stozo

Can see this being really high scoring regardless of who wins. If both teams don't score I'll be stunned!

subs Elliot, Ferguson, Santon, Gosling, R.Taylor, Vuckic, Ameobi.

(4-3-3): Krul; Simpson, Williamson, Perch, Gutierrez ©; Guthrie, Tiote, Cabaye; Ben Arfa, Cisse, Ba

Article in Journal today saying he doesn't want to move his family, wants to become a coach and would like to be a player/coach next season.

No Bellamy! We got this. No Agger more importantly.

I really don't think any of us are in a position to say what Donachie is like as a coach. I certainly have no idea (and I suspect you don't either) whether he is a bad, average, good or excellent coach. My point is simply that the fact our reserve team is getting beaten regularly is probably more down to us blooding kids who aren't at reserve level yet than whether Willie Donachie is a good manager or not.

1. I don't really understand how you can say they are the same mix of players when they are a totally different set of players. 2. Looking at all the Beardsley results the highest number of players he played who also played yesterday was three. 3. Donachie's record after 6 games was Won 3, Drawn 1, Lost 2. Not exactly an immediate descent into horrible form. Yes, it is quite annoying to see the reserve team getting beat by large margins but the end goal is to produce first-team players not neccessarily to win reserve team matches. If giving 16/17-year olds reserve team experience this term is going to help them develop as players than I'm all for it. It's also important to remember that probably our three brightest players in that age group (Campbell, Streete and Knight) were all missing yesterday.

yes think its a mixture of the youngsters and then the older ones are the ones being released, although you'd think they'd be busting a gut trying to impress any watching scouts that are present. It was exactly the same mix of players when Beardo was manager, the results were brilliant under him, ever since Donachie took over the results have been terrible, someone on here who i cant recall said that when they have been watching the reserves and Donachie has them playing long ball, and it doesn't suit the players at all. That's simply not true. Of our wins against Norwich (6-0), Swansea (5-3) and Liverpool (3-2) at the start of the season the only player who played in any them and yesterday was Michael Richardson. We're losing these games because were playing very young players at reserve team level. Hopefully this time next year when these players are a bit more physically developed we'll be performing better.

Danny Guthrie.

Looking on their forum it looks like Adam is out, Agger is highly doubtful and Johnson, Kelly and Bellamy are all doubtful. Would really fancy Ba, Cisse and Ben Arfa against a back four of Enrique, Skrtel, Carragher and Flangan.

Looking at the post I was a bit too critical on Krul himself. It is very much about the type of passing you play. However, the Stoke keepers who play a lot of long balls still manage to kick at over 52%. The problem we've got (which the second bit of my post eluded to) is that Williamson and Simpson are actually very poor passers of the ball. Williamson on Monday was an anamoly (87% pass sucess). His season average is 76.1% and Simpson's is 76.3%. This stops us from playing a short passing game as teams are simply going to press harder on Simpson and Williamson to push for the mistake

He's not a popular target of criticism on here but I honestly think some of our tactical problems start at the very back with Tim Krul. His kicking is very poor and that stats are there to back it up: Goalkeepers - Pass Success (%) Vorm – 68.5 Cech - 66.1 Szczesny – 65.6 Reina – 63.6 Friedel - 61.6 De Gea – 56.6 Hart – 52.2 Foster - 53.2 Howard – 50.1 Krul - 42 Krul averages 24 passes a game so in your average match Krul is going to give the ball away 14 times. It's not exactly tocket science that if you have a goalkeeper who consistently gives the ball away then were going to struggle to play passing fooball. This obviously isn't helped by the fact Danny Simspon and Mike Williamson have the two lowest pass completion rates of our back 8 (midfield + defence) which probably makes it difficult to ask Krul to play a short passing game. In contrast Colo and Santon are our two most successful passers so if we were to sign two players to play CB and RB who could pass a ball then we'd potentially significantly improve our side by giving us the option to play out from the back.

Lovely ball player but really needs to work on his defending. Got tore apart by Walcott at times in the first half and should have done much better on the cross for the first goal.

Tactically got it right tonight I thought. It was the players performances to blame. 4-4-1-1 worked fairly well first half. Not so well first 15 mins of second so had the guts to go 4-4-2. Not his fault that the players couldn't keep the ball for any sustained period.

Throw in was woeful but if he'd got up a bust a gut he'd have probably been in roughly the area Vermaelen was in.

Presumably he thought we weren't in the game at 1-1. To be fair to Pardew he went 4-4-2 when we had our backs against the wall after 60 mins. Not sure what else he can do in that position. Like I've said before he can't force Cabaye to put his foot on the ball and pass it.

Absolutely criminal though when we've had our backs up against it for 45 mins. What is the RB doing in that position in injury time?

Would there really be that much bother at a place like the Emirates, even if you did do the occasional moan? Obviously it isn't America but surely it can't be that bad? You wouldn't get your ass kicked or anything, right? Just a bunch of banter? The way I see it is that it's better to be safe than sorry. The Emirates might be a bit laid back but I personally wouldn't risk doing anything against what's considered the norm there. Agreed. The danger I'd say is someone would get pissed off and report you to a steward who would then eject you from the ground for being in the home end rather than the away end.

Hadn't realised until I read the article on the Chronicle website that they'll be no home friendlies next year because of Olympics at SJP.

Paul Dummett has gone on loan for a month to Gateshead. Goes straight into the squad for tomorrow night's game.

They could do a lot worse than bringing their old reserve team manager, Brendan Rodgers, back.

I've given Ben Arfa a fair bit of stick so I think it's only fair to say I thought he had his best 45 minutes for us yesterday. If he can consistently perform like that then he deserves to be in the team.

I think they've made the wrong decision to sack him. He's not had a great season but I'd have given him until this time next year with a remit of completely overhauling the squad. As a lot of people have said Drogba, Essien, Lampard, Cole, Terry and Cech are shadows of the players they were four or so years ago. The only way they're going to go forward is if they clear out that lot as well as the deadwood (Torres, Kalou, Malouda). Regardless of the above it would be great for the Premier League if Mourinho came back in the summer.

Toby Alderweireld linked in the Sunday Sun.

Good analysis on FourFourTwo StatsZone about Tiote.