Unbelievable

If I was Martin Jol I wouldn't even bother putting a replacement CB on..

Never a straight red..

What a day if you're a Man City supporter..

Nearly scored in Fergie time..

Wow

Fuck international football, especially friendlies.

Are we playing 3 wingers today?

Those must be old quotes. Rubbish article.

Please let's not make that his epithet, man. As bas as referring to Wes Brown as 'the Champions' League winner'. They both have those respective accolades but they don't necessarily represent their ability, nor put them beyond reproach or sensible criticism. Are you seriously suggesting you can't see the difference between a manager of a mid-table team receiving those accolades for managing his team to being in the mix for CL football until the very last weekend of the season and a utility player of a great squad winning a medal in a tournament he barely featured in?

Dan Abrahams is actually a top sports psychologist, but not that you'll care. I don't know how people get so wound up about things like that when its blatantly obvious we set up to contain teams and clearly lack an attacking mindset. Calm down, ffs. Look who's talking.. Has it totally escaped your mind we finished fifth last season, way better than most on here dared to dream, and our manager was awarded the manager of the year award as a result. Aye, I bet some two bob "top sports physchologist" would know better - tactics and psychology are near enough the same thing..

I'm sure the manager of the year will be thrilled by this great insight from a psychological coach wannabee..

Fuck

Overseas TV revenue deal for next 3 season looks like achieving 1.4 billion target, taking the total for TV revenues for the Premiership to 5 billion for the next 3 seasons.. Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/nov/12/premier-league-tv-rights-5-bn

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?