Unbelievable

Fuck

First half at Everton is the worst I've seen us play since Chelsea at home last season.

The last few pages of this thread make me sad. Liverpoolesque sense of entitlement.

That's an entirely different discussion though. I for one am perfectly happy to use the early stages of the European campaign to give the likes of Tavernier and Ferguson some official game time and develop their game if we can afford it. If we would have played our first team all the time I'm failry certain people would be claiming it was the cause for the injuries and suspensions.

Right. So you completely missed my point that we focused on defensive solidity first and foremost all last season too? There's no denying Pardew started to experiment with different attacking formations last seasons once we were settled though. My point is this time around maybe it is understandable we are having to work harder on the defensive side of things, as the back five hasn't settled yet. Santon has been the only ever present, and even then we've had to play him in different positions due to the inavailability of others.

That's not my point though. We've hardly had our preferred back 5 (6 if you include Tiote) out this season and have had to make a lot of changes between matches, which might explain the focus on defensive solidity before offensive fluidity. Edit: the same point could be made for the midfield in general, where we've seen more than our fair share of forced permutations, as Jayson correctly points out.

Anita was made for that role. Can't ever see us playing 3 at the back though, so it's a non-starter and rightfully so if you ask me. Also, Perch and Williams ahead of Colo?

It was little different for most of last season though. It was massively different. We started the first 10 matches with the same back 5 last season IIRC.

Playing devil's advocate, maybe the apparent focus (in training) on being defensively solid rather than fluid going forward is related to the large number of forced changes to our back 5, be it through injuries or suspensions? In 11 Premiership matches we have had to make 14 changes in personnel between games: Spurs (h): Krul, Simpson, Perch, S.Taylor, Santon Chelsea (a): Krul, Simpson, Coloccini, S.Taylor, Santon => 1 change Villa (h): Krul, Simpson, Coloccini, S.Taylor, Santon => no changes Everton (a): Harper, Perch, Williamson, S.Taylor, Santon => 3 changes Norwich (h): Harper, Perch, Williamson, S.Taylor, Santon => no changes Reading (a): Harper, Perch, Williamson, S.Taylor, Santon => no changes Man U (h): Harper, Santon, Williamson, Perch, Ferguson => 3 changes Mackems (a): Krul, Simpson, Williamson, Coloccini, Santon => 3 changes West Brom (h): Krul, Simpson, Williamson, Coloccini, Santon => no changes Liverpool (a): Krul, Anita, Coloccini, S.Taylor, Santon => 2 changes West Ham (h): Krul, Simspon, S.Taylor, Williamson, Santon => 2 changes Mind, this is excluding forced in-game changes and also ignoring the stop-start season our midfield enforcer Tiote has had so far. For the first half of last season we saw the huge benefit of having a fairly stable back 5 that saw us unbeaten in 17 (?)- this year so far seems to be the opposite. We're also heavily relying on the likes of Williamson (7 starts) , Harper (4 starts) and Perch (4 starts (in defence)) because of a lack of squad depth (of the required quality). This might go some way towards explaining our preoccupation with being solid first and foremost?

really? Do you? Or are you going to continue to highlight a very vague Cabaye incident? The movement around the lad is horrendous. To clarify I'm not on the HBA is s***/not a team player side of the argument, but how about when we broke and he had Demba Ba to his right (movement around him) for a relatively easy set up and he overhit it towards the corner flag? But he did actually try to pass in this incident which surely supports the "he passes when he has options" argument? I didn't say he doesn't pass. The counter argument was there was no movement around him, which there evidently was in this case. He did pass to his credit, but the move broke down as the pass was so bad. As I said, even on a bad day like yesterday he's still one of our better players, but with his quality you would expect him to be able to play in the striker in an instance like that, just like last week with Cisse, and he failed to do it. Those are match defining moments where he should do better, especially with his quality. There might be the occasional moment but on the whole we are unbelievably static, our movement is shocking, surely you must see that? It's just even more infuriating when Ben Arfa's on the ball because he actually regularly creates space for others but we never capitalise or even gamble on it. Oh I agree our movement is shocking, especially in the box. People often criticise Obertan's end product for example, but he put in a decent ball at the near post yesterday late in the game, where both Shola and Ba were completely immobile. I can't figure out why we apparently don't work on having one striker sit back on the penalty spot in space and one attacking the near post, to give people options to pass to. As I've said before I'm not having a go at Ben Arfa specifically; he is without a doubt one of our best players and the most likely to make anything happen, but he's not beyond critisism either. The whole team has been underperforming this season so far, and it's affected Ben Arfa too, as he's notably less effective than earlier in the season. It appears to me that Pardew and the coaching staff are not really working on our forward play, expecting the quality of the players to always give us a chance, whilst they work on being defensively solid as the main priority. In their defense (no pun intended), we haven't had a settled back 5 so far this season due to injuries and suspensions, so it's probably understandable that a lot of work between matches goes into preparing an unsettled back 5 for the upcoming task of defending a specific opponent. Last season in the first half of the season, where we laid the foundations of our excellent campaign, we had the benefit of having a settled if unspectacular back 5 and could concentrate on automatisms in going forward. This season it appears our midfield and attack haven't got a clue on where to move in which situation, and we often see a lack of imaginative movement, people going for the same ball, no width to our play, etc.

really? Do you? Or are you going to continue to highlight a very vague Cabaye incident? The movement around the lad is horrendous. To clarify I'm not on the HBA is s***/not a team player side of the argument, but how about when we broke and he had Demba Ba to his right (movement around him) for a relatively easy set up and he overhit it towards the corner flag? But he did actually try to pass in this incident which surely supports the "he passes when he has options" argument? I didn't say he doesn't pass. The counter argument was there was no movement around him, which there evidently was in this case. He did pass to his credit, but the move broke down as the pass was so bad. As I said, even on a bad day like yesterday he's still one of our better players, but with his quality you would expect him to be able to play in the striker in an instance like that, just like last week with Cisse, and he failed to do it. Those are match defining moments where he should do better, especially with his quality.

really? Do you? Or are you going to continue to highlight a very vague Cabaye incident? The movement around the lad is horrendous. To clarify I'm not on the HBA is shit/not a team player side of the argument, but how about when we broke and he had Demba Ba to his right (movement around him) for a relatively easy set up and he overhit it towards the corner flag?

This for me. He was still one of the few bright spots today as he's always pleasing on the eye, but he seems to be having trouble with the fairly simple stuff that decides games at the moment. Last week he failed to play in an unmarked Cisse (iirc) on the break, this week he had a chance to launch Ba in a one on one and completely misjudged the pace of the ball. For a player as technically gifted as him it is incredibly frustrating to see him be responsible for the breaking down of promising moves, especially as we don't have many these days and generally (over)rely on our flair players to conjure something out of nothing.

27 points. Going from bad to worse..

What? I don't see the problem. Ok he only had 15 minutes but he managed to cram 90 minutes worth of frustration into that cameo. All he can do is run. In those 15 minutes (if that) he put more balls in the box than Ferguson did in 90. The lack of movement by the strikers in the box was astonishing. Not saying he did particularly well, but to single him out for criticism smacks of having an axe to grind.

What?

FT - season over

Again, no movement in the box for that Santon cross..

Pards

When was this?

5 minutes..

He's a good player but he's responsible for his own performances which have been average since September.

How's that a foul by Shola?

5 minutes, come on FFS!!!