Mick

Mental from Coloccini, he was done all day then rounded it off with a stupidly pointless red card.

what a goal

The movement around the Coloccini run was poor.

Passes, we do passes.

As I thought, we're getting done in midfield.

So we've got an ex mackem in the studio and an ex scouse, great.

I doubt his legs will have gone at his age anyway, it's not like he's had any bad injuries while here.

A few have tried to replace Simpson on the right and none of them have managed so far, Anita should be able to do it.

We've got as good a starting line up as we could put out, the game will depend on how many Liverpool stick in the middle against what will probably be our two. If we're going 4-4-2 we'll need to make use of our wide players to spread the game and we're unlikely to do that based on past performances.

We're on ITV4+1 now.

We need to win this one and should have enough to do that.

The ultimate troll. Well in Raylor! The mackems' remarks at Colo and Jonas - "GET A f***ing HAIRCUT!" That welcome was tame when compared to the one they get when they come to our ground. The noise at our place is deafening.

What is his job and what are his responsibilities? He has nothing to do with transfers, he has no impact on player performance. Do his responsibilities go any further than picking the team and speaking to the press?

The reason for that is debatable, I should have probably been more clear.

I'm not going to go on about history, especially when it's Shearer and England as England doesn't concern me and I have no idea if people were writing him off before Euro 96. As for stability, I didn't say good managers always create stability, I can't think of a poor one that ever has. Wenger certainly has and I've never doubted his ability as a manager. He’s clearly a top manager and I will back Pardew against anybody if he manages to emulate Wenger. Not that I think he will emulate him or even get close to doing so but that’s not my personal benchmark for him either. My personal benchmark for Pardew is for him to have us playing to the best of our ability. I expect him to get performances out of the team that are at least equal the sum of its parts and I don’t currently think he’s achieving that. I’m not saying that he can’t in future but to do so he’s going to have to change the way he sets us up as it’s not suiting our players. I don’t believe Cisse, Tiote or Cabaye are poor players, performances from those three for much of this season suggest that they aren’t up to playing well and that is far from the truth. As a team we are not performing at the level we’re capable of and I can’t pin that on individual players. If one or two players were below par then I’d put it down to those players, when it’s the team as a whole you have to look beyond the players for the reason.

Ba hasn't gone backwards , the other 2 are debatable.

True and that's why I didn't bring history up until somebody else did.

Last season after 9 games we were 4th and 6 points better off so we are similar in that we played poorly early on but we did get better results.

History suggests that finishing 5th isn't going to happen again as his best finish before last season was 9th so I don't think looking at history does him any favours. What Shearer did as a player has absolutely no bearing on what Pardew will do as a manager in the future and I was never bothered about Shearer playing for England. Also, it was mentioned that we have changed managers far too many times in the past and that’s right. The flip side of that is that we’ve appointed too many poor choices in the past and that’s why they’ve gone. Stability doesn’t create a good manager, a good manager creates stability. I’m not writing Pardew off as it would be mad to do so, I do have reservations about him and it’s up to him to change that and he’ll only doing it by performing at an acceptable level.

I don't think anybody has said that he's doing a bad job as it's too early to go that far, that doesn't mean he can't be seen as having to do better. If we maintain our current points haul over the season, we'll finish 7th based on last season.

Finishing 5th last season has gone, he can only live off that for so long and I don't watch us playing shit football and think about last season. After a shit game I think about what I've just watched and what we've done poorly. If we play well I don't think about a game in which we've been shit, I think about what we've done well and this season it's been more of the former. As for his thought pattern in to why he sometimes spouts shit, I'm not that bothered but will comment about it. I'm more bothered about why he comes out with it. We've got a game on Sunday and his feelings about Ashley will have no bearing on either the way we play or the result we get. Going back to last season, it was great to finish 5th but that has gone. Keeping him here based on that season alone is pointless and he should only remain here for as long as he can meet the goals which others set for him and if he fails to meet my goals for him then I'll say so. I don’t keep my job because I performed well last year, I keep it because of what I do now and it’s got to be the same for anybody in any job.

Does the bit in bold only apply to our players?

Better managers than Pardew have been given shit when teams aren't performing. Football is a results based game and he's going to be judged on the results and performances of the team and we could be doing better. We did exceed expectations last season and that has rightly raised our expectations for this season, although not as much as they seem to have raised his. I thought we might fight it out with Spurs and Arsenal for 4th but still fall short. That was before our poor transfer window which finished with us failing once again to upgrade weaknesses in our squad. After seeing our first few games I think we’ll do well to finish in 6th or 7th. He's either full of shit for saying, or deluded if he thinks, we're going to challenge the top 4 the way we're playing at the minute and have played for most of this season.

Pardew in talking shit shocker.

I'd take him back,, Enrique on the left and Santon on the right would be a good upgrade when you add the understanding he had with Jonas and Coloccini.