tmonkey

Jonas ffs.

Absolute world class.

N'Zogbia

Brilliant by Sissoko. Class by Cisse.

Haha

Kid is milking it to be fair.

Do you like seeing his rubbery, boiled egg of a head plodding around in the number 10 position passing sideways all the time and prancing around as though he's the most skillful player in the world?

Sneijder - up there with Nasri as one of the most overrated players around. Bit of a shame Liverpool didn't get him as he'd have been another Joe Cole for them.

Ashley Cole is such a cheating cunt. Turning round to the ref claiming it wasn't a foul

Arshavin

Wilshere has looked out of his depth at times today.

Lots of Chelsea fans wishing Torres would have snapped in half there.

One more Arsenal goal and we'll be hearing "Fat Spanish Waiter" in some form for sure.

Class finish by Walcott. Reminiscent of a young Michael Owen.

Why has no pundit ever highlighted Danny Simpson's shitty defending like they're doing now with Sagna? Or Shola's terrible play?

So much space in the middle of the park.

This is going to be a thrashing

Tors pls.

Great little run by Hazard.

Unprecendented? Ben Arfa, Cabaye and Steven Taylor have been injured since mid/late November. That's about it. The fact of the matter is that even when they were all fit, and we had Ba scoring for fun, we were still performing to the same standard that we are now. The same cowardly, negative, anti-football mentality stemming from Pardew was permeating the team a few months ago with Cabaye, Ba and Ben Arfa in it and causing us to play less than the sum of our parts - just like it is at the moment. Cabaye's form was at an all time low for us since he arrived here, Ben Arfa's form had begun to dip quite badly going into November, and Steven Taylor started the season playing like the Steven Taylor of old, i.e. back off like a muppet all the time and effectively hiding all game. The players' confidence had started to dip long before these "unprecedented" injuries started to affect us. Pardew has tried to spin excuses about Europe tiring everyone out and needing more players to be signed, and unfortunately some folk appear to have bought it. But that's just him doing what he does best, something that has enabled him to actually have a decent career as a Premiership manager, i.e. bullshitting so as to deflect attention away from the fact that he can't get a group of relatively talented footballers to play well. He did it at West Ham when he claims he was unfairly sacked after the board forced Tevez and Mascherano on him, and he'll say the same thing if he gets sacked this week, i.e. that the Newcastle board worked against him, didn't bring in who he wanted, etc etc. It needs to be noted that practically every other team in the league, no matter who the personnel or the names (Norwich still have half their Championship sqiad ffs), nearly every one of them either plays better football or functions much better as a team than us. Signing more players (even if needed) or getting Ben Arfa, Cabaye, etc, back fit won't do anything other than paper over the cracks under this conman of a manager.

Just below Rui Costa for me.

This is what NUFC does to people.

Get him in. Sexy Football time!

Few things to consider though (and I'm not saying they're all correct): 1) IIRC Guardiola won everything in his first season. I don't believe this was a "Guardiola" team yet, and I did find it odd how he was being described as a great manager in his very first season managing by far the most talented team on the planet, most of whom were well developed players long before he took over. On top of this, some of the best signings under Pep took place straight after he joined, i.e. Alves and Pique. Was this down to him, or Rijkaard, or the board? Who identified those targets whilst he was managing the B side? An educated guess would be that the board/Directors/general management signed those players after the scouts had identified them as key targets, even more so when going by that behind-the-scenes Barca documentary back when Ronaldinho was at his peak and La Porta & Co were signing players with minimal input from Rijkaard. 2) When Riijkaard went, the team was at a stage where several players needed to be replaced - Ronaldinho, Eto'o and Deco namely. Like all great teams, there comes a transition period where the team is shuffled and changed slightly, the old making way for the new, etc etc, and I think those changes would have been made with or without Riijkaard - it's just that Pep was there straight after that transition was made. To think of it another way, Alex Ferguson's teams have undergone numerous transitions now, with things going stale after a while with players needing to be phased out, but they always eventually get back to the top under him. Had Ferguson been sacked at any of those "low" point and someone else appointed who then enjoys the revival, it doesn't mean Fergie wouldn't have gotten the team back to the top again. 3) Guardiola lasted 4 seasons I think, and by the end of it he was starting to look a bit potty, especially in those big games where the team was just screaming out for a striker in the box. Didn't they lose out on the major competitions in his final season? 4) Messi hit his peak goalscoring form under Guardiola - how much of this is down to Pep is anyone's guess. Had Riijkaard, or anyone else in fact, been manager, I'm sure the end results wouldn't be much different. FWIW I'd level similar arguements at Rijkaard, though I think he did more to actually build this team than Pep did.

Am I the only one who thinks that Pep Guardiola is like that moustched bloke in the movie Contact, the one who sidelined Jodie Foster (Frank Riijkaard) and took all the glory after someone else did all the groundwork and laid the foundations?