Mick

Thanks.

If he's not fit to take any part in games then don't put him on the bench. I would understand if the cold is getting to a joint injury but that's not what he had. I've had a few broken bones playing football and haven't felt them since they healed, the only thing I ever feel is an old knuckle injury.

Shit, Souness is on, let me know when the 2nd half kicks off.

Man City V Arsenal is a good open game.

You're right that we don't know something different would work, we do know that what we did do, didn't work. As for Ben Arfa's fitness, it was good enough to last 75 minutes against Man City and set up a really good chance for Ba and it was good enough for 80 minutes against Man U when he won the penalty that got us the point. On that basis I think it's reasonable to assume that he could have played at some point yesterday.

Has anybody praised Jonas for his performance yesterday?

The chances created by Obertan were created by Ba being able to turn crap deiliveries into something. Ba had no right to get some of his shots on goal but he did because he's good enough to do that, we might have got a goal if the delivery had been better. The pass behind Ba and Best was a joke. He's got 1 assist in 14 games for a reason, he's not very good, no matter how it's dressed up.

It does on those two occasions.

Simpson put at least 2 quality balls into the box, the problem was that Swansea flooded the box.

If he carries on picking Obertan who is not producing then he's only got himself to blame if he's getting stick. I haven't written Obertan off, I just think he's got a lot to do before he's worthy of his place. My only hope for now is that Ryan Taylor doesn't walk back into the team as soon as he's fit.

If we finish 7th at the end of the season I'm sure Pardew will be applauded for that, being 7th now gets you as much as being 3rd a few weeks ago, nothing. Pardew doesn't have to play Perch, Lovenkrands or Smith but he does that by choice, nobody forces him into playing them as far as I'm aware. Obertan finally playing consistent first team football is part of the problem, he's doing nothing to justify his place in the team. Has anybody called for Pardew to be sacked? They possibly have but I can't remember seeing anybody calling for his head.

At least 2 of his shots were obscene and he had no right to control the ball so well and manage shots out of nothing.

You might get a signed shirt for hitting the woodwork at half time but you get nowt for that during the game. We did have a better first half but we still didn't score and I would have liked to have seen changes for the start of the second half.

We didn't put the ball in the net and we only seemed to have one idea of how to score and that was get the ball over the top when they had 5 or 6 players in the box defending. We were far too predictable for far too long and that was plain to see by half time when we should have made at least one change, possibly two.

Under Pardew we've played well at times but not consistently and today we were left badly wanting and resorted to hoofing the ball into the middle. Stoke away was a good game but it was no better than beating Arsenal away last season. Have we played better under Pardew than we did when we beat Villa and the Mackems last season? If our game plan hadn’t worked against stoke would we have been able to change our game? My guess is that we probably wouldn’t have. Today we kept playing the same balls into the box and it didn’t work yet we didn’t try to change how we were playing. Obertan had the type of game that is becoming his standard, he was completely ineffective yet it took something like 82 minutes to change it. Best went off and we didn’t try to change the way we were playing, we went like for like and carried on with what hadn’t been working up until that point. Why would bringing Shola on have given us anything different to what Best was giving us? Maybe bringing Ben Arfa or Vuckic on for Best would have changed things as neither of them are anything like Shola and Best. Taking Obertan off at half time would have given us something different on the right rather than trying to hoy the ball into the middle in the hope that we’d get a header on target and away from the keeper. Against Norwich we played 4 full backs when we did have a central defender who didn’t get a game. I can’t say for certain that we would have won with him, I can say it would have been easier playing somebody who was natural and comfortable in that position. If Luiz had been sent off against Chelsea we’d have had a better chance of getting something, 11 v 11 and we weren’t in the game as far as getting anything out of it is concerned. We didn’t deserve to win today, I don’t think we did enough and we didn’t work hard enough other than repeating what had already failed to break them down. We had plenty of possession yet we failed to do anything with it.

I wasn't having a go at you, I was explaining why I didn't agree with what you'd posted.

I forgot about Ba, you're right he should get that one if it's true that he was the one who wanted him.

He didn't mention "currently" or I would have agreed.

I really wouldn't try to ever compare Pardew to Wenger, and I have never mentioned his ability to buy young, unproven talent. I think Wenger is a very good manager who gets his team to play a good brand of football and usually gets the best out of his players. Secondly, I don't think he got any of his substitutions right today never mind all of them. We have had two dodgy results but we've been lucky on quite a few occasions where we've had results which were better than our display deserved. Today was a poor result against a team we should have beaten and we didn't do enough to get the points. Our game plan wasn't working and we stuck with it until the end of the game, I’m not going to congratulate Pardew for screwing up, you can if you want to. As for who is deluded, we’ll know by the end of the season, won’t we?

I love it when people try to use agenda to put people down. As for us having our best season in 6 years, we'll have to wait until May before we know if that's true or not.

I thought that Obertan was poor and Cabaye played well. Some of the tackling from Cabaye isn't what I'd expected from him, he could end up being the perfect midfielder once he's had a full season behind him.

On current form, Best is shit.

The song sheet from today, obviously the song was on the other side. The song sheet was on good quality card rather than A4 paper. http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/7148/001lzx.jpg

Don't, just don't.

We wouldn't have lost the game in years gone by, I don't think Swansea had a shot all game.