Unbelievable

Wat

Costa smacked the s*** out of him. Refs need to crack down on defenders grabbing hold of strikers though, that's why players end up in wrestling matches and then you get strikers lashing out. I actually admire Gabriel for stepping in after seeing Costa manhandle Koscielny with three seperste bookable offences. Costa should have been off there and then, with Gabriel booked ar the most. I still don't see how Gabriel stamped Cista either as the latter is simply waiting to be backed into.

There's at least three bookable offences there man. He slaps him on the face with his right arm, then his left hand and then he pushes him over. I'd have booked him for simulation too for the "stamp", so maybe even four.

Costa elbowed and hit Koscielny, Gabriel pushed Costa away as the latter squared up to Kos again. Both booked. Then a few second later as Gabriel walks backwards, Costa plants his foot underneath Gabriel's and claims he's been stamped. Most ridiculous decision ever.

Not sure Gabriel did anything wrong at all like. Ridiculous double booking

Are you having a fucking laugh. Costa is just waiting for Gabriel to step into him

Send this nutcase off please

If McClaren manages to take this squad down he's an even worse manager than I believe he is.

Looking past the messenger and the strange suggestion that our play in any way resembles tika-taka he does have a point that we clearly lack penetration so far. Our number of efforts on goal is worryingly low.

Even more important perhaps than the three points is that I would like to see that McClaren has the ability to see the mistakes he has made and rectifies them.

I believe Cheick will get his chance this season and take it. He's by far the best defensive midfielder we currently have and Pardew has killed him by making him some sort of deep playmaker which he most certainly doesn't have the attributes for. Pair him with Wijnaldum as the box-to-box midfielder in centre mid and tell him to sit/protect and only play simple passes. Have De Jong or Perez as the number 10 and our spine will look a lot more solid.

He's simply not a number 10. Don't know why it's taking McClaren so long to see this.

At our place yes, beyond that I think Pardew has the better reputation of the two in the outside (non-NUFC) world's view, and probably rightly so based on what he's done at Palace so far.

This is where I'm at too at this point in time. We are only 2-3 points behind where I hoped/expected us to be five games in, which isn't catastrophic by any measure, but things need to pick up and very fast, starting with Watford at the weekend. If we are cut adrift in the bottom 3 after the next three games it might be very difficult to recover from that and every so-called easier game will fast become a must win. We saw at the back end of last season how the players cope with that sort of pressure.

Objectively speaking McClaren and Pardew are roughly in the same bracket whether you like it or not, with the latter being current flavour of the month for many non-NUFC fans you would imagine.

I'm of the opinion that he shouldn't have been given the job period, but seeing as he's here we owe him at least a season to see what he can do unless we're in serious danger of going down later in the season, which I don't really expect despite the rocky start to our season. That said, this won't stop me from criticising decisions I see as errors of judgement as and when I see them. I just think any pressure on him to get the sack before the end of the season is unwarranted unless we are in deep brown stuff.

I could probably live with all the mentioned flaws to his game if his goal record was as good as you suggest, which to me would be somewhere near 15 PL goals a season or more, but it really isn't.

Ayoze Perez scored 7 PL goals last season often not playing as the central striker, same as Cisse's record over the past three seasons. He's not ideally suited for the role, but at least he can trap a ball and get other players involved and at this stage I would trust him more to put the ball in the net if a chance fell to him than Cisse. After last season's debut season Ayoze didn't deserve to be dropped, let alone to be benched for another forward who offers absolutely nothing. That said, it was madness in the first place for people to suggest that we needed to keep Cisse as he was guaranteed to get us goals. At this point he offers little more than Gouffran or Riviere would.

Hang on a second. Only a few weeks ago the majority on here were dead set against selling him (and replacing with Austin or AN Other) as Papiss Cisse supposedly was our only dependable source for goals, despite the fact that he only managed an average of 7 PL goals per season over the past three seasons whilst adding absolutely nothing positive to our general play. This season he has bundled another goal in and so is still averaging what he has done in his time here bar the first six months. What has changed for people to suddenly be so vitriolic? His style has always been languish and seemingly disinterested, his first touch has always been rubbish and his hold up play has always been non-existent. Yesterday evening was nothing new really; it's what I've been witnessing for the past few years and I would go as far as to say if Mitrovic doesn't sort himself out real soon we are in serious trouble again this season.

Not surprised one bit about how this has unfolded so far, sadly. A difficult start to the season, new players without any Premier League experience to integrate, a rather average manager to oversee operations all adds up to a shaky start of the season and early must win games to even get us out of the bottom 3. Lose to Watford and things could get very tasty very early on for him. Some honeymoon period

Carroll v Colo

Just leave Colback, Cisse and Schteve in London please

Colback