Unbelievable

Getting some crosses in

Santon looking superb so far

Decent cross Cisse

WTF Colo

Williamson good interception..

Willo corner almost worked

Ba

Mike FFS

Comedy gold..

Howay the lads!

The Martinez lovin' on here is embarrassing btw. Besides being experimentative tactically, what's he ever done to suggest he's a top class manager in the making?

I would agree if he was a complete no-hoper in the Kinnear or Souness mould but you're talking about the reigning Manager of the Season - he's proved he can overachieve on a tight budget and difficult working conditions, and I think that earns him the chance to work through his first really tough period. There's nothing to suggest Pardew's lost the dressing room either. He may be tactically rigid, but I think many of those thinking moving Ba out to the left would magically see us improve are massively oversimplifying the situation.

Thread over Yeah, I'm not sure he had our current season in mind when he said that. What DO you think he had in mind? I don't think he thought we could go to this from 5th. Obviously on a high, he was a bit "brave" in his statements. We'll see what happens. Hope we win today mind. Can't deal with a relegation fight. This is EXACTLY what he had in mind man. Do you remember the last season we were in a relegation fight (not that I think we are in one in all seriousness)? FOUR managers. That worked out great, didn't it? Anyway, if Mike and Dekka are honest with themselves, they will acknowledge that finishing fifth and challenging for CL until the last round last season was a massive overachievement from Pardew and this squad of players. They have failed to sufficiently strengthen the squad in the summer (although I commend them on not selling any of our best players), and we are suffering as a consequence. Anyway, they have laid down a marker for stability, and they would look like absolute fools to abandon it so quickly. What they need to do now is hold their end of the bargain, and make funds available to ensure we can remain competitive, not even contemplate sacking the manager who did so well for them last season at the first sight of trouble.

Thread over Yeah, I'm not sure he had our current season in mind when he said that. What DO you think he had in mind?

Thread over

Dream on

Do you understand the legal implications of a contract?

Keep Ba and it leaves Cissé where? At home looking for his shooting boots.

Not really. Some people, myself included, argued that whilst we didn't strengthen sufficiently, we also didn't lose any of our important players, so it wasn't all bad. In hindsight not getting in a centre back knowing how unrealiable Steven Taylor is, and hence having to rely on Williamson as much as we do has hurt us the most. Other than that I don't think you can attribute our poor season to the transfer window failures too much. Poor player form, Europe and injuries/suspensions have all contributed far more than our ultimate failure to bring in someone like Debuchy if you ask me. Chalking that up as 'hindsight' True, bad choice of words, as I felt (and said so at the time) that should have been our priority position long before getting in another defensive midfield player. There's no denying however not losing anybody crucial was massive, and we've had more than our fair share of injuries/suspensions, meaning we've not had a stable back five especially, which I think has been a massive factor in our disappointing season so far.

Happens quite regularly..

37 with Gibbs still to play and Pog coming from the bench if he gets minutes (which he will almost certainly not). 6 of my players (including 2 benched Chelsea players) did not get any playing time this week

I like Santon a lot, but that first half display last Saturday reminded me a bit of Taylor vs Chelsea at home first half last season..

I guess what grinds my gears is that people make it sound like it's Demba Ba himself who decides our formation. He doesn't, that's Pardew's job. Here's a striker who scored 16 goals in the first half of last season and is on course for doing it again, playing in a team without much fluidity and hardly creating many chances. Playing in his best position he's capable of 30 goals a season feeding of scraps. I happen to believe that gives him some leeway when it comes to requesting Pardew to be played in his best position. I think every player is willing to occasionally play elsewhere if circumstances (injuries, suspensions) dictate it, but why is it OK to ask him to sacrifice his best attributes for half a season, and not ask Cisse to play out wide for a bit until he refinds his goalscoring touch? The real problem here is not Ba or Cisse, it's Pardew's preference of a 4-4-2 formation (see for example his attempt to bring in Carroll last summer) combined with the fact that despite Ba and Cisse both being excellent strikers individually, as a front two pairing they're not very effective/complimentary as has been proven in the past couple of months unfortunately. Now I'll give Pardew some credit for insisting with a Ba/Cisse pairing for as long as he has, because in theory they could be brilliant and score 50 between them in a season and for large parts of that brilliant last season we actually played 4-4-2, were fairly solid and got the results through individual brilliance and lethal finishing of mainly the two above mentioned strikers. At this point though, he needs to analyse the situation and come up with a suitable solution. In the last three matches he’s tried Cisse out wide, which has led to somewhat improved team performances, but not results, and to be fair Cisse is not a wide player at all. I can’t see this being the long term solution, although I personally agree that Ba needs to be playing as a central striker at the moment because of his excellent goalscoring form and Cisse’s lack of it. It will be interesting to see what happens in the January transfer window. The Ba contract situation may force Pardew’s hand of course, but I for one hope he stays and we try our hardest to get the best possible forward in to complement our existing options up top. Whether that will be a 4-4-2 type battering ram target man (Carroll type), a pacey forward capable of playing wide (Remy type?) or maybe even nobody at all will tell us a lot about the current level of ambition of the club and the long term type of football Pardew has in stock. I’ll be honest here, I’m 90% about results and 10% about aesthetics, as I can say hand on heart I quite enjoyed our physical, hard working style of Hughton’s group of lads despite not always being the most beautiful to watch. For our sake though, I hope he gets it right as what he’s tried so far this season clearly isn’t working, and that is not Ba OR Cisse’s fault, it’s a matter of lack of gameplan first and foremost.