tmonkey

Summary of Milner's technical ability right there.

Horrendous window, and we've missed a great opportunity to significantly strengthen in one or two key positions (especially left wing) with some very obvious options completely ignored (Scott Sinclair would have been great). I think the only good thing that may come out of this summer, if anything at all, is the dismissal of Pardew. Though what happens after that would be anyone's guess.

Bit of an overreaction in here tbh. It's pretty obvious to anyone with a brain that the crisis in Syria was holding our transfer business up - had that been resolved before the window shut it would have started a chain reaction of transfers that would have seen us snap our transfer targets up for peanuts.

Pathetic lack of fake bids from us. This really is not on.

IMO, differences in style and physique permitted, the majority of Bale's performances last season were pretty much similar to Hatem's yesterday against Fulham, i.e. 89 minutes of trying things with mixed success, including his fair share of wild shots (when teammates in good positions were available) and wayward passing, but still consistently having that one or two minutes where the ball would end up in the back of the net and make all the difference. And because Spurs were built around him, and encouraged him to continue playing up to his reputation by constantly trying those 25-30 yard shots, it wasn't a big deal that he wasn't actually that great a player for e.g. 80-89 minutes of a match. He was delivering them match winning goals, and that's all that mattered. So if Hatem has 25 out of 38 games like yesterday, would anyone care about those moments of greed or sloppiness? I doubt it. The headlines and match winning goals would be extrapolated back to performances, at it commonly is, and as it was for Bale last season. So from that point of view and in respect to critiquing his game, it'd make just as much sense to criticize Ben Arfa for not getting enough shots on target (and therefore hitting the back of the net more frequently) rather than wanting him to play a safer, more sensible game more often.

Doing the opposite hasn't worked, i.e. signing Raylor.

This guy

Could have broken Gotze's leg that. Nasty tackle, lucky to only be a 2nd yellow.

Took a good few months to get some confidence back into players who could barely pass the ball by the time Allardyce had left, get them passing and moving, and finding a system that worked well with what was available (and sticking with it).

The new Tomas Brolin.

West Ham should be a few goals up by now.

Whilst what you're saying is fair enough, it's only one side of the coin. The other side is that Jonas, knowing full well he should be dropped (and only one man can't see it), is so desperate to remain in the team that he'll gamble with his own fitness so as to extend his spot in the first team here. In other words he's only looking after himself because he knows his position is precarious, and he's doing everything he can so as to ensure noone else gets a chance in "his" position (or a better, more effective starting eleven forms without him being part of it).

IIRC Ashley paid off the clubs debt and that is what the club owes him. Isn't that specific element only around £100m though? IIRC from the reports we've had, the club supposedly owes him £260m or close to that? So the excess would be what he paid for the club?

Being a bit dim here no doubt, but I don't get business sometimes. Let's say Ashley bought NUFC for £150m. That £150m was paid to the shareholders at the time (Hall/Shepherd/other shareholders). Am I reading things right in that Ashley has attached that £150m to the club as a debt owed to him? If so, how does that even work? I'd understand if he'd just straight up purchased debentures or preference shares from NUFC, and therefore the club owed him money (for receiving his £150m), but how does NUFC owe Ashley the cost of him buying NUFC's shares? It's not like the money went into the club. Or is it a weird technicality where instead of shares+goodwill worth £150m, he has shares worth £1 and £150m in a loan? If it's this, why do it like this - to avoid amortization of goodwill? Confusing as f***.

But haven't you previously agreed that Tiote was good for us in the first 1 or 1.5 seasons here prior to being "found out"? In which case you're now contracting yourself surely, since he wasn't scoring goals/doing anything on the ball back then and was only slightly less of a liability with his tackling (more of a liability with his wayward passing) than he is now?

Wouldn't it be better to just have him watch videos of himself from his first full season here?

Earns £60k per week, sends letters with a 2nd class stamp.

Gouffran for me was a Kevin Gallacher type of signing. A neat, tidy, relatively pacey, low budget forward who'll get the odd goal and give the team a decent footballer to work with, but is far too lightweight to be in the first team if we want to actually get anywhere. A decent stopgap signing when the squad was thin, but we need to do better to move forward.

This is the same manager who'd rather stick Ben Arfa on a different wing because he's shit scared of an opposition fullback. "Hatem, we can't play you down the right today, they've got Baines out there and I'm worried you can't handle him defensively". The only question mark on Pardew's mind is how to stop the opposition - there's not a cat's chance in hell of him sitting down and thinking about what system gets the best out of the players we have, as he'll just use whichever system and lineup he thinks will best contain the opposition on a game to game basis.

Absolutely no acceptable reason I can think of as to why this has taken so long to happen. He should have been in Portugal with the rest of the squad at the very least. We're so f***ing amateur it's unreal. Not entirely clued up about what's going on at the club, but aren't we effectively rudderless right now in terms of not having a chairman or managing director? If so, not surprising at all that it's taking us ages to get basic things done. Especially if Llambias' duties have been taken over by Kinnear, who was supposedly on holiday for much of the past month.

Cabaye without a shadow of a doubt has superior passing/shooting technical ability than Lee/Speed had. His issues are consistency, fitness, and an inability to dribble or carry the ball effectively. But overall, if given let's say 8 seasons at St James' with at least 2/3 seasons in a quality attacking side surrounded by good movement (as Lee/Speed were), I think he'd be on a par with the both of them come retirement, albeit as a slightly different type of central midfielder.

I think the quiet games have mainly been the ones where he's been played as a winger in the Premiership. Games have just passed him by completely when he's been played there. As an attacking central midfielder though, the guy is a class act. Easily our best player over the Christmas period before getting injured/inexplicably dropped and then never making it back into the team (except for the odd occasion, usually out wide). His ability to drive forward with the ball in the middle of the park is his biggest attribute imo - he's very smart, has good bursts of pace, and is technically sound, all of which means he's great at exploiting space in the middle. All of these traits are wasted by playing him on the wing because it requires a different type of dribbling/directness than through the middle. As Cheik the Room says, Marveaux (down the middle) and Ben Arfa in the same team could be a great combination. They could interchange during games if they wanted to try something different/mix it up a bit/Hatem isn't having any joy on the wing, and Hatem's natural game on the right flank involves him opening opposition teams up by beating 1-2 players near the touchline/half-way line and passing it infield, so it'd be great to have a technical runner like Marveaux down the middle to compliment and build on the opportunities Hatem provides for the team as a whole. Unfortunately, I don't ever see Marveaux getting much of a chance whilst Pardew is here, as we'd have to: 1) Play 4-3-3, when Pardew clearly only has faith in 4-4-2 (2 strikers in the box is better than one when it comes to percentage hoofball); 2) Have Marveaux starting (Pardew clearly views him as a cameo player - Marveaux probably isn't good enough in the tackle); 3) Have Marveaux as the most attacking of the central midfield trio (Pardew would probably opt for Sissoko to play that role, or as he did last season, would rather play someone more defensive like Jonas or Perch ahead of Marveaux); and 4) Have the team playing some sort of passing game to make use of a player who's pretty slick with the ball at feet (it's pretty obvious by now that we only "switch" to a passing style of play when Pardew wants it, which is rarely, and the rest of the time we play a "get the ball into the box as quickly as possible" game). Ultimately, £5m for a crock we picked up on a free (iirc) would represent good business, especially if our useless plank of a manager is going to have us playing 4-4-2 percentage football. But selling this type of player would kill a little bit of me on the inside, as firstly there's always the hope that he gets over his injury problems, and secondly the goal should be to get more players of this type capable of getting the team to play good quality "penetrative" football on the deck (i.e. progress), rather than getting rid of our more talented and underused players to pander to a manager who's vision and tactics are no better than what you get at schoolboy levels up and down the country.

It's like that Simpsons election campaign advert from Sideshow Bob about Mayor Quimby: "Alan Pardew supports selling your best players". "Alan Pardew doesn't even want your club to quality for Europe." "Can you trust a man who has had an affair with his own player's wife?". "Vote JFK for Manager."