Unbelievable

Damn, those set pieces look seriously dangerous..

Krul

Everton turning the screw..

Wow, close.. Great work from Obertan in the build up.. Good cross Shola..

Dat defending

Pardew is fucking brilliant

Cisse scores!!!

YES!!

Header saved.

Cisse winning a header from the wing

Howay the lads!

Hazard missing too.. Edit: no he isn't.. Strange, he's showing with 0 points on the FF website.. Edit: having he mare. He is on the bench..

To add to that, playing Shola from the start also robs us from our only plan B in case things don't work out as planned. Don't know what Pardew is thinking here.

Wow, besides Shola's inexplicable inclusion, that looks a tad offensive no? None of those front four will be any help defensively. Can't see this working in an attacking sense with Cisse out wide and Shola up top, but neither does it anything to help shore up a very vulnerable defense.

Ba's and Cisse's inability to form an effective partnership, as it turns out, was the waste of time.

Wait, that article says we only get 3 million out of the total 7.5

Well well well...

Rich posted some statistics a few days ago. His chance conversion this season stands at about 16% if I remember correctly, compared to almost 60% last season. Here's hoping he refinds that form in front of goal.

I would. Acceptable as a stop gap on the last day of the transfer window, but not now with a whole month to sort out a long term replacement.

All speculation to be honest. Also, do people think Ba is the only player with an agent that wants a slice of the pie, or even wants to be paid, as I've seen people include wages into these calculations too? Hopefully we will be paying some agent a heft sum right now to bring in Debuchy. That's just how football works.

There's something almost surreal about such a great player and consistent goalscorer's exit being met by many fans with a mixture of relief and excitement. Part of it, for me at least, is the desire to keep the relative harmony and stability we've had at the club since the beginning of last season. It's been relatively smooth sailing, enormously smooth compared to some seasons in our recent history. While I'm loathe to see Ba go having been a big advocate of his from day one, I think a lot of people simply understand that he appears keen to move on and feel that the team may benefit if he's allowed to leave and is then sufficiently replaced. There's a lot to be upset with, losing almost guaranteed goals first and foremost, but there's a lot of his leaving that people can find peace with when they think about it rationally. NUFC has made him what I assume is a fair contract offer and he's decided the time is right to move and that he can probably do better elsewhere - it's fair enough really. Aye, I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I'm gutted to see such an important player go, and I worry whether we will be able to replace his goals. On the other hand, there is the hope against all odds that this may twist Ashley's arm into investing to secure our Premiership status and make this move beneficial in the long term. A lot will depend on whether Cisse can get back to his previous goalscoring form, and quickly. I have no doubt he has the quality to do it, I'm just a little anxious that he may not for some reason. A combination of a team struggling for goals without its top scorer and an owner always willing to gamble it seems just fills me with fear. You just know that if there is any chance things will blow up in our face, with this club being the rollercoaster that it usually is, the unthinkable can always happen.

I thought Llambias has publicly stated that he does not do (or maybe like to do) bonuses in contracts? Just checked... Mmmm, interesting. Remember quite clearly them coming out with statements how they likes to incentivise contracts..?

Not totally true on two fronts. First - His blueprint is for the club to be self sufficient, if a players cost fits within the clubs affordability he’ll be bought irrespective of fee. The other “condition” is that he has resale value, that does not have to be more than he was bought for, just more than his value “on the books” at the time of sale (due to amortisation). Second – “competitive wages” are paid already (daft wages are not) and will continue to be so, so long as it fits with the % of turnover for wages that’s been laid down. It really is quite simple, players will be bought if it fits the model. If they don’t they won’t. In hindsight, he made a mistake in the summer, there was a case for a little speculate to accumulate, especially given the explosion in PL dosh next season. Hopefully he’s learned from that, but it doesn’t need a daft or never ending splash of cash. In fact if we hadn’t had so many injuries (way more than you could possibly reasonably expect) the apparent summer non-spend likely wouldn’t have been a factor. Yup, that is exactly the policy at present contrary to what many would have us believe. I agree. Thing is before this "self sufficient" policy came into effect Mike Ashley pledged that he would invest 20 million per season of his own money on top of making the club more financially stable. I can understand how he retracted that promise when the fans turned against him, but you would hope that as things have stabilised in terms of fan discontentment, he would now go back to his initial blueprint for the club.

An interesting angle in the whole "greedy cunt/refused to play left wing to the detriment of the team" argument is that his contract with us was probably heavily incentivised towards scoring goals, i.e. a low basic wage plus a high bonus for each goal scored. Interesting, because whilst performance related renumeration, which seems to be something Mike & Co are fond off, can work really well to mitigate certain risks (low pay when injured for example), it also inadvertently can motivate a player to be more greedy in front of goal rather than pass it off to a team mate who is in a better position and wanting to play in a position where the chances of picking up bonusses are higher. Providing this has been a factor in the entire "Ba will play centrally 90% of the time" saga earlier in the season, I hope Mike & Co learn from this experience and make sure that any future bonus related payment is geared towards team rather than individual parameters.

Last time it was us, replacing Carroll with Ba, Cabaye, Marveaux, Obertan and Cisse and still being well up in net cash What's also quite interesting is that in January 2011 Torres left Liverpool for Chelsea for £50m and Carroll left us for Liverpool for £35m. With Ba coming here for free and being seen as almost an after thought in the whole saga. Now Ba could be going off to replace Torres and a backup player from Chelsea could be off to Liverpool to replace Carroll Aye, remember not being impressed at all when we got Ba in on a free to be our main striker.