Dr Venkman

Credit for the win, I think we've got a sending off to thank in all honesty though.

Thank fuck for that. Sending off helped massively. Mapou imperious, Taylor the same, Haidara overawed, Marveaux as dangerous as we know he can be. Tiote not even a footballer.

Don't forget work it wide then put rubbish cross in to no-one.

He's lucky to get one chance a game at the minute.

Pretty much out of patience

Honestly man, I'm fucking sick of the way this team plays, it's so frustrating. We've got the players.

No emphasis at all on attacking play, movement, build up, dragging players out of position, creating space. None of it, ever.

yes

Long balls or aimless crosses. Thats it. Only a Sissoko run breaks the monotony. This team isn't being coached.

It's all them, occasionally we get the ball in their half....and we dont know what to do with it.

The poster version of Jonas/Tiote. You said it

I find it odd that people (including us) are still saying Cisse has been 'found out' or whatever. He's scored 5 in his last 11 league games.

Haven't been in here for while, just popped by to say he's shit.

He's mint, I love him.

complete c***s trick this like, not sporting at all. Who gives a fuck, only one pisses and moans, the rest laugh it off. My nickname at footy is Raaaa If someone did it to me I wouldn't be bothered, if anything it would make me more determined. We all have our standards, I just think it's unfair.

A bit of improvement since the new lads came in? I'd say there has been yeah, they've added a bit more quality. Southampton really attacked us which is why it was a high scoring game. I'm just not seeing us looking like a team with an attacking plan.

complete cunts trick this like, not sporting at all.

Well done Yorkie for setting it up and taking the initial hit on the funds! I'll have to make sure I'm fit for the next one.

I think a lot of the time it is easy to forget how different a game could be if one or two minor moments had been different. If Gouff has scored we might have forced Stoke to at least try to attack, and picked them off a couple more times on the break. It wasn't a great performance, but mainly because we chose the wrong options in attack. We never looked in danger of losing it except when Tiote had a brain freeze. I understand why people would find the game frustrating, because in theory we should have been able to murder Stoke. But in reality it's more difficult than that. I agree in principle Ian, particularly with the first paragraph, but when an awful lot of games involve us looking pretty clueless as an attacking force then who we're playing against becomes less relevant and who's in charge of it is more relevant, imo.

I agree, it wasn't that bad in isolation, we got 3 points. Our play this season has been that bad though, that's why we're 13th and needed loads of new players to get a few wins.

Nice to see him constantly encouraging MYM as well. I know Mapou looks like he's got more self belief than Ben Arfa ( ) but it's still a positive.

People are weird when judging new players, a mate of mine had no time for Santon either when he first joined. I really like Gouffran, I think it's down in no small part to having wanted that sort of player in the team for a long time now, he brings a lot

But for all this supposed negativity we dominated the game. Check out the stats on possession, shots, corners etc. That doesn't show a side sitting back, it shows a side taking the game on. My take was not that we were negative but that we could not convert our pressure into goals against a side who don't aim to do much other than sit back and adopt "spoiling" tactics. Possibly Marveaux for Jonas from the start might have given us a bit more creativity but Marveaux had game time in Moscow and was poor imo. Apply a bit of context, and some eyes, and it actually showed a team playing at home against an away team happy to surrender possession. We still didn't look like we knew how to break them down. Getting it wide and putting in crosses in wasn't working, most of the posters on this board could have told Pardew that it wouldn't work before kick off, we kept doing it though. Again this is a case of taking things game by game. Were we 'negative' in the way we played yesterday? No, because they let us have the ball so we spent most of the time 'attacking'. However I think the inability to break them down is due to an over arching negativity in the outlook of the manager, we constantly look like we don't know how to attack as a team (and have for the vast majority of Pardew's time here) and we simply didn't have an answer yesterday for 75 minutes, all we had was putting crosses in and Sissoko running from deep. If the team were coached in an attacking sense this might have been a bit better, and if he didn't persist with Tiote/Jonas no matter what.

It's an interesting point Stu. I don't have an awful deal of faith in him and it's eroding a little bit more all the time, I'd most certainly take another season of rubbish performances (without relegation) if we could win something though, we need to break that duck asap. Not that I think we'll win the EL though to be honest, I just don't think we're good enough to win something at the minute. Tron's point about Jonas and Tiote is a good one I think, aye it was a good move to bring Marv on, and in isolation that's 3 points won, brilliant. The problem for me is that I don't see it changing anything going forwards because it never does, and for every one of those results there's at least two where Marv/Anita don't start and we don't come back to win the game due to our overly defensive manager.