Tachikoma

I don't think Santon was even that bad, sure, Walcott got the better of him a couple times but nothing really came from it anyway. Perch sitting deep the whole of the second half made it much easier for Arsenal to press us on the left flank, if anything (not that Perch played badly).

This is the thing though mate, when you spend your entire season training the players to play one way, just because you would like to play a different way for one or two games doesn't mean the team's gonna be able to do it. You could see last night that the players are so used to just lobbing it forwards and staying in formation that they looked frightened in possession and none of them were moving for each other. These are good footballers I'm talking about as well, Cabaye, Jonas, Tiote, they all look bloody hopeless on the ball. Occasionally football will 'break out' of it's own accord when an opposition player gets dragged out of place or we play a quick one two, but watch us when we have comfortable possession in the middle of the pitch, we're f***ing clueless. I don't see it that way at all man, sorry. I've seen us play good football on plenty of occasions this season, but I agree the last couple of months we seem to have gotten scared somehow, and Pardew / the players seem to have lost a bit of confidence in us playing passing football. But I've seen it enough from us this season to suggest we can do it, and do it well. The long ball stuff we are resorting to at times at the minute is frustrating but not fully representative of what we / Pardew can and have done. I guess what I'm trying to say is, no one will convince me that in the last 30 minutes yesterday Pardew actually instructed the players to hit it long. I think it was a mixture of the players feeling the pressure, and naturally dropping deeper to try to soak it up. Granted a few games over the last few months have seen us play that tactic, but I don't believe that's what we were trying to do at all yesterday... more that we just got sucked into it as the game wore on. Krul did hit it long every time he got the ball and our players rarely ever made themselves available for a short release, so I'd say it was a "tactical" decision. Shola coming on seems to back it up too.

Lol no. Wasn't horrible but I'd rather we didn't get tonked by Norwich again.

His form has dropped off quite a bit relative to what it was at the start of the season, but he still contributes in important ways. I do look forward to Marveaux giving him competition for the spot on the left though.

Krul rolled the ball out to Williamson once the whole game. The end result of that was probably our first proper forage into Arsenal's third of the pitch (in the second half), shame that only happened once.

Has Arsene developed a fetish for injury prone Germans now?

When did Arsenal grow a spine and balls?

Man, Gervinho is terrible Glad we dodged that bullet.

Well, I wouldn't be opposed to starting Perch over Simpson at some point.

I suppose I wouldn't have any trouble accepting this if I started supporting the club under Souness instead of Bobby I'm not as angry as I was the day we played Sunderland, so I'm willing to give Pardew a chance to show he's not a total fraud against Arsenal. If he starts Raylor over Ben Arfa again...

Shola Shola Shola Shola Shola Shola Shola Shola Shola Shola Shola

you don't even support us Could have been worse, you could have captained Sessegnon, who made it into my first 11 despite being placed last on my bench by virtue of Bale being injured + Richards and Silva not playing for some strange reason.

He has looked excellent tbf. Rapid and has some eye for goal. Plays leftback as well doesn't he?

Here's the thing, I'm fairly certain I had a wildcard before (the second one), but its gone now. What's up with that?

Fulham are a more than decent side nowadays. While I wouldn't want to swap places with them I sure as hell wouldn't mind swapping managers.

Guthrie?

Wow, bringing in Dempsey and captaining him.

HBA _is_ our Messi though, so what if he does lose the ball?

tactical I think, Santon made a lot of runs but they all amounted to the square root of fuck all in actual threat, Raylor for all his faults is better at making chances and links up fairly well with Jonas His runs were pretty much the best we could have managed in the first half, given that everything else was perpetual hoof ball.

Would have Hughton back in a heartbeat

Lol. If only he wasn't one of Pardew's favourites though.

he doesnt know what he's doing, if he wanted to pick a conservative side he should have put 5 man in midfield, instead he just put a team out that did well against man utd, therefore it must do well against everyone else, thats schoolboy mentality and amature management Apparently he thought we played well against Wolves but needed a few "tweaks" here and there. I wonder what goes on in his head at times.

Oddly enough Raylor combined with Jonas better than Santon ever did.

Who has he bought, anyway? Juan Mata and? Cahill, Kevin de Bruyne... In fairness these are mostly players "for the future".

Its called whiplash.