Mick

You don't know that, they could just have easily become less effective.

I'm not sure our game is fluid.

Aye, Robert had the fantastic Babayaro when he was fit.

I'm aware that it's quicker to make 2 or 3 passes than it is to move 2 or 3 players. You don't have to move across to break up a move you can go diagonally. What makes you think that teams are going to leave 2 players wide on the far side and give us an advantage on the other side?

Spurs and Man U aren't as static as we are, our movement is crap and one dimensional.

The best wingers I've seen at this club have been the ones who didn't defend.

It takes less time to move a player from the middle of the pitch over to the left than is takes to move a player from the edge of our box to the edge of the opposition box.

We're not doing that though and I think Ben Arfa starting from further up field than the edge of our box gives us more of a chance to open up space, even if it's for other players.

He picked the ball up on Monday just inside the Arsenal half and carried it forward to score, I missed that one. The one I saw him score was where he picked it up just outside the Arsenal box.

Tiote meanwhile is where? Why does Jonas have to move so far that he can't get back to his side?

Agreed, we have one player who has proven that he can pick the ball up just inside the opposition half and scoore a goal, why not make the most of that?

The right winger doesn't have to track back, otherc can cover, why should we be set up in such a rigid way?

I didn't say that I'd be happy to see 3 players cover 50-60 yards, we don't get attacked right across the pitch and if the ball is played across it then players have time to move over, it's basic really. Why have we got to be the team that tries to cover the opposition? Are we not allowed to get other teams to try and cover what we're doing?

10 outfield players -2 = 8, we have plenty of others. If we have a player coming down our right then get Cabaye, Tiote and Jonas to move over.

It was always going to go wrong and it did, why wait for it to go wrong before doing something about it? Do you only have work done on your car when it stops working?

We have other players who can cover at the back, we don't need the one player who can do something special working his way up field from the edge of our 18 yard box. We need him starting off from the half way line and we might find that if he's hanging around the half way line then the opposition are not going to commit as many players forward. We don’t need 11 defenders.

They might not be able to double up on anybody if we try to pose a threat to the opposition and just try to force them back at times. When Ben Arfa has the ball he's usually got 3 players around him which should create space for others going forward rather than us setting ourselves up to defend. Defence is important, it's not the be all and end all that Pardew tries to make out.

Give over, Mick. He's an athlete; light as a feather with two strong legs. He's quite capable of tracking back occasionally without sacrificing his attacking impact. We don't need 11 defenders, when he's tracking back he's at the wrong end of the pitch to do damage. I'd rather have him as an outlet for when we do try to go forward, as rare as that sometimes is.

Ben Arfa is probably the last player I want to see doing a job in defence, I want him up the other end doing damage to the opposition.

Ashley did actually increase his loan by £200k for some reason.

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He looked physically fit, not match fit and he's starting to look more match fit the more he plays. As for his head, I do remember watching him warming up and looking quite pissed off when Sammy came on before him. None of us know what was going on inside his head but he did look hungry to play. By training alone, I meant training on its own rather than him training on his own.

He looked fit earlier when playing but was let down by his ball control when on the move and that comes with playing games and it was about him regaining sharpness as much as anything. You can train all you want but you can't become 100% ready by training alone. As for Sunday, I'll be away as I had booked a holiday before the game was moved and I thought that I would be safe going on Saturday Evening, I'll have to settle on watching it in a pub.

He needed games, you'll understand that if you've been on the sick for a while and have had loads of time on your hands to vegetate. The longest sick note I’ve had was for 3 weeks and I went back to work in half that time because I was crawling up the walls with boredom. How do we all know that he means football in general? Even if he did mean football in general, the football we have been playing was/is hardly likely to reignite his feelings for the game in a positive manner.