One went to dugout and threw his ticket at Pardew, another booted the ball away and generally was a total fucktard. Could well have been a third oo
A third knob ran on at full time (from the Leazes) but got restrained without further incident. Unlike the second guy who took on the stewards for what felt like 5 minutes.
Just a totally shit performance, we were hoofing it early doors and it was pathetic. Brown & O'Shea are limited defenders but it's bread and butter for them, they won't be worried by big hoofs to Shola. Williamson was back to the Williamson of old, shitting himself when in possession and Taylor only marginally better. Both were given a lesson by Altidore, who was an immovable object pretty much all day.
The penalty was in slow motion, Johnson had the ball and we doubled up. Everybody could see what was about to happen as Bardsley overlapped but nobody reacted to it. Anita eventually got across but decked the cunt and it was a stonewall pen. The second was just atrocious, ball into Altidore, little flick to the runner and Taylor backed off Colback. Krul was stranded by the deflection but how Johnson was able to follow it up unattended was pretty pathetic. Then there was the Santon/Krul flare up which summed it up.
Going forwards Sammy was the only one doing anything, actually running at them and comitting bodies, something which Ben Arfa should have been able to do more but as usual when he plays the 10 role he gets lost. Sammy was coming infield a lot which left loads of space for Santon but his final ball, much like his set pieces, left a lot to be desired. We huffed and puffed a bit but never really looked like scoring, unsurprisingly.
Worryingly they looked like scoring everytime they came forward, the amount of times they chased lost causes in the corners and got possession or worse skinned a man was embarassing. You can see Poyet's system - the fullbacks push on and the amount of times a cross from the right is retrieved on the left to keep the pressure going was ridiculous. Bridcutt is tidy in possession, Ki can pick a pass and Colback does all the running. By contrast, we ran about committing stupid fouls (I assume this is what Pardew means by 'being too up for it', as it certainly wasn't with our attacking play) with no real plan for scoring or even attacking the opposition.
Second half was better - but then it couldn't be any worse - they had 9 back most of the time and we didn't ever really pen them back. We had a little spell where Shola had a header off the line and headed one over, and I think we had a good pen shout but I'd need to see it back. The ball went wide to Debuchy and their player collided with ours to give Debuchy a free run. As he ran into the box somebody wiped out De Jong and then somebody tripped Shola as he tried to get to the loose ball. Dowd was generally shite though, so I'm not surprised. We wouldn't have deserved anything anyway.
We wasted a number of opportunities to even get a shot away today, Sissoko and De Jong were both practically one on one but neglected to even shoot, which is a worry. De Jong had a couple of openings where his shot was piss poor or non-existant, but we'll give him a chance. Shola was Shola, it wasn't him who set the team up to play long ball but he missed a few chances. So long.
The crowd turned today, as we expected. I didn't hear a peep from the mackems due to the utter disgust from our lot today, and rightly so. Not that it will make any difference.
