Shak

Less he plays in preseason the better tbh, last season's injury was depressing.

Be class if Ba was on the left.

Both on their way then.

On the wing though?

Bad misses by both sides.

Nice finish that.

The notion that Ranger is capable of intelligent thoughts.

Brazil game is a good watch, they may actually blow this. You reckon Ganso is done then Flip?

http://i.imgur.com/Fhq43.gif

Thought craic was just used by us Paddies?

De Mightily Sexy Buchy?

De Mighty Buchy.

But can he sail through these changing ocean tides? Can he handle this next shitty season of his life?

O'Shea oozing class. Guy doesn't look any better than his teammates playing for Ireland FFS, tragic if they genuinely think of him alone of their best players.

He's donating it all to charity apparently.

It wasn't aimed at you. Mick, you spent most of last year complaining about how poor our football was. It was only when we switched to 4-3-3 and brought in Ben Arfa that it improved. I'd be happy for Ba to keep playing that spot out left but he's seemingly made it clear he doesn't want to do so. Only option I can see for Pardew in that case is to revert to a 4-4-2, does that not concern you at all?

Contract is probably loaded with vincentives that can see him earn much more if City win trophies.

No, as I said I think he's a good player but if he's going to refuse to play in the position that he occupied when the team played by far it's best football last year then that's a problem. Nice snide dig all the same.

If we're classing players like Hoillett as advanced wide men I wouldn't say even that would suffice, it would leave us with Shola as third choice striker which, as much as I love the bloke, simply isn't on if we're wanting to consolidate our position or even try to push on. not too bad as a 3rd choice if you're only planning on one through the middle striker. Aye, I'd be hoping we'd sign someone like a Remy who plays wide when Cisse is in the team but can be the main striker too so we're not relying on Shola to be primary backup to Cisse.

i'd settle for one, a midfielder, centre half and debuchy. I would too simply because I'm not massively confident we'll get those other players, which I agree we need. I'd be a little wary of going into the year with Marv, Shola, Jonas and Obertan as our primary backups in the front three though.

If Ba leaves we need two strikers/advanced wide men.

He's clearly a good player, but that's not really the issue for me. It's similar to the Carroll bid. I think Carroll in the right situation will become a good player again, but I don't think he'll necessarily fit in well here so I'd rather we look elsewhere. If Ba was happy to play either out wide or up front then absolutely I'd be desperate to keep him, no doubt. Pardew's made it clear enough that this isn't the case though, which more or less means that we'll be forced to go 4-4-2 if Ba's to play. That's the bit that concerns me.

I don't think anyone (nobody worthwhile anyway) is suggesting just getting rid of the guy and expecting Sammy or Marveaux to replace him. The big concern I have over the Carroll/De Jong interest combined with Pardew's comments that Ba wants to play centrally is that to me it implies we're looking for another central striker and thus going back towards a 4-4-2. I don't want that. We looked so much better in a 4-3-3 and to me we should be looking to build on that rather than toss it aside and go back to a 4-4-2, a system I don't like in general anyway. Ba's been great here, last year we were pretty much entirely reliant on him for large parts of the season. But the team is the most important thing, and while I think tmonkey was a bit OTT in his comments the point that we may have to move on to keep improving is a valid one. Barton, Nolan and Carroll were massive for us our first year back, but we've improved since they moved on. Just because Ba has been good for us so far it doesn't mean that people should be ridiculed for thinking we might be able to improve on him.

How many teams actually do that in reality though? It's not easy to just rotate your players around different spots, managers tend to try and find a position that works for a player and leave him there. And rightly so.