Mick

“When I came back after my injury, I no longer had the desire to play,” he continued. “I found that the football they played was too far away from the one I loved." I know how he feels.

I don't give Pardew any praise for the way Ben Arfa is playing. He's now playing the way he could have played after this many games if played sooner. Instead we've missed seeing a potentially brilliant player for more games than was needed.

I think you can... His agent has even said as much in that recent article... People on here forget he was nowhere near fit enough to start the season and we went on such a great run that you don't fix what wasn't broken... Slowly and sensibly HBA has been intergrated into the first team and wouldn't be surprised to see him start the remaining fixtures... What do you or anybody else expect Stainrod to say?

They aren't getting a chance to show if they are as good or not.

Aye, a bit like that £50 bet that went straight over yours.

Has anybody claimed that Swansea will qualify for anything?

You qualify for nothing after 28 games, we were 3rd at the beginning of November and qualified for nothing then either.

Everybody knows where we are in the league, the idiots are the ones who think everything is going well and couldn't see our poor performances coming. They even still try to find excuses for the inexcusable.

Some of the excuses in here are simply breath taking.

Last season we let in 1.5 goals per game, this season we've let in 1.464 goals per game. Not bad considering we work on defence 80% of the time.

He's a tidy player and I look forward to his return and hopefully an injury free future.

We didn't play anything like the way we had during the first half, in the 2nd half, we were actually trying to play football in the first, we didn't in the 2nd as we just hoofed it. By hoofing it, I mean aimless kicking away from our goal in an attempt to get the ball away from our box, hoofing it isn't always long ball but it can be.

We weren't battered in the first half and changed our game the minute they kicked the 2nd half off.

He'd been injured for months and has 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 weeks training, that's nowhere near enough for a premiership footballer and it's showing the more he plays because he's been much much better than he currently is. The only difference is his lack of training before he was thrown into the team and he's playing with players who are mainly the same as or better than he's played with before.

Players do have their own brains but if they are told to do something as a collective then it's going to be a struggle for any individual to change that. Are you suggesting that the manager said something and the players came out and changed how he wanted us to play between leaving the dressing room and kick off?

Pardews tactics weren't spot on, first half I can have no complaints but we changed it 2nd half and suffered because of it. Did the players decide that they were changing it 2nd half or did Pardew say something at half time? Not everybody was caught up in anything earlier in the season other than the ones who thought that we were better than we actually are. Even then, I think some people wanted us to be better than we are rather than thought it and I don't blame anybody for that because we all want to be better than we are, or at least we should.

List his strenghts.

It's also fair to point out that he came back after a long lay off and had only been back in training a few weeks before he had to be thrown into the team. My guess is that he didn't come back into the team with a full fitness level and is now running on his reserve tank.

Sewelly has hardly had a go at Pardew, how it he "you lot"?

Agreed. He was excellent against Villa, a 9/10 showing. Man Utd at home he played well in a good team performance, 8/10. Other than that, for me it's mainly 6/10. I just never watch us and think "wow Cabaye's having a stormer." I'm not picking on the lad, but I've always been loath to protect players by saying "but he's not been used correctly" or "the players around him aren't good enough". Once a player is on the pitch, if he's a good player it will shine through regardless and I'm tired of the easy to reach excuses to defend his anonymous displays. It's reminding me of Emre, loads used to say he had it, but he only ever showed it once in a blue moon. That's far too simplistic, managers can make a massive difference to players and can make good players look bad or bad players look good. Keegan has already been mentioned, he took over a team Allardyce was struggling with and he transformed them after a run of games where he got to know them and got them playing differently. Look at what Bobby did against Sheff Wed with players who had looked devoid of any clue as to how to play football. Managers have a massive role to play in how a team performs even though the players have a major say in it, I think ours is having a negative effect on our players which had been predicted by quite a few.

Do you also find it laughable how you take the opposite stance and add a little?

That's a myth.