players you've mentioned, as individuals, have been as important to our current position.

I wouldn't say over-performing. Over-achieving, yes. The factor that's hard to quantify is how many points Krul has rescued for us. But I'd say he's been the difference between mid-table and top six for us. Having said that, we now have a great platform from which to progress.

Once or twice it looked unnecessary. But it helped enormously to have a striker with a bit of mobility.

Brilliant goal to win it. I think his left is his weaker foot, isn't it? Guthrie did the work of two men. He was all over the pitch. Obertan is getting more involved, but needs to deliver the ball earlier. He seems to be looking for the perfect cross.

Bad decision by Jonas to try and dribble his way out of that situation. He had an easy ball back to Santon. Cost us the goal. Impressed by Cisse though. Ba has had trouble keeping hold of the ball.

Yep. Overall, we've relied on good defending rather than good attacking to win games. There's pressure on the defence and therefore we're more likely to concede a pen.

Two points - Yes, Ben Arfa does help the defence out but not always. He's erratic in his decisions and his team-mates can't rely on him. Yes we lose the ball through inaccurate punts forward and poor control from the strikers, but sometimes Ben Arfa loses it whilst trying to dribble the ball from the midfield. That's dangerous because often several players are in advance of him at the time and the defence is then left exposed with lots of players out of position. It's also unnecessary because, as jpd has pointed out, he'd usually be better off giving a quick pass and then moving forward to try and collect the ball in a more dangerous position. I don't think we should in any way be giving up on him, because he's not a million miles away from being a much better player. What he needs to lose is this impulse to try and win games on his own.

Exactly.

My concern is that the issue that Pardew is coming up against now is probably the same one that HBA's previous managers have experienced with him. In the end, they gave up on him and, let's face it, there have been managers at bigger clubs who have decided against taking him on. Despite these moments of brilliance, he's not really clicking with his team-mates. I'm sure he's had years of top quality coaching, but you wonder how much he's really taken on board. Maybe with that talent, he doesn't feel he needs to, and in a sense he's right, because his ability alone will provide him with a decent set of opportunities throughout his career. But he has to be prepared to develop his game and mature, because otherwise he'll keep sliding backwards to the same position.

The lad is nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is. I looked at his Twitter site and it says at the top of the page - 'It might be a surprise but its true. That I'm not like you and I don't want your advice or your praise or to move in the way you do. And I never will'. And yet he seems to spend all his time judging other people and telling them what they should do. Take your head out of your arse Joey, take a step back and try and see yourself as others see you.

He should have been dropped from the squad over the Wayne Bridge affair. Apart from being the correct course of action, it would have made it far easier to drop him again now.

I'm sure he's a player that Wenger has been aware of for many years, and who he could have chosen to sign at the drop of a hat. It could have been the disciplinary angle, but I suspect also that Wenger wants players with a strong team ethic, who can combine well with one another and be receptive to learning new ideas and developing skills. Ben Arfa is still too prone to playing like he's on the school playground.